This is a follow-up to this post : https://adeptplay.com/2025/07/11/playing-prepared/
I started playing Fantasy For Real with Julie & Logan, with who I played Apocalypse World three years ago (Already !), here https://adeptplay.com/2022/08/26/return-apocalypse-world/
Due to my recent improvement in play, also a period of only playing as a player-character (not as a GM) the last 6 months, I’ve started to feel that I wouldn’t gm until September, with one exception. I felt ready to play short casual games of Fantasy for Real. I felt it was the right game for me to apply the principles I’ve described there, by having them explicitly in mind, now that I have formulated them.
Something funny happened. The first session, we played in the Bumbling Swamp. I’ve sent visuals of the land, did my prep, we created characters, and went into play. It was great, and generated much excitement. « We are not stopping this right ? We play it next week ! » said Logan with excitment.
It was also a moment of adjustment. Logan looked my in my first session of Sorcerer, explaining how his character feels, what he thinks, and making stories but no stating what he say or does. Julie had trouble to define her own goal (in this game, not being able to formulate picklet) – which is an issue we already seen, experienced, and discussed. Fantasy for Real, in its simplicity, allows us as a group to spot those things very easily, discuss them, and improve.
Comes the second session, last week. I had a crazy week, there a lot of public works on the road, and public transports are all messed up. I went home to grab my RPG stuff, the little map I drew, my notes of the previous session, then I took the wrong bus and I was 1 hour late. We had to start fast.
We played, as I planned, in the White Waste. Julie formulates a picklet – still not something personal to her character, but at least not nothing ; and Logan proactively played the pickle he never succeed in the last session (finding the amulet of his family – he his a cursed prince). I focused a lot on my principles. After 60min, Julie &Logan was playing toward her picklet, failing every time. We have seen a lot of Magic, as the player actively used that system to achieve their goals, just because they enjoyed so much the magic system.
After Logan failed General Knowledge roll, I described that Logan had no knowledge of a path through the secret tunnels under the ruins of the royal palace (where he lived once). Julie asked me « Shouldn’t the consequence of a failure be more striking than that ? Like situation changing ? ». This question rang a bell, we were playing for 60 min and something was not right. I think I answered a bit defensively at first : « well, sometimes a failure doesn’t need to be ground breaking, it just change the knowledge a character have on the situation ». But I felt something itching. I was doing everything I had to as detailed in my principles of « playing prepared » : looking at the map, playing the imagined character that were fitting in the locale visited by the player characters, reincorporating them, etc. But after 1 hour, I had a feeling that we were kind of rolling in a hamster wheel. Julie didn’t say that, but I think she felt the same.
… That’s when I realized that I forgot to prep. I didn’t roll any elements. I felt so stupid, so I said « Guys, I forgot to prep ». I was opening scenes with I had in mind from the Backdrop. We had a laugh. « Can you feel how lack a little something, because I’m only responding to what you do ? », we all could. I rolled 2 elements in front of them, but without mentionning them : a Creature causing trouble (which was nice because I could just take the one from the book, the red serpent that cancels magic), and a determined person with a goal (and I named a good one, and one with bad intentions). I rolled their number. I designed the goals of the determined characters.
Then, as an answer to Julie, I described Logan’s failure by including the serpent bumping into Logan while he was looking for the former tunnels.
It hyperbounced directly, as I brought the serpent and the determined characters into play. The feeling of engagement tuned up to 11 in almost the instant, to the point that we extended our planned session lenght. This was a very cool experience : half of the session responding to what they did, playing correctly, I think, but without bringing my own elements into play, then the second half of the session with my own stuffs, the creature and the two characters. The first half like the mirrored version of the player following the GM’s bit. The second half demonstrated the bouncing power of « everyone playing with what he has ». The character and their picklets and magic for Julie & Logan, the rolled element (and the magic too) for me.
It was a great learning experience the three of us, in the sense that I think there is no turning back from this kind of play after this session. Especially as Logan FINALLY succeeded at his Elan test and found his family amulet … at the neck of the evil character he was able to paralyze through a whimsical magic spell.
3 responses to “Playing without prep – an anecdote”
In this picture, you can see my notes, on the left pages of the map I’ve drew.
You can see Logan and Julie’s character names in the upper box.
Then you can see a box under “SORTS” (spells in French), where I note every spell names so I check how they interact together.
Under that, you can see a “Prep!” box. That’s what I wrote when I realized that I forgot to roll the elements.
This is a good example of how systems actually work. Some of them benefit from not supplying much external content, in some cases, close to none. In those games, generating “what’s happening” is part of play itself. But others benefit from a designated and often precise basket of external content in place prior to play. The difference between these isn’t mystical or difficult.
The cultural problem with the concept is obvious in my opinion: to elevate either of the above into sacred fun-guaranteeing status. Using some system in which prepared external content is minimal to absent, so we make it up in play, is itself merely a feature, not a solution to a problem and in itself no guarantor of anything. Using some system in which prepared external content is extensive and structural, so we must attend and commit to learning it, is also itself merely a feature, not a solution to a problem and in itself no guarantor of anything.