The Great Quest... the day after.

Tomorrow will be the first game back after a two week break. Normally, I would have spent a great deal of time preparing for such a session, but this time I have done almost nothing. Part of the reason for that is that I have been very busy lately, but the other part is that the next part of my game is going to be more free form than the first half has been.

Up to this point in the campaign, the characters (who call themselves "The Champions of Light") have been travelling across the country seeking "Tholand's Keep" the ancient capital of their province, that has been lost for three centuries. As such, the sessions had been fairly well planned out, with each adventure bringing them a step closer to their goal. Each of these steps were laid out with great detail, as I knew exactly what sorts of dangers the trip posed to the heroes and what kind of encounters were likely to spring from them.

Last session, they discovered the keep and slew the crystal dragon that had been using it as a terrarium for its magical creations. At the end of the session, they returned home to bask in the glory of their heroics. Their first great quest being over, the Characters are now dealing with the repercussions of what they have achieved. This marks a change in the pacing of the sessions, with there being less geographic borders between the parties activities.

From a DM's perspective, it is not so important, at this point, to understand exactly what dangers are where and plan specific encounters for the Characters, but rather to understand the motivations of the characters (both Player Characters and NPCs) to determine how the actions and reactions of the next part of the story will flow.

This demands a different type of preparation than simply designing and filling a dungeon. It is much easier to create encounters and build traps than it is to have conflict organically grow from the interactions between characters. As such, rather than sit around and write up encounters like I would for a dungeon scenario, I like to spend time thinking like the antagonists would. It doesn't even have to specifically be about the events of the game. If you can begin to understand how a specific character would think about every day things, you get a much better understanding of how they will react to the actions of the Player Characters.

This is particularly helpful in those times where the DM is unsure of what sort of momentum and direction the PCs will be providing. For example, I know that the wizard of our group, one Cartwicket Schepder, is working on building his library to begin performing spell research, and that the Fighter, Valorius Leontius, plans to seek out a Grandmaster of the Bastard Sword to learn from; but these are personal quests and I am unsure of the steps that the Characters will take to achieve them. So rather than plan a great deal of specifics that they party may never encounter, I have developed the world itself. This way I can react to the player's desires and better present them with a game that will engage those wants.

This is actually one of those points in the game where too much preparation can actually be a bad thing. A good GM must be open enough to go with the flow that the players present him with, overplanning, or more precisely the wrong kind of planning, can make it very hard to do that. It is better, in my mind, to use your planning time to create and solidify the world of the game setting, than to plan specific adventures and encounters. That way, you can be assured that you are presenting an internally consistant world that will allow you engage your players, and the aims of their characters.