When did you realize that the superior style of GMing is to not have plans...

Are you stupid? The GM isn't prevented from doing anything by giving their players a say in what happens. Where did you even get that notion?

The secret is to grin and wink whenever the players mention a plot hole. Of course there wasn't a plot hole. What do they think there's?

You shouldn't have to directly ask them what they think will happen next, that's lazy and obvious. Let them talk to each other about it and so on.

This. Listen in, and take notes.

And again, if you have sufficiently perceptive players, especially older ones who have all been on the other end of the GM table, they'll see through these tricks, because they've seen them, maybe even employed them before. I'm not even talking about inconsistent characterization, or a epic plot twist. These are guys who notice quantum ogres, and "this is the vague area of the map I haven't really fleshed out" and cast their barbs appropriately.

That goes without question, but doesn't make a funny OP.

Maybe don't play with no-fun-allowed grognards then? I mean, I've been on both sides of the GM's screen, and I definitely notice plot holes and inconsistencies or whatever. But I'm also not a dick about it. I keep my mouth shut, see where it goes, and enjoy the ride. Because it's a game, not some super serious theater production.

Happy you get it, because it was basically your reasoning.
So now we can agree, players aren't prevented from doing anything by the GM having some sort of plan.

Who said they're no fun allowed? Because I certainly enjoy playing with them, and running for them. But it also means that you can't slap shit together at the last minute and call it a day. It's well worth the effort, if you have players who actually will notice and appreciate that kind of stuff.

I mean, let's face it, the entire premise of OP's assertions is that players can't or won't tell the difference. Why are you playing with that caliber of a group?

If they noticed, that just means you need to git gud.

Except yes, they are. You're assuming GMs and players, by default, have the same sort of narrative control, when that's blatantly false. The GM has final say in what happens in their game. A player can say they're from a place and have it all written out and everything, but if the GM says that the location doesn't exist, then it doesn't. Meanwhile, the GM can absolutely declare a place exists, and the players don't really get to say otherwise. It's a power gap that exists and has existed in RPGs since the genesis of the hobby, and the fact that you can't see it proves that you don't really play games yourself.

Best advice?
Put precisely half the amount of time preparing a game as you will GMing it; anything else is excessive, draining to your mental energy reserves, and will lead only to a mixture of burnout when you use up all you have fast and disappointment when your plan doesn't fall through like you imagined because players aren't in on it.

If they didn't notice, you just have stupid, unperceptive players. Get better ones.

Figure out what will fill that plot hole, then canonize it. That guy who keeps giving you bad advice? Maybe he's working against you/for a totally separate goal and has no care if you live or die. Then players feel clever for noticing something is wrong, and everybody wins.

...Develop improv skills?

When in doubt, just keep a generic encounter or two waiting in the wings to pull out if they deliberately go for the bit of the map that is still mostly empty. It's not particularly inspired, but every wilderness has wildlife (assuming that the party is low-powered enough for bears and the like to be a threat), and bandits are an old standby. The encounter just needs to last long enough to come up with something cool for the other side.

Also, if your players actively run away from any prep you did, there's no point in prepping storylines. Go for breadth, not depth.

If they noticed, it's possible you're just kind of shit at on-the-fly design. Get better at it.

Improv isn't hard.

I'm 55189911. Literally nothing you said is even applicable to what I've been writing. Did you even read it?

It's also possible that they can tell the difference between improved and pre-planned stuff. Why are you so resistant to the idea? Have YOU never been able to tell the difference between something improved and something pre-planned when you were playing?

>I'm not bad at improv, you just don't have smart players like me!

Nonsense.

Again, try throwing an intentional "plot hole" at them, just grin and nod while they nitpick and whine, then BAM! Reveal that it wasn't a plot hole after all, it was actually a case of them having some fundamental misapprehension of the situation.
Do that a time or two and they'll stop nitpicking and being smug bitches every time they think they've "caught you making it up" and will instead be wary of the surprises you could have in store for them.

tl;dr: GIT GUD

Plans are useless, planning is essential. So while I agree that a game that has a lot of improv and mad libbing can be some of the best fun around, not having some idea of what the game actually is and what the general goals of the characters are can be fatal as the game turns to chaos. I am sure most the people suggesting the improv method already know this, so I am only stating it to remove the presumptions.

I can tell when the GM is shit. When he's good it all flows so seamlessly it's hard to say.

Absolutely. I don't bother writing down much anymore because I find that shit never gets used, but I do spend a lot of time thinking over the world space, considering what the major actors are doing, how they are responding to what happened last session, tying loose ends together and stuff like that.

You're just a moron. Even your posts sound cringey and retarded.

But I know this and haven't deny it. Of course a GM CAN prevent players from doing, but it doesn't have to be that way.
You're talking as if any decision from the GM result in absolute railroading, calm down.

>I can't argue that, let me post dismissive labels and buzzwords instead

>Get BTFO
>No y-you're dumb and your posts are cringey!

Pottery.

>You're talking as if any decision from the GM result in absolute railroading

No, he's not. How do you get that from his post?

>inferring

ITT
> They're not playing like me
> Which means they must be evil!

It doesn't matter if they know you're improvising large sections of plot. Why would it? As long as the content is good, what's to complain about?

Personally, I think improvised stuff can end up better than the carefully planned out roadmap that the players will likely disregard anyways, and I know I've seen that as a player. It's the difference between acting out the novel that the GM wanted to write and actual collaborative storytelling.

>Pottery.

Huh? I'm sorry I think you're too hip for me to follow your banter. I get you're mocking him, but I don't know what that means.

I know, right?

Again, READ the posts. I'm not talking about plot holes. Are you incapable of following a couple of two line posts? I'm talking about players who are capable of noticing the tricks, and who get upset to be deceived in that manner. What do you do say, when your players notice that you threw a quantum ogre and get upset about it? What do you do when they point out that a given region's economic or political setup can't possible work?

Players can be smart too. The idea that you can fool them all of the time and they'll never notice is predicated on the assumption that you're better at perpetrating subterfuge than any of them are at penetrating it. If you play enough people for long enough, you will find players who get wise. Some of them won't take an issue with it, but others will. Lazily slapping shit together on the fly and assuming that none of them will notice or care is not going to happen if you get a good stable of players.

>notice that you threw a quantum ogre

I never do that, it's half-assed improv for beginners.

>What do you do when they point out that a given region's economic or political setup can't possible work?

Say "Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it?" then start taking mental notes as they try to figure out what's really going on with that region. By next session I have their ideas and my own to pick from when deciding the solution to the mystery.

And like with trolling, you NEVER admit when you're caught. Just smile and kick it down the road, make adjustments to the world, and they'll begin to wonder if they ever actually caught you at all.

>Again, missing the point.
Please, point out where I was talking about plot and plot holes. These are my posts
.I make one, offhand reference to it. What about when it's bad encounter design because you threw something together without looking to see if it was really balanced or thematically appropriate? What if it's in the nature of your worldbuilding being inconsistent or implausible? What if it's something that doesn't mesh with the rest of the game's tone well?

Personally, I think improvised stuff is never as clever as its proponents think it is, and often starts falling apart under its own weight by the third or fourth question you ask about the new development. I know because I've seen it as a player. It's the difference between something that had a bit of leisure time and free thought put into it, and something that's thrown together on the spot while trying to appear like it isn't and while running a game on top of it. It has very little to do with forcing the players to dance to your tune.

I think everyone else is just using "plot holes" as emblematic of the whole "notice you're not using prepared content" idea. Don't get so hung up on it.

>I never do that, it's half-assed improv for beginners.
So what do you do? After all, you've mentioned that you think players are (if the GM isn't straitjacketing them) difficult to predict. So one day your players decide to drop everything that they've been doing thus far, and shout "LETS GO TO SEA AND BECOME PIRATES". Now you've got to make up some encounters on the spot. What's your set of techniques for doing so in the next 5 minutes?

>Say "Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it?" then start taking mental notes as they try to figure out what's really going on with that region
So, in essence, double down, and bet that they're some combination of stupid, easily intimidated, or imperceptive. Turn it around; you're the player, you've noticed your GM making stuff up, and it's not as good as the stuff he has pre-planned. When you notice something inconsistent, he tries to squirm out of it, stall until the session ends, and then, later, adds MORE inconsistent stuff, that definitely wasn't there last time. I know if it was me, I'd be pissed. And this plan of yours can only work if

A) The player or players, while capable of noticing your first stumble, can't notice you applying a patch on it.

B) Your improvised stuff is really no different in quality than your planned stuff, and they can't tell the difference

I certainly don't. I mean look at what he said.

>Personally, I think improvised stuff can end up better than the carefully planned out roadmap that the players will likely disregard anyways, and I know I've seen that as a player. It's the difference between acting out the novel that the GM wanted to write and actual collaborative storytelling.

He's bringing in a dimension of player freedom and efficacy of choices. That is applicable to improvisation of plot, but it isn't to say, improvisation of encounters.

What about... doing some planing and being ready to scrap your plans if needed? being prepared but flexible?
There is a world between railroad and calvinball, it's where actual games are played.

In order of preference:

>straight-up Quantum Ogres

>Refluffed Quantum Ogres to fit the situation

>Refluffed "Quantum Ogres" with stats and abilities and encounter space adjusted on the fly

>"Quantum Ogres" where I pick some monster that's close to what I want and alter it on the fly

>"Quantum Ogres" where I select or make up an appropriate monster for the situation and then create the stats for it on the spot

(By the last one it clearly isn't "Quantum Ogres" at all anymore)

I'll grant the last one takes a good deal of mastery of your system, and may be nigh impossible if you're playing some systems where statblocks are really long and involved, but even then I don't see the need to prepare a whole encounter and just shove it in front of wherever the players go.

>adds MORE inconsistent stuff

Then he's doing it wrong. Duh. You have to find a way to hammer out the inconsistencies, you don't just pile them up, silly. You look at what's wrong and say "what underlying explanation would cause this to make sense?"

That's what I do. I imagine there are some GMs who are God-tier improv guys who don't need to prep at all, but I still need a little bit of time between sessions to iron things out and get ready.

Because that requires work user. Who the hell has time to prepare something if you aren't sure you're going to use it?

That's what I've been advocating for, really. I just prefer breadth to depth. Have a vague map, general ideas of what's in the area, and some interesting characters that you can slot into wherever they seem to fit best in the moment.

If they want to be pirates, I'd let them. In the immediate term, they are still on land, so they'd need to go to a port and acquire a ship. Ships are expensive and not available off-the-rack in most places that aren't major dockyards, so they'd need to go to a major port city. During this period, you'd pretty much be dealing with the same shit as before, (party trying to get from A to B) which isn't really a problem, do some road encounters if you feel like it. Then I'd probably let them decide how they want to get the ship and crew that they'd need (no decently-sized ship is going to sail with a crew of 5 untrained sailors). If they want to turn pirate, they can't just hire a crew, so they'd need to get a crew of people willing to do something that illegal and loyal enough to follow them. Maybe they steal a ship, maybe they buy one (nice money-sink), maybe they set themselves up as privateers with the blessing of a regional authority. All of this is doable without throwing the GM too much for a loop, as long as you handle it logically.

tl;dr the party is usually limited in what they can do, so as long as you plan around what they can do, you have time to put together something further up the path. (Also, that piracy thing sounds fun to do, giving them huge returns at the end when they get a big score, maybe a nice chance for them to get into some plot hooks when they steal something they didn't expect (cursed artifact, royal envoy, dragon eggs, lich's phylactery that was being shipped securely). It sounds like a great time.)

In my experience, as long as you have at least 2 things prepped, you can avoid looking like you have a Quantum Ogre, even if it's just one telegraphed encounter that the party can choose to either go for or avoid (bringing them, inevitably, to the alternate encounter, with relatively minimal fluff-changes to fit the situation). It's not much harder than the Quantum Ogre, but the players get to feel like they made a meaningful decision, as long as the alternate encounter comes soon enough after they avoid the first Ogre and is clearly linked to the method they used to get around it.

Then you just have a LOL random campaign that inevitably fizzles out because the DM has no idea what the fuck is going on and neither so the players so everything devolved into aimlessness. You need to give players some choice and structure, an empty sandbox is just as bad as a tight railroad.

You need to run a good game have a balance of elements. You need structure to get players hooked and have a cohesive world with verisimilitude but you need flexibility so that the players can add to that and come.up with their own creative solutions.

The LOLrandomz DM and the railroad DM both fall into the trap of fearing vulnerability, the railroad DM fears the players will break his game and he won't know what to do so strictly structures it whereas the LOLrandom DM fears his structure won't be good enough and fears the effort creating such structure entails so opts for none at all. To have a good game as with all things in life you must find the middle road.

Savages, the lot of them

Pretty much after the first campaign I ran. It became very apparent that significant narrative prep is totally worthless.

>tone that vaguely hints you're mocking them
>You do a minimum of work, you look smart

Seems like you accidentally exposed what kind of a person you are, embarrassing desu

This.

This thread is full of lazy half-asser GMs who are pretending to be great, when they're actually mediocre.

SOMETIMES a GM has to resort to what the OP is talking about because they players do something unexpected and you don't have anything prepared. However doing it by default is the work of a charlatan who gets by only because his players are even stupider than he is.

Or don't be an asshole

Build your story organically instead of planning ahead sure but come up with something interesting instead of antagonistic. If the pace is too slow, speed it up. If things seem to easy start slowly building the difficulty. If your players like horror and tense atmospheres then make it a roller coaster of intense brief exposition, tense stealth moments and opponents with debilitating abilities.

Even if you don't plan ahead you should at least have an idea of what your story is. Start throwing out a story and build on it based on reaction. Kind of like what you're saying but instead of being an antagonistic asshole who's just going to alienate his players and cause friendship ending fights, you build on their expectations and try to surpass them.

>DMing
>integrity

What?

Absolutely. Pretending to be a good GM isn't the same as being a good GM, and it doesn't get you any closer to that goal.

>Be me, dm guy
>improv a lot, like a LOT
>have old, experienced RPG players
>they love my improv stuff
>they know I improv, but aren't often sure when I'm improving or working from prep
>but the sessions I improv the most on seem to be the ones they call out as their favorites
>feel good, figure I'm doing pretty well

>come here

>Veeky Forums tells me I'm like some kind of incredible unicorn, I couldn't possibly exist
>stuff I know is true must be lies because who could possibly do that?

Thanks for the ego boost!

Beneath their acne hide there's emptiness inside.

No one is saying that improv isn't possible

We are saying that OP sounds like an asshole

How can I steal something the players never had?

Surprisingly effective bait

Well, of course OP is a faggot, that goes without saying, but several people have said that nobody could possibly do shit that I've done, right in this very thread.
I suppose I could assume that maybe they're just bad at games or lack imagination or experience, but I think I'd rather believe that it's because I'm incredible. The thread's more fun that way.

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

The same holds true for rpgs.

>Have a campaign with a GM who puts in a pretty large amount of time into worldbuilding
>Ended up being a really high magic bullshit pathfinder game with ludicrously broken characters
>Was really enjoyable, but salty players meant it ended in a slightly sour note
>New campaign, start level 0, random misfits in a bumfuck nowhere village
>Low magic, no magical items available, even things like adamantine is ludicrously rare
>Players keep eachother interested and invested in this novel little setting
>Almost entire sessions are just intercharacter dickery with 1 or 2 actual events
>GM is happy
>1 session a godling messes with the characters in the woods while they were hunting
>1 session the tax man rolls into the village
>1 BBEG intervention later (BBEG was played by someone other than the GM) and a PC is taxed to hell after helping the entire village with their taxes
>PC basically becomes evil
>Chaos descends onto the game like a thick fog
>Slow progression, we've reached level 6 now
>The last 3 sessions have all had a player death
>The last 3 sessions have all resulted in entire in world factions getting dropped into shit creek without a paddle
>Only surviving party member from the start is Mr."taxed into evil", who has basically been the cause of most of this
>GM is left after each session holding his head in his hands, having to plan out events and characters for entirely new factions as we just obliterated the last faction we were at
>GM is stressed
>I am to be the next GM, this campagin ends when the chaos elemental spawned by taxation finally dies
Low prep games are some shit if you end up with the wrong/right characters. Also I think I am comfortable in saying that having people outside your games play the BBEGs always ends in hilarity. Would recommend. One action turned what was going to be a Lawful good heroic party into a whirlwind of chaos and despair.