Toss them a minor magic item. Prep while they squabble over who should take it for 30-60 minutes.
In 3 months, you’ll forget they have it and they’ll use it to completely bypass a 4 hour combat you planned, leaving you in the exact fake boat you are now but even worse.
Just finished a 2 yr campaign as a DM and had plenty of these moments. I am looking forward to being a player again while I recharge for the next campaign I run.
I once spent 6 months leading up to summer to plan out a campaign that would take us 3 months to get through, and while I allowed the team to do whatever they wanted, let’s just say a few villages grew legs to plop down ahead of their path. Not everything was planned, but the bulk of it was there and details could be filled in as we go and they become relevant. Always keep notes.
Then one day, one of the players couldn’t make it, so we still met but with 5 instead of 6. Nobody wanted to play without 6, so they asked me to pull out a side one if I had one. I did not.
So improvisation it is.
Afterward they asked if they could restart and play THIS campaign instead because they felt I had put more thought into it than the previous one.
I’m gonna be honest, I finished the campaign but that comment killed my passion for it because they essentially told me “your plans are shit, we’d rather just have rehashed tired movie plots instead”
It’s been years and my dice still sit on my shelf, notebooks boxed up I don’t even know where. I don’t think any of my character sheets survived my last move either.
I really dislike the thought of running epic months-/years-long campaigns. In theory, it sounds like it could be interesting, but then it just breaks down under real world conditions. You’ll rarely find a solid group of consistent players and if you’ve already worked it out that its going to take months to get through, you’ve kind of already decided to start railroading the players (though you can allow for improvisation, the overall story’s structure is pre-written).
I much prefer running one-shot adventures, maybe lasting <10 sessions at most, where I have as little idea what’s going to happen as the players and there’s no pressure to keep things going. It just lets me work on the general feel and concept for the game I want to run and not worry about funneling the players through a set of specific story beats or work out what’s happening in the background amongst different factions, etc. If the players liked running improv, just go with it then, true improv in gaming feels so rare (at least in my gaming group I think).
Luckily we all lived within the same two blocks, so coordinating was easy. Toss your shit in a bag and walk for 180 seconds, you’re there. It made scheduling much easier when you don’t have to factor in traffic time.
I’m gonna disagree with you on the “you have to railroad them”. There’s a reason I put 6 months of work into it, so there was something to do no matter where they went, and most of it could be shuffled a bit for convenience, most of it had a connection in one way or another to another part, so if they wanted to follow a lead after clearing out the last dungeon there’s a new quest for next session, or you can leave and start walking in a random direction until you find something.
I don’t like filler, so no sessions filled with basically nothing but travel.
This campaign was met weekly, for 3 months. I feel like 10-13 sessions is pretty standard for a decent sized campaign. I don’t have the patience for years long shit. In my mind “one shot” adventures are things you come up with for today only. 5 sessions is a “mini campaign”.
I try to shoot for 6 sessions usually. That way if there’s an issue with schedules, we can compress it to 4. If nobody has any conflicts, we can stretch it to 8 by adding in a couple surprises. Hash it all out in session 0.
A good DM knows when to use each type of adventure, and a good group will find what they all like together. Up to that point, we had all liked what we were doing, and aside from minor issues here and there, we worked out any problems at the start of each new adventure.
“akshyully I’ve been well aware of why casual content appeals to the casual audience. I’m a GAMER.”
But seriously, yeah. Generic plots appeal to the most people because they’re easy to follow. I’ve met a lot of people who hated “The Prestige” because “it was confusing as fuck” and “didn’t make sense”. I admit, I ve seen it four times now and I still caught something new on my last watch. But still. It’s not exactly rocket surgery.
But I really did pull most of that campaign straight from a movieand they ate it up, talked about it like it was an 11 course meal. Instead of a truck stop hotdog with slightly too-green mustard.
This isn’t just your world, meticulous planning, even with preparation to be fluid is often worse than pure improv. When your players know that there isn’t much lined up ahead, they start to contribute lore and tone, and they seek adventure instead of reacting to it. Players may be enjoying a TV show, book or game at the moment and want to echo something they enjoy, either a character or even just a vibe, oftentimes a game that encourages that to come forth is more fun.
I have a beloved campaign setting that between last time I used it and now, I’ve made thousands of changes and improvements and I’m truly excited to run it, but after I next run it, I’m going to shelve it indefinitely until running it for my children one day, if I have any. Instead I’ll just sit down in session 0 and ask people what tones and fiction touchstones they’re enjoyjng, and then build the setting then and there with them, vetoing options that I’d not enjoy running but keeping things open. From there, I’ll encourage them to build the world with me, a player will care more about the kingdom they named or the wandering superweapon automaton that they suggested than anything I could come up with, not because they’re better writers but because people do just care about the things they enjoy more.
It’s like when players are overly invested in their own backstory over the plot, it’s not because your plot is bad but because they have daydreamed about that and are keen to explore it above all else, not all players love to make a complex backstory character but the majority who won’t may still enjoy collaborative worldbuilding and be excited to explore the parts they build, as a GM your role is to keep things concise and develop the through line that allows all these factions and locations to shine, while even keeping that flexible and casual.
TTRPGs are often about escapism and having fun often outweighs having something meaningful, players will remember the session they smiled through more than the session with well achieved complexity or good writing. Get those dice off the shelf and have another go, and remember to have fun first. It’s always fun to build your setting and story, and it’s a great way to enjoy this game away from the table, but your players don’t share in that enjoyment, and if you need them to have the most fun for you to have fun too, then remember that the times you have fun daydreaming about your world without them are moments that may be fun to have together.
For me it’s all the time the other way around. I prepared everything and think about the session later the day. Then I read the group chat and people cancel and try to reschedule without finding time for it…
Inattentive ADHD and being a DM can a bit of a mixed bag a lot of the time, but hey I can improvise like hell in sessions when the party starts to wander
Hell for the last 4 months the party has been wandering
I mainly GM Adventure Paths, so it’s a bit different, but typically aim to prepare up to a whole book in advance. Which really is overkill, but it does mean that I’m never in a rush or panic over it, and lets me devote extra prep time to whatever I feel deserves it.
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