Rpg thoughts: non-schrodinger prep

 There's a joke about a GM preparing an ogre lair, and asking the party which way they want to go, but whatever they go, the GM decides the ogre lair is that way.

I think that's an expected part of planning to a greater or lesser extent. It's only a problem when the GM treats everything like that

But what I wondered was, is there an advantage is preparing something approximating a single reality at all? Or should the GM default to winging it, to adjusting reality and difficulty on the fly to create the desired impression?

Well, there should be a lot of adjusting on the fly. Or, indeed, just improvising when you deliberately didn't prep the specifics, you wrote "pit trap", and decided to improv how difficult it was when it came up.

But I also think, there should be things you DO plan in advance and DO stick to more often than not.

The most obvious example is, a combat where the GM repeatedly fudges the dice rolls. Obviously, it's possible that the monsters happen to roll badly just when it saves the party from being totally wiped out. But if it happens even once, with several rolls involved, the players get the idea it's likely that the GM fudged the results. And then, they assume that they're never really in danger, because the GM will fudge things so it turns out ok. That's good for some styles of game, but bad for others. In fact, GMs commonly aim to avoid it because it's too obvious, whether or not they think it's ok in principle, and find some other adjustment instead. 

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