Day 18 – What is your preferred DM style – super-prepared or ‘wing it’?

I learned how to run a game from reading published adventures, like the Village of Hommlet (I still have it in my collection). These adventures were fully developed and often quite linear (aka rail-roading) – fully drawn up maps with every room ‘keyed’ with monsters, traps and treasures. For many years, this was how I thought an adventure should be run.

And then I read the Lazy DM by Sly Flourish (definitely worth a look). Suddenly, a world of random encounter tables opened up for me and I have realised that a game can be enjoyable without the massive amount of work I used to put in to it. Hell, players are going to destroy your hard work anyway, so why spend time making everything perfect if they’re just going to breeze through it.

Fast and loose is the way to go.

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