Most of my games get planned the night before, or sometimes the day of. I have found there to be two primary reasons for this, the first being that I change my mind frequently. We generally play my games every other week and in the time between games, I have a lot of ideas. Often times, I will “settle” on an idea, or an encounter, only to toss it out the next day.
Perhaps this is just the way I am wired. I am a procrastinator, and work better at the last minute.
But last night something occurred to me when thinking about the process. I think part of the reason for my delayed planning is that I am trying too hard. I want each one of my games to play as if it is the climax of some epic story. I want to wow my players each and every game. I want them to remember each game as one of the most awesome they have ever experienced.
I don’t think that going for gold each game is necessarily a problem, but I think it may have a lot to do with the drawn out process of my game planning.
To be clear, I am by no means claiming each of my games ARE epic. In fact, there have been times when this quest for an epic game has lead to a paralysis of ideas. One that forces me to run a completely improvised game. The point is, I should lower my expectations a bit if I want to work on avoiding the last minute push.
What about you – are your expectations high when planning each game?
NOTE: By the way – if you dig the fighting squirrel pic, you can see the photographer David J Slater’s “Cape Ground Squirrel” gallery here, with even more pics like this!
I recognize the last minute inspiration/solution. I too get way too many ideas and tend to change my mind too much. That’s one of the reasons I’ve started writing stuff down to put online that’s game related but not necessarily related to my regular campaign. I call it “overflow”, and there’s a LOT of it!
I think, if I spent all that time between sessions just planning that one next adventure, I would end up going crazy and probably end up with a less inspired game.
I generally spend around a year developing a campaign setting with a general story arc per character level, then running a sandbox improv fest.
I keep a grab bag of adventures and “dungeons” that I develop over the course of designing the setting, and I’ve kept tons of unused ones from other campaigns I’ve run over the years that I can thow in as well, but if the players don’t take any of the hooks I throw at them my setting is detailed enough that I can mix and match adventure elements and NPCs on the fly if necessary.
I’ve found running a fluid campaign structure like this allows my players to suspend disbelief and have a more immersive experience.
I have the same problems: Too many ideas, procrastination, wanting my games to be perfect. I write everything down and just draw up tons of dungeons, then I stick them in a box and pull out random ideas when I get stumped.
Our most interesting games have been when I pull out a dungeon/story arc that I wrote 10 years ago in 2e.