GM'ing Style question

[weogarth]

Originally Posted by Grey Mage

Weogarth,

Are you pregenerating maps in FG? Or freehanding?

While I own almost everything Profantasy has to offer, I don't make enough maps for my liking so many times, I'll just do freehand for dungeons/tactical maps.

[Mmurphy]

Originally Posted by weogarth

While I own almost everything Profantasy has to offer, I don't make enough maps for my liking so many times,

Wow, that sounds very familiar (I own most everything profantasy has to offer for fantasy), however I also bought the forgotten realms maps and use those for castles, inns, buildings, and dungeons. This is how I can 'just pull something out'.

[jerrycnh]

And now for a slightly different perspective.

I can appreciate a world that has player flexibility, but for myself, I prefer to have things a little more set out in stone. For example, I would never allow player imagination to "create" a castle or other fixture in my game world. This is largely because I tend to (as much as possible within a fantasy setting) stress realism in my campaigns, and give the feel that the world is active and alive outside of the players' presence. My general rule is to make sure that the area 5 miles around the PCs is completely mapped out at all times, and I have a couple of "random" encounters ready to pounce on any PCs who unwittingly walk off the board and enter whitespace, in the hopes that said encounters get me through the rest of the session so that I can have that area mapped before the next one.

Ironically, I have the feeling this is going to make the storyboard even /less/ useful for me, because my areas always exist in realtime - every dungeon, ruins, cave, artifact, political situation, etc. has a set note on it that says "this is what will happen by X date without PC interference" and, since the PCs can't be everywhere at once, most of the time that note happens and I need to write the next event for that plotline. I can't imagine keeping that flow would be easy on a static storyboard.

But then I don't have the program yet so I could be wrong.

[Farling]

Originally Posted by jerrycnh

Ironically, I have the feeling this is going to make the storyboard even /less/ useful for me, because my areas always exist in realtime - every dungeon, ruins, cave, artifact, political situation, etc. has a set note on it that says "this is what will happen by X date without PC interference" and, since the PCs can't be everywhere at once, most of the time that note happens and I need to write the next event for that plotline. I can't imagine keeping that flow would be easy on a static storyboard.

The storyboard helps you plan out the steps through your plot. So it can be used to sequence together the events, including showing where there are choices to be met (and again where multiple plot threads might merge back together).

[weogarth]

Originally Posted by jerrycnh

And now for a slightly different perspective.

I can appreciate a world that has player flexibility, but for myself, I prefer to have things a little more set out in stone. For example, I would never allow player imagination to "create" a castle or other fixture in my game world.

I very much agree with this one. As I said, my players can do anything they want to. That is, of course, within the game. Inventing a rumor they never heard is out of the game and would be shot down with vigor