The greatest brainstorming document of all time.

[Hexed Pressman]

...any prep the GM ~gets to~ do is prep the GM must do. And increasingly I find that if I'm going to prep, I want to prep my own work, not somebody else's. If I'm going to run something out of a book, I want that book to do my work for me. Cracking open a new RPG book that seems to expect me to do hours and hours of prep just to get the game to the table (like Mythic Bastionland, or Veins, or any of the others) feels like I'm buying myself homework.

I think that, for myself, that work is part of the GMing experience that I enjoy. I look forward to building out worlds and settings to play in so I don't find these types of books a detriment to me.

...there's a level of specificity to some of these "toolkit" games that feels like it undermines itself -- how much of my own creativity am I really going to inject into a Mythic Bastionland sandbox?

That's an interesting point. I guess though that if you're buying into Vaarn or MB that you want to run a Vaarn or MB-like setting. I run my own settings pretty much 100% of the time so these books end up being toolkits that I borrow from more than something I would run in total unless I was running it to specifically explore the book/system.

[JimMonsoon]

Sorely tempted to let my MB knights wander into WutC…

Feel like I gotta run them both RaW first tho

[misha]

there's a level of specificity to some of these "toolkit" games that feels like it undermines itself -- how much of my own creativity am I really going to inject into a Mythic Bastionland sandbox?

I still feel like this is better than the alternative--specificity gives me descriptions and situations to use when describing things to players, and if I want to replace them with my own details I still generally can without many knock-on effects (although I almost wish there was more inter-omen connectivity).

There's also still a ton of connective tissue that a realm wants once it's been initially generated--a pass where you make the omens and sites and knights and everyone all connect to each other and exist as part of a coherent whole. That's where the personal creativity gets injected, in my mind.

[sam_the_bold]

It's funny, I increasingly find myself annoyed having to do prep at all beyond reading and note-taking. Like maybe this is just an after-effect of ~being a game designer~, but I feel like if I'm going to do the work of prepping something good myself, I should make it into something I can release. Like prep, when done well, can tremendously increase the quality of the games that I run at the table. I really value well-made adventures and play materials specifically because it means that I can get that quality boost at my table—all the depth and richness of prep—without needing to do the work, the labor of the craft, myself. Don't get me wrong, in the games that I do make myself to run and the books I do eventually release, I definitely pour in a lot of time and love and creativity and effort. And that sort of just makes it more frustrating to have a book claim to do that work for me, the labor, only to find that it will still take me hours of preparation before I can bring it to the table. I don't mind doing that for my own work, my own precious special little projects, but if it has to be mostly my own work to even get the game to the table, what's this new RPG book I just picked up even for?

Increasingly I find myself feeling that I am a very... uncreative GM? I read the books and take notes, sure, but mostly, I feel like I am just there to referee. I have no real plan, no real outcomes I'm building up to, no big dynamics devised for my players. We go where the game takes us. When I hear about how some GMs run, where there are moments and situations and dynamics built up to with huge intention and mountains of prep well in advance, it's pretty astonishing. Like at the table I think I put in plenty of effort to take notes, keep track of lots of moving pieces, adjudicate fairly and well, do fun character voices, lean into the big descriptions and exciting stuff, make sure everyone's comfy and enjoying themselves. It's just that none of that is... creative? Really? Like I am, for the most part, not really making anything up. I do a bit with the NPCs and the descriptions, sure, but I feel like mostly I am just describing this imaginary world as it is. 

And I actually get a lot of value out of that, I think. I come away from sessions often tired and worn-out, true, but also often delighted, reinvigorated, compelled and moved by the events of play. It's really cool to see how players running into the world can change that world, and it makes me think and feel lots of ways. And so it's hard, it's difficult for me, to see that promise expressed somewhere in or around a book, only to discover that all those good feelings of uncreative GMing are still hours of work and preparation away.

[AmICoolYet?]

The thing that I am always stuck on with MyBa, is that the outlines, and suggestions of interesting characters really are the best parts of the book. Like, the rules offered are pretty slim, and like... fine, but they are not really the thing that gives the game value IMO. The thing that gives the game value is the excitement I feel when I read it to create new stuff based on what I read. The experience reminds me of reading the monster manual for wolves upon the coast. The little poems it has for each monster, particularly the poem for the Gnoll, gesture to really interesting creatures, but doesn't give me anything solid to work with. While all of this provides an interesting, energizing, and certainly inspiring experience, it does not really help me run a game.

Typically when I buy (or release) an RPG product, the value proposition that I am looking for is "hay GM, I know your life is busy and prepping takes a lot of time and energy, so I've prepped something really great for you so you don't have to do the work." OFC you can edit/play with/change modules as much as you want before you run them, but at that point, the GM is deciding they have the extra energy and drive to edit what they are going to give their players and not just run something from a book.

While I certainly think that MyBa is really great for what it is, I feel like it does not really offer me enough of what it is promising (or at least what I subjectively want from it). I don't want a suggestion of an adventure that I can do all the work for and make on my own, I want an adventure. If I'm going to put the effort into writing something, I want it to be something I could maybe later release. If I'm not writing something, I don't want to do a bunch of work beforehand to make it runnable. But again, I can't deny how much reading Mythic Bastionland excites me, and makes me want to write.

[misha]

Increasingly I find myself feeling that I am a very... uncreative GM?
...
It's really cool to see how players running into the world can change that world, and it makes me think and feel lots of ways.

Yeah, I'm pretty similar but I see it very much as "my role is to be the situation so the players can drive the action".

If I'm not writing something, I don't want to do a bunch of work beforehand to make it runnable. But again, I can't deny how much reading Mythic Bastionland excites me, and makes me want to write.

Yeah, as much as I've defended MB I have a hard time imagining myself running it. I think it does a good job of making the campaign prep easy and supported, but for all the reasons stated above it's still a little much for my schedule. I think if I read it a decade or two ago it would have been great, though.

[JimMonsoon]

I brought this up on Bluesky already, but what I wondered about is how differently the podcast seemed to view the amount of prep needed to run MB (bad) to the amount of prep needed to run WutC (fine). Having done the MB prep myself I’m still feeling overwhelmed at the idea of running Wolves… (maybe it would be fine idk)

[misha]

I honestly don't think I could run Wolves either. I don't make as much of a distinction between reading prep and writing prep as Sam does, and the prep-hours needed to run it are still pretty intense.

Although maybe that's less true now, that I read it for the podcast.

[Matthias]

I think what I often need as a teacher and as a GM is to fully internalize the content, and do some boring legwork to ensure things to smoothly logistically, and then at the moment I'm not doing anything "creative," I'm just responding as the activity demands. Keith Johnstone talks in *Impro* about unlocking creativity in people by helping them go through rituals which make them feel like they're not responsible for their creative output, and I think this does fall under that.

The internalization of the content is the fun side of prep. I have to make time for it because otherwise toddlers and logistics will take over my life, but I don't fundamentally find that creating my own material and adapting someone else's are super different on this score. If I'm adapting someone else's I have to adapt it to understand/internalize it, and if I'm rolling my own I typically have to make some high level creative decisions and then any lower level ones are typically in not-consciously-creative, what-would-be-the-logical-consequence or what-is-immediately-apparent modes. I'll be making a lot of flashcards. This is most apparent in the classroom, where everything is in service of getting students in meaningful contact with content that I didn't myself create - any "content" that I created or stole from the dept's GDrive or whatever is a mediating mechanism rather than the thing itself.

I don't run much because actually getting people together is in the boring logistics ledger so I find I almost never have the energy. I'll think through a lot of campaigns because that's in the internalization ledger. So reading Wolves was great and I would look forward to reading it again more deliberately as a form of campaign prep, and I'd feel guilty that I'd probably be procrastingating just getting some people together to play it.