this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2023
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Don't write every part of your adventure in advance. Unless you and your players are OK with some strong railroad tracks or agree to follow plot hooks, it's a recipe for wasted content.
That doesn't mean write an adventure or campaign, it means write an outline and the next session or three of content and then see where the party starts to go. A good thing to get in the habit of is ending a session right after a major decision has been made, especially if it pertains to traveling. Try to align the end of a session with the party's decision on what cave, cellar or town to travel to next. Then you can prep it as needed.
Something interesting that Matt Mercer mentioned on their latest talkback was how often times he just creates problems but not a solution. Seems like a really great way to ensure the players are able to have freedom in how they approach things and you as a DM aren’t forced into ensuring a specific outcome
That's good advice. Unless everyone agreed to run a prewritten module, expecting the players to do too specific things and go to too specific places is ill-advised.
Pre-planning too far, even with collaborative players, can fail to provide what they want. Only as the campaign progresses it will become clear what the players gravitate towards and what are their dispositions.
The GM can keep some general ideas for the future events and potential conclusions, but fleshing them out before they are imminent will only lead to wasted effort and disappointment. Being able to think on your feet is very important for a GM too.
Conversely, players should understand that GMs also have ideas of what they want to see, so they should at least try to pick up on some cues.
Everyone should remember that the core of TTRPGs is collaborative storytelling.
Honestly even if everyone agreed to a linear story, they can jump the rails without even knowing unless you have clear and explicit communication. DMs should be willing to say "hey, you can do this, but just so you know I never considered this action and might need to make up some nonsense on the fly or take a break to do some new prep" if they think it's necessary. Clear communication beats hiding behind the curtain for the sake of immersion every time.
I was a player in a campaign a while back where this basically happened - we all knew the DM had plans and thought we were following them, but he revealed at the end that pretty much the last half of the campaign had been panicked improvisation of material that he wasn't happy with, because at one point the NPCs we'd been traveling with got on a boat to a new continent and invited us along, and in absence of other clear plot hooks we said yes. Apparently all the prep was on the previous continent and he riffed a ton of interactionless filler descriptions, a random dungeon, and a half-baked new plot, rather than saying "you can go with them but to be clear you'd be leaving my prep". In our particular group's case, we would have happily changed our mind on that basis, but even if we'd gotten on the boat we would have been in a position to understand and enjoy the new adventure better knowing that everyone (including the DM) was venturing into the unknown together.