Prep Time
What!? You mean to tell me that there are creator gods in Handbook-World? And I’m them? I’m not sure I can handle this kind of responsibility….
Theological complications aside, I think that we can all sympathize with the pressed-for-time deities of today’s comic. No matter how much you care about your character, your campaign, or the internal consistency of your fantasy world, the demands of real life have a way of stealing your time. That’s why it pays to have a ready-to-go method in place for session prep. I got mine from no less a designer than DM to the stars Chris Perkins.
It was just a few years out of college, and I was saddled to a desk job with little responsibility and loads of downtime. In order to keep from going mad, I found myself scouring the internet of 2011 for something to do. And even though my main gaming fix at the time was M:tG rather than D&D, I decided to try reading through the other content coming out of Wizards of the Coast. That’s how I discovered Perkins’s series of articles, The Dungeon Master Experience. That’s what first got me into RPGs, and Perkins’s work will forever hold a special place in my geeky game-designer heart. The archive of articles is long-since gone, but you can still find a PDF of the highlights. For those of you who are unfamiliar, the series was all about coming up with ways to be a better DM, relying on Perkins’s personal campaign world of Iomandra as a lens. I like to think that I’m writing the same sort of content myself these days, even if it’s nowhere near as good.
That whole PDF is worth a read-through, but the bit I want to talk about today is the article on page 92, “Event Horizon.” I’ve got a copy saved to my Google Docs, and I still use it as the template to prep all my sessions. Writing out the “episode synopsis” is a great way to organize my thoughts. The short form of the “events” section helps to crystallize the major story-beats without going into obnoxious amounts of detail. The conventions of “other roleplaying notes” and “event x” help to keep things fluid, while the logical step by step of combat planning (minis → stat block → battle map) keep the practical side of session prep in sight.
That’s my version of “how to plan a session,” but I’d love to hear yours! So often GMs get bogged down in the specifics of the craft (Dungeon design! Plot twists! Story arcs!) that we forget to consider our broader process. That’s what I’d like to talk about today. How do you go about preparing for a game session? Do you “overprep” or fly by the seat of your pants? Sound off with your process down in the comments!
ARE YOU AN IMPATIENT GAMER? If so, you should check out the “Henchman” reward level over on The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. For just one buck a month, you can get each and every Handbook of Heroes comic a day earlier than the rest of your party members. That’s bragging rights right there!
The DM experience isn’t gone, just moved. https://dnd.wizards.com/articles Go to articles (not sure if the link already sends you there), then “narrow by: types”, and at the bottom of the list is The Dungeon Master Experience. Oddly enough, it doesn’t have the pdf, so you have to use both eh pdf and website for what I assume is the full experience.
Nice! I know that there are a few articles missing from the PDF, but it looks like the archive you linked doesn’t go all the way back to the “epic goblins” article that launched the series.
I wonder if way back machine is the way to go here…?
When I read the name Chris Perkins, my very first thought was about the show ‘Parks & Rec.’ I was wondering why Chris had Ann’s last name. lol
For the longest time, whenever I heard “Chris Perkins”, I thought, “Wait, Chris and Ann got married? When did Chris take Ann’s name?”, followed by a mental image of Chris chirpily saying, “Hi!”. Only recently did my brain accept that Chris Perkins is a game designer, and stopped sending me pictures of Chris saying, “Hi!” whenever I tried to read DM experience.
They did get married in one of the later seasons. But it was still weird seeing the so-called wrong last name.
https://www.bing.com/th/id/OIP.Jf0zoLhME2XEWC6H7vncpgAAAA?pid=Api&rs=1
When I read “they did get married,” my very first thought was about Thief and Wizard. I was wondering if I forgot a comic or two.
Ooh! That would be nice. Cleric could officiate the ceremony! And of course Barbarian would style their hair into pretty up-dos.
Lol. I heard Necromancer has a spell for that.
“Why aren’t I Purple?” Perhaps “Why am I not purple?” would flow better? The sentence just feels…weird to me.
As for planning, I’ve experimented with a few different ways over the course of my GMing career, but I’ve found that I work best when I prepare by outline. The Outline or Flow chart will have a rough idea of how I plan for the session to go. Then, I’ll go painstakingly write out the descriptions and set-dressing for various locations and encounters. Now, because I know what villains A, B and C are doing at any given time, I know how to react to most things my players can do. They still surprise me at time, but those times often include more “misreading npcs” or “Party self-destruct” than anything else.
Also, ALWAYS read every ability your party has at each level. Least they surprise you with some weird thing like “Oh, I learned how to read someone’s shadow to tell if they are lying last session” or something. Also, maybe you’ll come up with an encounter designed to show off that one ability.
“Why am I not purple” does flow better, but does also make it sound as though Thief has thought out the sentence before saying it. “Why aren’t I purple” doesn’t sound as flowing, and more ably serves to show Thief’s shock and distress over the situation, as she is still literate and grammatically correct, but no longer focusing on sentence structure and audibly pleasing sentences as she is Oh My Gosh What’s Happening To Meeeee!
“Why am I not purple?” is probably the correct way to say it, but actually I think “Why aren’t I purple?” sounds more like something a real person would say, particularly in a moment of panic.
I agree. This is definitely the best way to say it. All other possible ways are bad and wrong. 😛
All hail our Lord, Colin of the Handbook!
All hail!
The creator of the one true campaign setting!
One and true!
He whose wisdom shall deliver us from munchkins!
Deliver us!
To whom we are so grateful we would never ask him to chip in for the pizza!
So grateful!
Oh mighty Colin! Your humble servants offer you this sacrifice: a level 10 Synthesist Summoner. We hope that his high Charisma shall please you, and his poor Wisdom shall prevent him from realising this is for real and not just improv theatre. Secure the sacrifice to the altar!
Rolling for Grappling!
Perform the sacrifice!!!
Performing coup de grace!
The sacrifice has failed it’s save and has now joined our dreaded Lord! Now everyone, please make sure to mark it on your character sheets that you’ve performed your obedience for the day if you’ve taken the Demonic Obedience feat. Alright folks, that’s all, see you next week!
Huh. Will you look at that? I just got Divine Rank 0. Neat!
Right now I’m running a module, so my DM prep consists of a summary of last sessions events, followed by a series of paragraphs summing up events that can happen this session. And also have a bunch of notes on general changes to the module floating around… somewhere. So my notes on modules end up being a summary, followed by paragraphs jumping from topic to topic at random, but short and concise enough to be readable.
I need to get better at summarizing rather than “reading at.” I think my players are getting sick of having the full campaign log from the previous session read at them.
Five minutes later it’s like, “That’s great. Can we play now?”
My first few session recaps were a paragraph long, but they swiftly grew to be a full page. So I did the only logical thing: didn’t both try and shorten it and instead work on reading faster than your stereotypical auctioneer.
I sometimes try to make eye contact with the players as I’m reading, to prevent the “reading at” problem, but making eye contact with people means that I’m not reading my recap, which makes it difficult to read the recap.
Yeah… I do that as well. But if you scroll down to my very-long session summary in the comments over here…
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/session-summary
…You can see that the length is making even that untenable. I like having those long write-ups, but I think Ima go back to the condense version for the actual session summary. People can pay attention to about one metric Star Wars scroll before their attention wanders.
When it comes to home-brew, I write down notes on events that can happen, locations, the people within, and all that stuff. Not to big, but enough, and just information that I think is relevant. However, I don’t have any structure to where I put my notes, or my “porto-notes” (ideas, not fully developed), so my notes for an adventure would be a nightmare to sort through should my players steal my laptop. I’m naturally a disorganised person, so I don’t have to much difficulty; however, the disorganisation is a huge change from the relative neatness of modules. While I do write down these notes, and print them out, I don’t actually use them much, having a good memory for these things. As such, my already-minimal notes often go to waste. Unless they’re for a location, or a map. Don’t have a good memory for that stuff. Which is annoying because I HATE drawing maps. I always put it off. I’ve known that I need to draw a map since the 7th, and the next session is on the 18th. I still haven’t drawn that map. Not sure what my plan is there, but my brain’ll think of someway out of it.
There’s been much cursing-at-cartography in the Handbook household of late. Laurel it putting the finishing touches our our first mini-adventure. And yeah: mapping seems hard.
If you hate drawing maps that much, I recommend you don’t. Steal a map from somewhere else and just relabel it as needed. There’s loads of free maps via an image search or on DriveThruRPG, or you can pinch a medieval map of a real place and turn it upsidown.
I actually enjoy making maps, and they help me come up with plot ideas, but if that doesn’t help you then save yourself the work.
As an addition to the home-brew adventure prep, I have two stages in prepping for an adventure. The first is before an adventure; this is when I write down the overall of what’s happening in the adventure, e.g. all locations, NPCs, the evil forces, what they’re trying to do, etc. Then, after each session, I write up my summary of last session, and write may notes for what I think will happen this session. This means going into more detail in specific locations and NPCs. The adventure overview rarely gets printed out, but instead serves as a reference for the minute adventures, e.g., okay, so this is what forces the villain could bring to bear… let’s pick this, this and this. Okay, this is a plot the villain can set in motion… let’s do that this session. What was is that castle, again? Okay… let’s flesh that castle out a bit more. Etc, etc. My session notes are just the basics, but I have the Grand Overview on hand to create those notes.
Have you got a write-up to share? I’d be interested in seeing what your note structure looks like.
Sure! I’ve put together a “standard” session write up, with some minor context in the form of a brief dramatis personae, so that is makes some minor sense.
Dungeon of the Mad Mage: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Za8-GCmgJ0MAeR6QyG_RXR6a4vNV3nKQj9aBw5GxVy4/edit
Homebrew campaign: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CZ5PIYUFaDGqv3pQ4mUgq1L1Hss9Tu1BMFWHWUkfZD8/edit
Wait, hang on sec, that doesn’t work.
Module: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Za8-GCmgJ0MAeR6QyG_RXR6a4vNV3nKQj9aBw5GxVy4/edit?usp=sharing
Homebrew: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CZ5PIYUFaDGqv3pQ4mUgq1L1Hss9Tu1BMFWHWUkfZD8/edit?usp=sharing
I’ve already posted a whole lot here, but this is (probably) the last one on session prep. I write out the statblocks on monsters and NPCs into pages, ordered in such a way that monsters appearing in the same encounter appear next to each other, and preferably in the order the are expected to be encountered. This good because the stat blocks are smaller, and conveniently located, allowing me to run a multi-creature encounter with ease, and a multi-sourcebook-creature encounter without covering the whole table with books. It also means that I can write down pre-rolled initiative, damage, and debuffs right on the monster’s sheet, making it easier to keep track of.
Screen caps! I demand screen caps!
/Users/Liam/Desktop/Monsters.pdf
I’m about as technologically literate as my grandmother, so here is what I hope is a pdf of my monster stat blocks. They have no ordering whatsoever, so control f is required to find anything.
That’s doesn’t appear to be a link. You’d have to host it on Google Docs or some such.
Imma try again.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nMn6tfkSc2CYPoBDiwLOLir69QFZSmCvHmU8AIoLtR4/edit
I got the “you must request access” text. You have to hit “share” and then copy down the “anyone with this link can view” link.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nMn6tfkSc2CYPoBDiwLOLir69QFZSmCvHmU8AIoLtR4/edit?usp=sharing
If you see a monster you don’t recognise, you can probably assume it’s homebrew.
The Colouringbook of Heroes!
Don’t say that too loud or Laurel will actually want to do it.
THE COLOURINGBOOK OF HEROES!!
=p
THE HEROES OF BOOK COLORING! =P
Stop it. Now you’re tempting me with your gimmicky sales tactics!
Save your worries for when we start clamouring for the follow-up, the Colouringbook of Erotic Fantasy, instead.
There aren’t enough flesh-colored crayons in the world.
That’s what the Prestidigitation spell is for. Your heroes can be ANY color.
Is it weird to say I prefer the way Wizard looks in this to some of the other comics?
I’m still finding my feet with this, I have a campaign planner where I keep notes on everyone and everything, but knowing what to prepare ahead of time can be a problem.
Last session my players surprised me by not only leaving the dungeon halfway through to have a rest back at the inn, but also by going looking for an NPC to identify what was going on with the weird dragon-rat hybrids they had found. I knew there was an alchemist and a wizard in town who may be able to assist, but I hadn’t fleshed them out at all as I was expecting the whole session to stay in the dungeon. I think I could have got away with it if only I had a name for the wizard, as I managed to blag the rest reasonably well.
I’ve always loved Laurel’s line work. I think it’s her best skill. Just zoom in on this one:
https://www.deviantart.com/fishcapades/art/Ardor-of-Agony-270251026
As for the nameless wizard, there’s a trick that a lot of GMs use (myself included) where they’ll keep a list of male and female names of various races on hand. That way you can just assign one to the NPC of the moment and add ’em to the running glossar o’ NPCs at your leisure.
That’s really cool, I like that style a lot.
And thanks for the tip, I think I need a list like that on my DM screen – I have lists in books but for that situation you need something right in front of you.
My party has been weirdly good at biting plot hooks, and will all much rather follow the railroad than take initiative. That said, I’ve found that I’m quite good at improv and when the party decides to spend the entire session goofing around the city I’ll play ball. My prep mostly involves printing the stat blocks I plan to use from the unethical PDFs of books I own so I don’t need to juggle the books as much. Simply having the Volo’s Yuan-Ti statblocks handy in the Yuan-Ti temple means less flipping back and forth the the Yuan-Ti page.
I think the railroad is something that newer players need. More experienced GMs can sometimes wonder why “they don’t do anything” when they’re still trying to figure out what they are allowed to do. That mess evens out in time.
As my Rise of the Runelords game proved to me, I think it’s a situation of Table to table, not really experience. My group has all been playing D&D longer than I have (My partner and I are actually the babies of the group) and when they finished Barl Breakbones and went back to Sandpoint, they just got lost. That’s the first real section where RotRL stops holding the party’s hand and saying “You need to go to point A to do Thing B and Kill Enemy C”. Instead, it says “This happens. Okay, you fixed that? They came from over there.” and expects them to handle it.
Now, on one hand, this is the exact right time to do so, because it’s right when the Players are at the level that your full Casters are getting Teleport, Scry, and other spells that completely change the tactics of the entire party and the module does an excellent job of providing the GM with all the information they need to react to any of that. It still has options for if your main Arcane caster is a Sorceror or a weird variant that doesn’t get Teleports and such, but it expects the change of tactics to come.
The problem is it doesn’t really ease the players into that shift. It kinda of assumes that they are used to that. And even though my players should have been, they took a bit to pick it up because of the abrupt shift.
I dunno, the one in charge of that things is the DM. I am more in charge of the plot of the campaign and the world-building. As long as i pass my notes to him and i check his my job is done. He is the one in charge of finding a place to play, the minis or their substitutes, props, food, drinks, pencils and paper and tables. Also transport, logistics, DMing and rules-book-checking. Oh, and running the game. Other than that he doesn’t have that much things to worry about. We only need to appear in time and place as he summons us 🙂
So wait… You build the setting while another dude runs the game?
Yep. I made the setting, plot-hooks, overall plot of the campaign, i left the basics for him to make and run. A setting isn’t that big deal of work and, as our DM have stated, i do a better work than him is my duty then to provide the murder scene for our party 🙂
I was actually talking with a friend a few hours ago, where he was lamenting about his ability to craft finely detailed worlds, fascinating histories, and all of the setting stuff, but not any plot, while I was bemoaning the opposite. So, since each of use specialised in the other’s weakness, we’ve decided to create a joint campaign. Do you have any tips?
For the plot? Don’t worry to be original, steal shamelessly, but make sure you can hide from where did you steal each thing.
For the setting? Make sure you like it, if you don’t like it you can’t make other people do it, but even if you like it recognize bad things for what they are.
For the two of you working together? Working with other person is an epic journey, make sure it ends well, no campaign or pride is worth a friend.
As for me? Look for some book or something about how to write counsels because i don’t have any idea of what i am doing 😛
I have yet to learn how to actually fucking prepare for sessions. God help me.
Might I direct you attention toward a certain Chris Perkins article…?
When I’m running a long campaign, three things I do at the very beginning of the campaign is 1) plan out a few cool events, settings, encounters, etc to happen in the game (e.g. come across a floating wizard tower, an ambush by a basilisk and black pudding (lethal combo that, especially at lower levels), meet three powerful fey arguing over an apple of discord, etc); 2) have a few plot/character related events jotted down; 3) ask the players for something they think would be cool to happen in the game. Then later in the campaign if a session is coming up and I’m ill-prepared, time crunched, writer’s blocked, etc. I just got through that list, maybe mash a few of the concepts together, add a few details, and presto! Plus, by having them thought out at the beginning I can drop foreshadowing or references to them throughout the campaign, which helps them feel like a natural part of the flow when I throw them at the players.
You reminded me of one thing that I add to Perkins’s model. In addition to the major session encounters, I try to plan a “moment” for each PC. It might be a conversation with their sentient item, news from their guild, or something as simple as “the monster talks to them first.” Just something to give everyone a share of the spotligh.
As someone who runs pbp games you’d maybe think I prepare a lot. But…. really I don’t.
I figure out the big plots threads… basically in the shower or while washing dishes or whatever in random bits in pieces and maybe some events or places I want to throw in.
But anything that’s going to be happening sometime soon is pretty much just completely improvised.
The closest I come to “proper planning” is writing up stats for custom magic items or creatures.
Ramsus? You’d be proud of me. It’s winter break. I’m finally bringing back my Crimson Throne game. Pbp, here I come!
Interestingly enough one of the youtube channels I watch is doing a Let’s Play of that module. And they even converted it to 5e.
Good luck getting dedicated players to last long enough for a good run (or more than a couple weeks as is my typical experience). That module seems like it’s fairly lengthy. (Though that group also frequently spends entire sessions literally just sitting around roleplaying their characters’ relationship dramas or working on plans that immediately fall apart once they get to the action. So my perspective on how long the module is could be flawed.)
Well hey, the only reason we quit is because of last year’s move. I anticipate good things. 😀
I’m also worried the party is about to be attacked by wrench-wielding devils in Avernus after winning a soul-coin-powered-vehicle race…
Wait… Does DiA have a color-sucking encounter?
I’m referring to a music video;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djV11Xbc914
My first attempt at playing D&D completely failed because in my childhood naivety and hubris I thought that I could wing it as a DM
Such arrogance!
Did you at least learn from your mistake? Go on to game and glory?
Well I didn’t try to DM again because I knew I needed more experience with the game to do so successfully. But the next game I played fell apart due to unrelated scheduling reasons.
Since then I’ve only played computer RPGs. On the upside, I’ve played through the Atari version of Temple of Elemental Evil so many times that I might be able to DM that specific adventure if I ever get another group together.
I always like Stephen King on this point: “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” Similar points for GMing: read a lot and play a lot.
Actual play podcasts help, and so do computer-based RPGs. But in my experience, sitting down at the table is where it’s at.
I hope you do get the chance to give pen and paper another go. Good luck finding that next group!
I think the best Lawful Evil NPC I ever created was the Duke who employed the PCs. He made the party file risk assessments, take out insurance before heading out on quests, and required them to file their income according to a complex formula upon returning. He was an effective ruler, ran a reasonably just society, and actually made people’s lives better in ways that the players could see (the local populace would cheer them in the streets because their hard work was directly paying for civic improvements).
But they hated those forms so much. The lengths they went to just to avoid filling them in properly was hilarious.
Sorry commented this on the wrong post.
I’m sure your evil bureaucrat would be very disappointed in your misfilng.
Back when I was still running things out of the Starter Set, prep was as simple as just reading through the relevant section before the game and maybe drawing a map. Now that I’m making up stuff as we go, it’s a bit more involved.
Before each session, I’ll usually try to make sure I have all the info handy for wherever my group’s probably going to go. This doesn’t always work — there was that one time our ranger used Primeval Awareness for the first time, sensed a zombie at the edge of his range, and then sprinted off in that direction… Fortunately, I had already come up with a fairly fleshed-out dungeon in that area, so I had stuff to run for them; they actually just got done rescuing themselves using their backup characters in today’s session.
I start by just kinda occasionally taking time to think about what sort of stuff might be in the area (“What sort of random encounters live there?” “What sort of motivation/personality does the arc villain have?” “Where’s the treasury with the golem in relation to the main forge room with the fire elementals?”). We don’t meet very often, so there’s generally plenty of time for stuff like that to percolate in my backbrain.
Then, I do stuff like work out exact encounters, treasure piles, dungeon layouts, and such. I generally assemble encounters in Kobold Fight Club to see roughly how tough they are, and I might tweak them on the fly if the group happens to be having an especially hard or easy time of it. This is also when I make new monsters and/or fiddle with existing ones so they fit better. For treasure I usually roll in the DMG or decide on based on what sort of stuff my group might want to find.
Once I’ve got the encounters/treasure figured out, I’ll make sure all the relevant info is easily accessible come session time; I’ve got a Notepad document where I keep a whole bunch of relevant monster stats (as well as some monster stats I think might eventually become relevant someday), and another one where I keep track of initiative, treasure, experience, and such.
As for maps, I’ll draw a full one for a large, involved dungeon (an abandoned magical mine, a firenewt stronghold, that sort of thing), but for minor encounters along the way I’ll usually just kinda scribble something on a sheet of graph paper (occasionally mid-session; it’s not like “Forest clearing #72” needs to be all that involved). I have tried doing things completely “Theater of the Mind”, but it really works better for my group if we have a physical map that we can point at and move little Lego pieces around on and occasionally scribble on when somebody makes smoke or tentacly blackness or something.
After every session, I’ll do a short writeup of any significant events that happened. This serves double duty as grist for the “Previously on…” thing we always start our sessions with, as well as being something I’ll eventually send to everyone if/when the campaign ever concludes so we can look back on our adventures and laugh.