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Only have one RP hosting credit to my name, but I'm very in on the "create situations, not plots" school of thinking. I set up some locations and NPCs, added some events to introduce both of those to the players, and then everything else I just built from those elements during play. At the same time, though, I don't think it's impossible to have, like, a complete story in mind when setting up, it just needs to be flexible enough to change when players inevitably run roughshod over it. From my RP, the major steps are pretty set; it's a journey and I already at least have an idea of each location on the way. Even the finale is rather concrete. Player expression, then, comes from how they resolve the situation on each stop.

As the last slime melted away into the water the group held for a few moments in case of more attacks. When nothing happened there was a feeling of relief that could be felt by several of the members. "What a mess." Madelyn said. "Good to see that you can handle that much. I'd be worried otherwise." "You could say it was a...sticky situation." Damien said casually as he sheathed his blade and strolled on past the others on his way down the tunnel once more. "You could, but you really shouldn't." Madelyn said with a groan. Keres wasn't sure what to think of the exchange but she was somewhat disappointed that nothing remained of the slimes. Whatever traces left over was lost in the large puddle that was covering the floor. She was rather curious about them. The only equivalent she had seen in the swamp were the gelatinous cubes and they worked rather differently. The group started out once more to try and reach the end of this tunnel without another incident. Partway through Keres let out a soft "Oh." Followed by. "Because slimes are sticky." She nodded to herself and continued on without a change in expression nor tone to indicate she realized she had been slow on the uptake. The tunnel continued on for a good while until they realized that it was starting to move slightly upward. Finally, with another sense of relief, they were above the level of the water and found themselves at the end of this tunnel. Madelyn ringed out the water from her robe with a look of disgust as the rest looked around. It seemed that they were at the end of a fork. With one tunnel going back the way they came, but on the other side, which was presumably the tunnel they hadn't taken. It seemed to be about as narrow as it had been earlier. However there was another tunnel branching off farther down the direction they had been heading. A single, wide, tunnel that gently sloped downward for enough distance they couldn't see the end. "Pretty straight-forward, it seems." Damien noted as he leaned against the wall to rest a moment.

I am non-binary. I am not he. I am not she. I am they. I am not Josh. I am not Black. I am Blake. It took me a long time to get to this point, but I want people to know how scary being different is, and how hard it is to just... say something like this. Cause someone out there could have poor designs. Or just be a dick. So fuck the haters. Thanks for a community where I can be me, NCM.

So, I guess this is the best place to post this honestly, but it's a bit of a discussion potentially! Currently, I'm in the process of planning for an RP. Taadaa. But more than anything, I'm curious on how much you all plan out when you're starting the planning stages of the RP. Obviously, you can't plan out everything and still have player influence, but you can plan beats. Do you have every potential story beat planned out? Do you have a vague outline of what you want? Do you bother planning at all? I'm curious, cause we've got a decent array of styles of hosts here, so I want to hear from some of ya. And we can use this forum a bit too.

there are actually a lot of birds that prey on other species of birds in particular it tends to be falcons, but I remember there's another fairly large family of birds that do it as well. falcons tend to be the most well known though. it's really not that uncommon at all!

Yasha ended up sitting on top of the desk next to Diana's, kicking his legs off the ground like a child and grinning ear-to-ear. Not that he had ears. Regardless, he was overjoyed (and somewhat nervous) that his entire team was girls, save for him. It made the prospect of fighting their teacher even more thrilling, in the sense that he might impress some of them if they won. "So! We get to fight Ms. Hemlock. Any ideas on what we should look out for?" Yasha asked. "I mean, she is a Pro Hero, so she's probably going to be a lot better at fighting than us, so we really need a solid plan going in, right?" Yasha was raring to go already, but he remembered how he'd felt after the surprise test they gave them the first day, and didn't want to look that stupid in front of the whole class twice. That would just be embarrassing...

Sai and I have the arcs and major story beats planned out for FBMO, but not how it will affect characters. The characters will almost certainly influence things to the point where plans change (one of them already has), but that's all a part of the process.

I'm more of a medium-sized brain person, I guess. Anyway, new blog post is up.

what's planning lmao Because players - being human and thus fickle creatures - are fully capable of doing something there's no way to account for, I tend to not worry that much about the overarching plot of an RP. I'll think about the broad strokes of "this is cast, cast's goal is X which we can do via methods Y or Z, and obstacles A B and C are in our way" of course, but I tend to focus more on the world of the RP instead of its story; once you have a world, the rest kinda falls into place in my experience. Aside from this method that pretty much gives me a plan in name only, I don't bother with the plot. Course, I'm a notoriously unsuccessful host, so maybe don't take too many notes from how I operate.

@LordCowCow this is not a mention

tbh it has varied for me. Gijinka I had a basic idea and a map, figured out basics about the cities on it, and then kinda just made it up as I went along. Mind and Soul I literally had a couple "events" planned for each area, trainers and teams planned, plot points, evil team admins, rivals, gym leaders, basically I had everything planned out before it even was an OOC For the most part when starting though I want at least Premise Setting (sometimes with some specific locations, sometimes with just vague ideas) A few important NPCs And the initial one or two "encounters" and/or "events"

i mean, if i get rid of birds, i stop existing so i gotta pick them.