If you didn't know I'm a gamer. I've pretty much played it all. Board games. Card games. CCG's. Miniature games. Video games. Computer games. Role Playing Games. RPG's are amongst my most favorite both playing and running. I've been doing both for the better part of 25 years and I've seen a wide assortment of players.
Some want to just roll dice and kill things. Some want to explore the world. Some want to become their character and immerse themselves. Some just want to get the hell out of the house and escape their family (I don't judge). The one thing that they all have in common is the ability to take your well laid adventure and turn it on its head with relative ease.
I enjoy running games. I enjoy the creative process of taking an idea and expanding on it. Map making. NPC creation. I like to think I'm good at it. From the talk of my players they enjoy it, so that's a check in my favor.
My first truly cooked up adventure that I planned for took me about 2 weeks to get together. I don't remember the specifics but it was the first in a multi-year campaign. The adventure was for West End Games Star Wars. I had planned the NPC's, their gear, the ships, the over arching goals, and what I thought were the paths the players would take. I had maps, descriptions, points of interest. I had looked over dozens of pre-generated adventures to get ideas.
I was pumped. Excited. Nervous. It was Game night. I had my GM screen. I had my notes, my maps, my game plan. And within about 30 minutes of the action beginning all my well laid plans went out the airlock. The few subtle hints about where to go went unnoticed (or ignored). I had a player disrupt my bad guy (very cleverly, I might add). What had been planned as a multi-game night story arc was almost neatly wrapped up before midnight. No adventure survives contact with the player.
It was a learning experience to say the least! I learned that copious notes and details are fantastic if you plan to publish your adventure but that in the future I should KISS it. Keep It Simple, Stupid. Oh, I still planned, but most of it was mental. I had an outline of what the goals of the adventure were and some simple notes. I also learned go off the cuff. To improvise. In some instances to flat out pull it out of my - um, out of thin air.
I also began to ask my players what they wanted. Did they have a particular story arc they wanted their characters to go. In that I began to tailor my adventures more to the players, trying to avoid the stereotypical tropes that we have all come to know and love. I borrow, emulate, and try to incorporate the best ideas from my fellow GM's. I do try to plan ahead, knowing what I do about my players, but despite all of that - my adventures still don't survive contact with my players.
