You might well be over thinking it there, Prime Minister.  Were you not
intending to refer the honourable member to the speech you gave on the
subject to the House this 12 September last?

At least you are aware of your major shortfalls as a GM - now you have
an idea what to work on.  Such is fairly solid evidence you aren't too
acquainted with Messrs Dunning and Krueger (?).

I've come a cropper a few times on an inability to let go of carefully
prepped hooks when the players say "Sod this" - after some more growing
old disgracefully, I've found it less wear and tear on the scalp turf to
leave the hook-location link somewhat inchoate and slide it in
underneath where the natural-disaster-looking-for-place-to-happen (ie,
the PCs) turns up next.

For example, if I had planned for them to pick up the hook at Derryn
Dodgie's Slightly Used Starships and they instead end up having to talk
to the law firm of Bleedum, Grabbit and Scarper (such as for a salvage
claim, where one of the PCs ended up bribing an apparently-unbribable
His Honour - the PC in question managed to frame the respondent for the
attempted bribe, getting Mr Grabbit in hot water), I'll rework the hook
to make sense near the law firm.

Especially with more complex rules, such as ship to ship combat, I've
found it's more important to go with a consistent set of rules, even if
wrong, for a given session, then cop to your mis-steak afterwards and
fix the worst of your goof for the next session.  It beats losing oodles
of time to rules-lawyer yammer and you yourself spinning out - the goal
is to tell a good yarn and have fun (ok, maybe not if you've dropped in
a hefty dose of Cthulhu Mythos), not dive into <JeffZeitlin>"Accurate
Adventures In Accounting"</JeffZeitlin>.

If you're talking to Jeff semi-regularly anyway and he's happy to try to
help you, why not dry-run your ideas past him?  Worst case, he's a
trans-little-pond rubber duck - he might not be able to help you _per
se_, but the process of organising and clarifying your ideas so you can
tell them to him will probably knock something loose.  Best case, he's a
greybeard (literally, I think) with oodles of rat cunning and can point
out holes in your (especially implicit) assumptions before your players
do.  When I talk to him, I learn something - usually, it's not that I
was right.

I have long steered away from running prepped modules in their original
system - I find them too constraining, my players find them boring,
etc.  That hasn't stopped me from taking such a module, wire-brushing
the serial numbers and VIN off, then running it in another system. 
There was a GURPS Dungeon Fantasy module which I ended up converting to
Pathfinder, getting many kudos about originality.

Me: "You all meet in an inn."

Players: *GROAN*  "Now what?"

Me: *smugging* "Zombies rise up out of the ground."

Players: "WTF?"

Me: "Better start running."

I have found it beneficial to let a general feel of what my players are
thinking/worrying about fill in most gaps, although usually not
immediately.  On gripping hand, if you have an obssessive-compulsive
rules lawyer, leaving a few gaps for them to obsess over can result in
some weird, weird rides.  As I am a rules lawyer with (subclinical) OCD
myself, it's somewhat obvious when someone's doing this to me.

Pacing, again, comes down to experience.  I've found if I prep what I
think will take around half to two-thirds of the next session length,
that usually works out well enough to have the session end off with a
bang (in some cases, very literally - such as PCs popping some
thunderballs).  Maybe take a page out of Agile sprint planning - if you
went roughly X % under on what you wanted to do this session, then
reduce your ambitions next session by that amount?

Alex

On 5/12/19 6:57 am, Timothy Collinson - timothy.collinson at port.ac.uk
(via tml list) wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, 4 Dec 2019 at 19:39, Ewan <xxxxxx@quibell.org.uk
> <mailto:xxxxxx@quibell.org.uk>> wrote:
>
>     Hi Tim,
>
>     Not sure you should be calling yourself a rookie referee any more ... 
>
>
>
> Thank you.  Jeff and I have this discussion fairly regularly!  (In my
> head my Confession of a Newbie Referee in Freelance Traveller are just
> 'Confessions' now.)  I appreciate the encouragement.
>
> But I refer the honourable member to the answer I gave previously
> "I fear that if you're basing that on my write ups, I may not be
> presenting a fair picture.  I've probably not majored on my (often)
> rooting through folder and bag for notes, remembering too late my key
> notes are still on the PC at work, poorly played NPCs (not to mention
> atrocious attempts at accents), failure to see the implications of
> things I make up on the spot, poorness with more complicated (or less
> used) rules like combat and space combat, an over reliance on filling
> gaps and not making players fill them, a lack of ability to 'let go'
> if players don't bite at my hooks, difficulty hiding what's in the
> book and what are my own additions (often giving away what's real plot
> and not) and an utter inability to pace a session and bring it to a
> suitable climax at the right time"
>
> At least that's a handy list to aim for improvements!
>
> cheers
>
> tc
>
>
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