Based on what was said in the recent SA thread I felt an exchange of ideas of what one considers adequate preparation for running a TROS campaign.

Personally, I like my GM to have a story prepared that fits in with the charactors SA's.

Myself, I usually make a 1 pg outline for each time we meet - more of a general plotline - which it not too rigid that it can't cope with a players unexpected actions. But the outline helps me with the story so that when I have to "wing it" -the players can't tell I'm doing so (they always think I'm two steps ahead, or so I hope). Such an ouline I usually find good for a solid 4 hours of play.

Now there is always the chance that a PC in the middle of and adventure will say "F#@k it all, my charactor's going home." and choose to walk right out of the story. But if one designs the story arc with the PC main SA's in mind, this will never happen as the player will want to see things through to the end.

But I may be an exception. I tend to think of my campaigns in terms of a movie series that people would actually like to watch. I view each time we meet to play more in terms of the next 'episode' rather than another gaming session. I think it's cool when some of my players say how cool a certain fight or encounter would be if they saw it in a movie. Especially since that's the effect that I'm trying to create.

I guess one of my pet peeves is when a GM wings it, and it shows. I consider such preparation as described above for me essential, and I feel my players get more out of and adventure when I am well prepared beforehand.

in my opinion, jake found a nice way to implement what DMs have been doing...at least good DMs... and that is, finding a reason based on your history or the way the character acts, to get that persn involved in a game... and thats really the best way to do it, the players are there because their characters are the main characters of said game.

with that in mind theres no sense in a seneschal making a game that doesnt revolve around them, thats the whole point to an RPG.. ya know?

as for winging it, i tend to do it alot, though i keep word files o my computer of what happened during the game, and we go from there... so really only the first session is winging it, and then the rest of the sessions (around a month or so) is chasing down leads, or killing the bad guys, or whatever... i give more info to them obviously, but i use my notes as a way to know where they have been, i still dont really plan things out after that, i just keep them as a reminder of what happened in previous weeks

What I think is very interesting about the way TROS handles things is that if you want to prewrite a plot("Illusionism") you can do it, if you want to wing it, you can do it easily as well. The benefit of having SA's is that you can look down the list and come up with Bangs or trigger points for things on the fly("Oh look, he's got conscience, let's spice up this fight scene by having a couple of refugees trying to run through it...kids, yeah").

The only conflict comes in the point of where players might want to change their SA on the fly("Actually, the King is wrong, this isn't justice...My immortal soul is more important!") particularly passions. In those cases, you may find your plot based around an unchanging passion to be completely blown out of water.

My recommendation is similar to what Fang has been writing of late-keep a loose list of bangs that can play off of various SA's, and insert them when things slow down. If someone changes one or two SA's, you still have a lot to play off of, and if you have the other NPC's embroiled in conflicts likely to test many SA's, you'll have no problem pulling things out the hat.

One issue that folks may want to take into account in the prepared vs. winging it debate: If a player does say, "My guy's going home", that's basically the same as saying, "This conflict doesn't interest me". That's a big sign to take a look at the player's SA's, and perhaps, out and out ask the player what kind of conflict they want. Remember, there's a lot that goes unspoken in roleplaying, which often leads to miscommunication and the "dysfunctional relationship" issues. When the GM and the players prep their stuff apart from each other, you get,

"Here's a world, make some people to fit in it"
"Here's some folks, make the story I want based around their stats and some back story"
"Um, well, I guess I can fit you into my plot, here and here, and well, we'll just kludge you in over there..."
"What the hell?!? This story is missing the point of my character?!?"
"Why aren't you interesting in the story I slaved over?!?"

etc. etc.

No matter which way you do it, communicate, communicate, communicate. The SA stats and basic description often aren't enough. Two folks can have a high conscience coming from different reasons. And since each character has 5 SA's, a player may only want to focus on 2 or 3 as the "story" of their character.

Chris

I concur. The biggest thing in keeping your players in the game is to involve the characters. The last game i GMed was WFRP, actually approximately a year ago at around this time. I just ran the sample introductory scenario from the back of the book, and let the players decide what they wanted to do. They took over the base, and the remaining gang members showed up. The party expalined that it wasn't them that killed everybody, but some chaos cultists.....(a big fat lie, but the gangers didn't know that ;) )

As time went on, one player wanted to become a mercenary captain, another a giant slayer, anad the third a bounty hunter/assassin. I asked the players what they wanted to see from the game character wise, and then worked them through the roads that were necessary to get them there. It all hinged well together, actually.

Sure I winged it, like the time they didn't want to solve a mystery that involved a number of noble families and the murder of one of their members, so I had to figure a way of getting them out of town wquick. Fortunately, one needed healing badly, so as payment to the temple, they had to escort a priestess to a village. Of course, there were consequences when the party returned to the city (riots etc).

We all have to wing it from time to time. One of the best games i've ever had involved my drawing a very crude map 25 minutes before the game session, telling the party that their mission was 'rescue this important officer from the enemy base' (they were military types, so orders from above were common) and just making the whole thing up as i went along. Everyone had a blast. One came up to me after and said that was his best gaming session ever.

Winging it is a bit of a skill, but one that is eminently valuable to good GMing. Since it IS a skill, it can be learned fairly easily.