I'm a decent DM when it comes to going with the flow, but

>>53770166
A greaser, chad, cheerleader and nerdy girl would make a good, although stereotypical, group makeup.
Go with actual world history for this. Play up communism threats, early mcarthyism. dont be afraid to throw in some lovecraftian shit, even though that had more of a pre-40's vibe to me. Gangsters are a big issue, not in the al-capone sense, but more in the jimmy hoffa incidents.

>>53770166
You don't plan adventures. You plan encounters. Adventures happen.

>>53770283
also, presidential assasination, threat of nuclear war, space aliens, really anything could fit appropriately. make a dozen or so plothooks that you can run off in sequential order if the players brush one or more off. then, all you have to do is study up and roll with it.
if you play the borderline sandbox-type of games, stick to it. no point in being rigid as a gm if you are naturally flexible. a general story plan helps though, regardless of your flexibility.

>>53770302
fuck off thesaurus-fag. you can plan an adventure just the same as you plan encounters.

>>53770325
>>53770283

This game is going more for supernatural horror feel, so skeletons, zombies, vampires, etc... Maybe I can include lovecraftian shit too. It's not like they have cell phones or internet, so it shouldn't be hard to include

OP here, I found a good Savage Worlds "One Sheet Adventure" I can use to kick things off... It's pretty simple but looks fun.

It's about a girl who believes she witnessed her grandmother die, but she's still alive it seems, although rather mindless. She asks the heroes to investigate. Turns out, the grandmother is a zombie, and almost every old person living in the Old Folks Trailer Park Home is a zombie. The care taker has been using a magic talisman of necromancy to give the elderly heart attacks and then keep them as zombie slaves. He keeps them around and makes people think they're still alive so he can collect their social security checks. The players end up having to fight him, and a swarm of elderly zombies with walking canes and gardening tools

>>53770508
I just wish I could write quality material like that.

>>53770166
So, you're running East Texas University, right anon?

>>53770772
No, but it's a similar pulpy style... I'm doing a variation that's in the 50's, rather than present time like ETU..

>>53770166
In order to make an adventure, You need 3 things.
Resolution.
Motivation.
Structure.
Resolutions are finish lines, once certain perimeters are met, they are resolved. You don't necessarily need to kill the dragon, all you need is for it to stop terrorizing the town. Good adventures have multiple resolutions that reflect player choice. The players should, on average, know at least one resolution before the end of the first scene.
Motivation is your best tool to railroad without making it feel like railroading. If you can give the players and their characters (there are two different motivations) a reason to follow your plan, then you've eliminated half the need to actually railroad them.
Structure is a string of scenes and encounters. Think of it as a flowchart. Not all scenes need to forward the plot, sometimes it's good to set some time aside for character development or loot at the end of an optional challenge.

There's two other pieces of advice I can give:
Always have a clear path forward to the next scene. If the PCs are investigating a murder, then don't count on their perception rolls to fine clues. You can let them find more or better clues but their needs to be an obvious lead they can follow. Believe me when I say players do stupid things when they don't know where to go next.
Always write notes detailing what you plan to do each session. You don't need to write the full extent of your adventure in one shot, just do what you need for every week.

>>53770860
I guess the main problem is just creating encounters and thinking of stories.

I'd never in a million years think "Hey, what if this dude running an old folks home really turns people into zombies to take their social security checks, and then someone gets suspicious of it and sends the heroes to investigate?"

>>53770341
If you don't understand the distinction, you're a shit GM.
You don't (and should not) have control over your players actions, which means you might be able to guess where they're going next, and if you're lucky you have an idea of what types of places they might want to go after that, but eventually it won't make sense to keep prepping because your players' choices can negate your DMing.

If you prep (some) encounters, you're probably doing it right.
If you prep an adventure, you're either railroading hard (that is, a dogshit DM who doesn't deserve your players; they're not there to have you stick your hands up their asses and sock puppet them, after all, or they'd be either be doing theatre or going to a swinger club specialized in fisting, not to your game table,) or you're blessed with extraordinarily predictable players (in which case get ready for when eventually they do surprise you anyway.)

A GM talking about preparing an entire adventure is a GM who doesn't know better.

>>53770927
If you can't think of something then start looking for inspiration. I'm not ashamed to admit I plan on taking ideas from The 100 in my up and coming Mutant YZ game.

>>53770166
Read the original IT. That's got some great titbits of 50's culture that you could strip mine.

>>53770965
Have to take the other guy's side on this one. Adventures and Encounters both require a resolution and a motivation. The only difference is that encounters need a point of conflict instead of structure, but that difference means little as they are both the meat of an RPG samich.

You absolutely do need to plan adventures ahead of time if you're not good at improve, but there are ways to do it without feeling railroadie. As I've said before, you need to give the PCs a reason to go on an adventure, one or more doorways to the next scene, and a clear idea of what they're doing and how.

>>53771081
Here's how to have adventures occur naturally and procedurally.
The GM plans for a session in such a way that various cool ideas and at least one threat or opportunity is featured. (Threat or opportunity in the broadest sense of the word.)
An example of that is an NPCs or NPC factions, the promise of treasure, a natural disaster, or whatever.
These can be featured either in encounters that establish them as part of the world, or when they're sought out by the player characters, or when the GM decides to have them reappear in future encounters. They always act in accordance with their goals and traits/quirks (known to the GM), and in a way that's consistent with what's established about them in the past, and what's going on around them in the present.

The "story" happens as player character personalities engage with your threats, opportunities, (and possibly also the more neutral "cool ideas." But they don't have a built-in driving force the way threats and opportunities .)
That is an iterative and agile model of GMing that works on a session-by-session basis, and does not result in railroading.
Zero planning for next session necessary.

Which is a good thing, because assuming the players will do anything in particular (necessary to plan for the future) would heavily incentivize railroading to not lose your precious prep/masterful story that you inevitably will become invested in.
Sure; you CAN plan a bit further ahead IF you think your players are gonna be extra predictable for whatever reason, but if you plan too much then suddenly the IKEA effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect) sneaks up on you and the temptation to railroad is there again, either consciously or subconsciously.
In fact, any method of DMing that encourages long-term planning has this fundamental problem.

If you "plan" the adventure then that implies you've decided where it can go.

>>53771458
>If you "plan" the adventure then that implies you've decided where it can go.
That's not hard to do, especially if you give them a world saving task and give them multiple options on how to approach it. Once the players make an important decision, you end the session and get to work on the next one, planning the scenes and how they could possibly end.

>>53771458
>If you "plan" the adventure then that implies you've decided where it can go.
Well I mean, in most cases the end of the campaign will occur once the PC's managed to deal with whatever threat they're working to avert, so in that sense the ending has already been decided barring something like a TPK or life makes meeting for campaign virtually impossible for everyone important to the plot.

The reality is that most GM's railroad to an extent, especially if they're running a longterm campaign where events in the narrative require a bit of setup towards a satisfying conclusion.

As someone who used to improv whole campaigns in the past, what usually ends up happening is that you introduce something that you think would be cool at the time, only to realize down the line that you have no idea how to resolve it. Nowadays I plan things out and it has helped out my GMing tremendously since now I can focus on interacting with the players without sacrificing consistency.

File: Untitled.jpg (34KB, 500x424px) Image search: [Google]

34KB, 500x424px

>>53771806
Yep. All GMs have to Railroad, the question is when and how to make it seem like it doesn't exist.

Every adventure needs a parameter to indicate it's finished.
A group can kill a dragon, negotiate with it, scare it off, deceive it into leaving, stuff it in a bag of holding and toss it in a river, or die. All are valid resolutions.

>>53771669
Simply introducing a threat or opportunity that might make your player characters' decisions more predictable, is not the same as, and does not necessarily lead to, planning out how the whole adventure is going to go.

It makes it safer to prepare encounters that might be used more than once session down the line, perhaps, but it's still a problem when you get invested in it.
Because that's the same as being invested in your players not coming up with anything you haven't thought of, and that's the source of railroading and "authorism," and generally shitting on player agency either consciously or subconsciously (by tweaking what successful rolls do, by saying no to otherwise good and completely plausible ideas about what they might find in their environment, and lots of other terrible things that lots of GMs do without even realizing it.)

Playing under a GM who has a plan for you(r adventure) is generally speaking just inherently a less interactive experience, due to quirks of GM psychology.
And if the GM is coming up with cool ideas for, say, his two favourite "pet timelines" of your adventure, then his mind is occupied with something that's not focused on coming up with cool ideas that are relevant for your next session, or that you could feasibly come upon in any session (either a new thing, or something that builds on something that's already established.)

I really hate how nu-/tg/ can't into moderation on anything they fucking talk about.

Like take this faggot right here
>>53771894
>>53771458
>>53770965
Either you're a GM who runs stream of consciousness campaigns where nothing is planned and the levels don't matter or you're a shit GM who has to plan out each and every possible parameter that the players will take because it's LITERALLY impossible apparently for a GM to plan a campaign while still allowing the players to make choices that can affect the campaign in a meaningful way.

If everyone calmed the fuck down a bit, I can see the board improving by at least one iota, but as it stands it seems like it's better to post false dichotomies while pretending that third options don't exist than to actually listen to one another and learn something to help you a better fucking GM.

>>53771893
>>53771806
>Every adventure needs a parameter to indicate it's finished.
I've DMed for about twelve years, and I count among my experiences three "very long" campaigns that we finished; one that was just short of six IRL years long, and two that were about three or four years long or so. With mostly regular sessions coming down to about once every 1½ week on average.

In all cases, while I may have come up with lore, or occasionally ideas for what might happen or how some group/character might react to something, I still ultimately prepared for sessions roughly the way it's described in this post
>>53771458

In all three of those campaigns, player characters, and the PC party, found "big goals" along the way, and in all three cases, we ended the campaign with satisfaction after they had met final success with such a big goal, spending about a session wrapping up any other loose ends at that point.

The idea that the GM should come up with some final goal for the campaign early on, and then assume the players are gonna be satisfied when they've completed his goal, is silly on its own. The idea that it's actually necessary is nothing short of a joke.

In both cases, the GM is going to have to introduce some big and potentially climactic threat that's bigger and more climactic than all the other threats, and then stop ramping up and wait until the players beat it. The only difference is that you've got more time to figure out how it all shakes out if you don't jump the gun early (maybe it turns out the players find a clever way to kill the big bad before everyone's ready to stop playing? Okay, that's fine, business as usual.)

>>53772004
>Sure; you CAN plan a bit further ahead IF you think your players are gonna be extra predictable for whatever reason, but if you plan too much then suddenly the IKEA effect sneaks up on you and the temptation to railroad is there again, either consciously or subconsciously.
>>LITERALLY impossible

>Sure; you CAN [but] the temptation to railroad is there.
>>LITERALLY
>>impossible

Wew son

>>53772118
Don't patronize me you sperg, you know EXACTLY what you meant when you wrote those sentences.

How is it that I, and many other, GM's can run games where we've planned shit out yet have never railroaded our players into doing shit exactly as planned but for you, the temptation to railroad is so great that you basically have to run stream-of-consciousness games where the only thing that's planned is that you're making shit up as you go along?

Somehow, I think the shit GM is you, mainly because you're like an alcoholic blaming the alcohol rather than stopping to consider that maybe the problem is actually you for not knowing how to handle yourself in moderation.

>>53772217
Agreed

>>53772086
>The idea that the GM should come up with some final goal for the campaign early on, and then assume the players are gonna be satisfied when they've completed his goal, is silly on its own. The idea that it's actually necessary is nothing short of a joke.
The only joke here is how you've completely misunderstood the premise of two separate posts while acting like you've got the high ground in this debate.

It's baffling to me that a GM would actually scoff at something as integral as campaign planning, as if doing so somehow makes them better than other DM's for some reason.

>>53772399
Agreed.

>>53772217

You call my GMing style "stream of consciousness" but that's all you, not me. You seem to be implying a lack of depth, but there isn't one.
I'm not telling you not to develop and flesh out good ideas/threats/opportunities in your prep, in ways that make them fun to interact with and give them a lot of potential for future sessions. Neither am I telling you not to continue developing and fleshing out old ideas that have become part of your campaign in the past, for use in an upcoming session (or one down the line if ends up relevant, as long as you don't violate player agency along the way.)

The big-picture version of what I'm saying is essentially; try to avoid making any assumptions about what your players will choose, because that conflicts with the idea that your players have agency.
Planning "stories" and "adventures" to move and end in particular ways, when the fact of the matter is that the players have agency over their in-character decisions, results in (several different kinds of) cognitive bias on the GM side toward using prep rather than not using it.

If you're denying that such cognitive biases exist, or you're assuming that people consciously understand and grasp these to the point where they can easily be unaffected by them, then you simply haven't done your homework on the topic, which frankly can't possibly be my responsibility from where I'm standing; yet there you are accusing me of being patronizing, when all you've done is embarrass yourself.

>>53772399
And if indeed I misunderstood you, maybe you could point me in the right direction?
What am I not understanding here?

>All GMs have to Railroad, the question is when and how to make it seem like it doesn't exist.
>Every adventure needs a parameter to indicate it's finished.

You concede that you railroad in the first of those two statements. My post focused on the second one.

>The reality is that most GM's railroad to an extent, especially if they're running a longterm campaign where events in the narrative require a bit of setup towards a satisfying conclusion.

And here it is again in the other post.

Since you expressed the same idea, I gave you both a single answer; There's nothing inherently necessary or even good about planning an ending ahead of time.

And now that I'm making direct replies; as for this
>what usually ends up happening is that you introduce something that you think would be cool at the time, only to realize down the line that you have no idea how to resolve it
This happens as a result of not coming up with a good threat. Part of coming up with a good threat is to make it beatable.
That's like saying that robot car factories are worthless because the blueprint you used of a car without tires resulted in something that couldn't get very far.

File: 1427461175360[1].jpg (34KB, 490x333px) Image search: [Google]

34KB, 490x333px

>>53772468
>You seem to be implying a lack of depth, but there isn't one.
Please, spare me your excuses.
>try to avoid making any assumptions about what your players will choose, because that conflicts with the idea that your players have agency.
Making a campaign where the premise is that somewhere towards the end they'll have to fight a lich is not the same as assuming that the players will go through the left door as opposed to the right one.
>Planning "stories" and "adventures" to move and end in particular ways, when the fact of the matter is that the players have agency over their in-character decisions, results in (several different kinds of) cognitive bias on the GM side toward using prep rather than not using it.
Sounds like a personal problem that you're projecting onto everyone else. Maybe if you spent more time learning how to plan without railroading instead of trying to excuse your own short-comings, you might actually grow into being a good GM.

What the fuck is this shit storm argument in my thread?

I just want ideas for running a 50's pulpy horror adventure.

>>53772649
>There's nothing inherently necessary or even good about planning an ending ahead of time.
Except that it helps to maintain consistency, gives you a rough outline of where the campaign will go barring major derailment, and will generally give players something to work towards by default, which is valuable since most players generally have no idea what to do with themselves if you don't give them a prompt to guide their decisions with.
>This happens as a result of not coming up with a good threat.
No, this happens as a result of GM's running with whatever crazy idea occurs during play without actually taking a breath and figuring out how this would affect the rest of the campaign and the expectations associated with it, it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with threats, or how beatable they are.

>>53772660

>Sounds like a personal problem that you're projecting onto everyone else.
Is this a joke? How do you not know about this? Did you not finish high school?
Don't bother answering because:

>Please, spare me your excuses.
Again you refuse to be civil and contribute nothing but bile. Fine, let what follows be the form of amicable compromise you deserve:

What about that was an excuse, you over-defensive, condescending, witless sack of uneducated, worthless, subhuman garbage? Nothing about that was an appeal. I wasn't asking you jack shit, I was TELLING you.
Argue your point or choke on it you feckless little shit.

This is the point where I've got to conclude that, if it despite my efforts somehow felt to you like I was patronizing you when I disagreed with you previously, then perhaps you simply knew how deeply you deserved some good old fashioned patronizing.

>>53772694
Yeah, I apologise. Go look at the Angry GM's blog. He does a better job at explaining this.

File: 1467404150625.png (558KB, 610x457px) Image search: [Google]

558KB, 610x457px

>>53772694
Your first mistake was asking /tg/ for help in a system that they can't post memes at to lord their superior tastes over the lowly plebeians and your second mistake is asking help in a system that isn't D&D or WH40K.

Better luck next time sport.

>>53772827
Typical narrativefag, breaks down the moment someone tells him that his shitty views belong in the toilet while leaving the argument once he realizes that he has no leg to stand on.

I feel sorry for your players, because they probably don't realize how shitty you are or have no choice in the matter.

>>53772873
Dude, srsly STFU. I'm not even the guy you're responding to and even I felt the urge to say that.

>>53772923
>"I'm totally a different guy"
>IP count unchanged
You're not fooling anyone but whatever, you've already lost the argument.

>>53770166

Write down a vague list of plot points, possible encounters, and NPC names, and go from there.

>>53772971
>Only someone who hasn't posted in this thread before now could have said this.
How astute of you.

>>53773200
Keeping digging yourself deeper.

File: HAHA.gif (612KB, 500x341px) Image search: [Google]

612KB, 500x341px

>>53772971

>>53770302
This is just terribly phrased advice. This is some fortune-cookie tier help. You've just substituted one word for another and done no clarification.