How "prepared" do DM's need to be? -- Faalor, a NWN Campaign setting

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Subject: How "prepared" do DM's need to be?

Author:
Debinani Rahl

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Date Posted: 09:35:44 07/14/02 Sun
In reply to: Lee 's message, "I figured it would take a couple of months before things really get into the swing of things" on 14:23:41 07/11/02 Thu

In a word: infinitely.
Assuming you're planning on the 99.9% possession route, it removes the need to do any real scripting or conversation writing - but you still need to know in advance who your characters are likely to meet and roughly what you'd like them to be doing. The DM client can't edit the properties of an item thrown into the game (not even the name or the faction), so plot-specific items and NPCs must be prepared beforehand and be in your module ready to go - and they have to be there *before* you begin play because you also can't edit a module after it's begun because all the necessary data is stored in the savegame.
Furthermore, no module data persists between modules. If, for example you have a large city that is divided into two modules (because of its size and complexity), and the players tear-ass through the first half of the city and make a lot of changes to the environment, then go to the second half, when they return to the first half - even if it's a minute or two later, none of the changes will be there, it'll be reset to how it was in the beginning. Also, the server can only be running a single module at a time, so in the above example it would be impossble for half the party to be in one half of the city and one half in the other.
You also can't be *too* freeform, because otherwise you'd have to build an entire world before starting and that would take just a few days short of forever.

I could go on like this for hours talking about this stuff, but it can be summed up with:
Aurora rox, Dm-Client sux.

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