This Treasure Tables post got me thinking about what I do. I’ve never really used prepared dialog in my adventures; I don’t like to read off what an NPC says, just because my PCs would tend to interrupt and I’d have to start ad-libbing, anyway. However, I find myself often playing potential scenes in my head and imagining the dialog, creating a sort of dialog rehearsal that I think helps me to be better prepared for what my PCs might say or ask. It also helps me to find the voice of a particular NPC, and stay in character during the actual game so as to project that NPCs personality rather than just making him/her a generic dialog output device.

I’d suggest that other people do the same thing, but honestly I don’t think that this kind of preparation arises from any conscious decision; it certainly didn’t on my part. It’s just in my personality to imagine how things might go in the future; it’s my ‘GM gene’, I guess. So, if you already do this, good for you. I think it definitely helps your game. If you don’t, you could certainly make the effort to give it a try if you wanted to. You might feel a little silly at first, but it’ll probably become second nature with enough practice.