Ron Edwards presents a good model to avoid over-preparing and
railroading in Sorcerer and its supplements. To summarize:
- Prepare setting and characters
- Ensure players arrive in setting when characters are 'in crisis' -
i.e Conan always arrives in town when civil war is about to spill out
into the open,not during a quiet weekend.
- Ask the players to prepare 'kickers' an event to which their
character will react this episode ("My old enemy reappears, and
reveals... he is my father")
- Using 1, 2, and 3 revise and produce a series of bangs - events
that require an immediate response - prepare a selection to throw at
players during those 'what do we do now' moments. Take the bangs from
the backstory and players kickers. Be prepared to throw them away if
the players take events along a different course.
- Have a theme to use as a guide when deciding where to go
- Run until bangs and kickers run out, and you are not inspired.
Stop, re-stock with bangs, continue
- Players get 'in-game' reward if kicker resolved.
I have tried to move toward a setting + situation & bangs model overtime,
though I am more comfortable with a lot of preperation somy
bnags tend to be quite thought out which prmotes a desire to push the
players towards them, but I think that, within limits of your own
creativity its useful stuff. Ron's three Sorcerer books are great for
thinking about how you run story-driven games.