Winging It

Sometimes when I show up to run a session of whatever we are playing at the time my arms are loaded down with notes, charts, books, and graph paper. Other times I show up with nothing more than a sack of dice, some rulebooks and a pen. I love sitting down and writing up the next grand adventure for my players. Spending late nights drawing maps and crafting encounters, but as I have gotten older I find that time is at a premium. With real life getting in the way of my gaming time I have found myself winging it more and more the last couple of years. Now I have been gaming with pretty much the same group for the last 15 years so they know what to expect when I show up at the table empty handed. I don't mean to wing the sessions most times, I set out with good intentions and lots of cool ideas in my head. There are times though where these ideas of grandeur sit in my head and the next thing I know it is Saturday night and I have six people sitting around a table looking at me expectantly. When this moment strikes I am left with two options, call off the whole night or make something up on the fly and see where it goes. Since the first option is not an option we go for the second for better or worse. I have had some amazing sessions over the years that just evolved organically out of a single plot point that may be stuck in my head. As I said before my players know me and they are there to help when they know I did not have a lot (if any) prep time and will chime in with their own ideas to help the story along. Some of my most memorable gaming sessions have come out of my complete lack of preparation. Not having a set structure allows me to get the players involved and keeps me from railroading them. This is not to say every gaming session I have ran without prep went wonderful and was loved by all. I have had my share of nights where things did not go right and I could tell by looking around the table that no one was really into it and we just called it early on those nights. So the next time you see that game night is looming upon you and you are still staring at an empty sheet of graph paper don't cancel, just show up and make it up. If you encourge your players to help a little by dropping hints that do not intrude with the game you can get everyone involved and have a ton of fun. In the end that is why I do this and I image it is why you all role play, to have fun and get away from the pressure of real life for a little while.