I understand that you typically prep only one session in advance, but what does that prep entail? Do you write room/setting descriptions, know exactly how many monsters are where, and create maps for each adventure location? Or do you make it less detailed and do the rest on the spot?
My prep is constrained to maps of the location that they will see, and the room descriptions and populations. Loot that I want them to have, and any secrets that support the plot maybe some red herring plot hooks to distract them from the main plot.
Prior to the first session I focus on NPCs and towns. I generate town maps for starting town and one town away from their starting location, and the list of merchants and rumors in that town. Some plot related, some red herrings. Once the PCs arrive at the next "horizon", the I expand to the next corresponding horizon.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
I do D&D work (prep) every day that I can. In advance of a campaign I put together a flurry of documents that detail the style of game I'd like to run, the basic story of the adventure land(s), and the type of characters that make sense in that land. An old school players guide type of document with an index.
Behind the scenes I draw a regional map for my use as DM and then a player version of the same map that I give to them before the game starts.
Then I put together a list of adventure seeds before game launch (and character creation) to get the ball rolling. Just simple problems like "Hunter's have gone missing in the Woods of Strange Adventures and the local Lord is offering a reward for their return."
As the characters get made and my players start to puzzle out which adventure seeds they are likely to take up, I start doing work on the actual plot of the adventure, the reasoning behind all the NPC actions and setup, and then the encounters and answers to how it might resolve when the characters get involved.
I start high level and, as players express interest, detail the next deeper level. As the campaign launch approaches I directly ask my players what they want to explore/find/solve in the first adventure(s) and that's when I get down to the encounters and locations and specific adventure details. I don't like the "You all find yourselves in a tavern with no goals." campaign start as a DM. The tavern is fine, but I want each character to have a few goals and a plan that I can work on as those final details before they jump in. Waiting to see what happens in the tavern pretty much ensures they'll go for something I didn't prepare. Asking them improves the odds (surprises still happen, I give my players complete character agency).
Day One A: Review the previous session outline (see below) and break off what had not been completed and start it as a new Session Outline.
Day One B: Brainstorm. This is where I'll take some notebook paper and write, a single sentence, all the ideas that spring to mind related to the game. This is also where I review what happened in the previous game and if it has any impacts on the next or future sessions. This helps me refine the upcoming session like plot points, NPC interaction, locations, as well as future game plots and characters.
Day Two: Brainstorm review. This is where I'll look at the notes I wrote up and transcribe them to my game document in my Notes section categorized by Plot, NPC, and Locations. The goal here is to take a look at those ideas from the previous day and start refining if they work or prune them if they don't to the game. This is usually the day that takes the most time as new ideas related to the brainstorm will creep up that helps create more depth to my three core development topics
Day Three: Outline. Review the session outline for the week and then update it with new notes and direction ideas even if the notes pertain to few sessions in the future. I continue to write out the game session in outline form as I don't expect the game to be 1-to-1 how I write it out because...well...players do the darndest things, but at least I have some 'guidance' on how I would like to play things out. I'll rarely write out full dialogue or description for NPCs and locations-- I'll have a written out general features but mostly I'll improve during the game.
Day Four: Review Outline: Quick read-through of the outline just to make sure everything still makes sense. I'll make slight changes as needed but I fully expect that Day Three was all the heavy lifting of edits. Next, I'll make sure my Random (male/female) Name lists do not need replenishing as well as any maps I could use for encounters. I subscribe to a few mapmakers Paetron is where I find the most of my maps otherwise I used DungeonDraft to create my own if necessary but if I'm constrained for the time I'll just sketch out a battle map on the VVT for play. Finally, I use DDB for my encounters and I create what encounters I may need for the upcoming sessions.
As time goes on I have a master document with multiple game sessions already outlined that I review and refine each week. All this helps me see the bigger picture of the campaign and makes sure I'm still heading in the intended direction. It also helps me look at plot holes or dead space that I can fill in with a side quest or RP moments.
All in all, for twice-a-week game sessions the total time I spend preparing is less than an hour. Now some people may say that is way too much time and you should only prep no more than fifteen minutes if you wish to be a "lazy" dungeon master, but I enjoy the prep and refining my games. There was a lot of upfront work when I got started but over time that workload lessens as my session document grows beyond just what is supposed to happen in the next session.
I understand that you typically prep only one session in advance, but what does that prep entail? Do you write room/setting descriptions, know exactly how many monsters are where, and create maps for each adventure location? Or do you make it less detailed and do the rest on the spot?
I prep way more than 1 session ahead. Since it typically takes more than a session to explore even a mid-sized dungeon, I have the whole thing done, ideally, before they walk in. This doesn't account for them surprising me with stuff -- obviously I can't prep that beforehand.
We are on hiatus right now but before the break, the party had just reached Ostia, the port of Rome (we are campaigning in an alt-Roman Empire). There is a magic item "exchange" that allows for anonymous transfer of items and money (the exchange is the middle-man) and items can also be offered for "service" (think "jobs board"). I picked 3 items I thought the party might want, and worked out 3 small adventures, one for each item. I also detailed the 'main quest' part of Rome (although that's not really a "dungeon" in the typical sense). My guess is, it will take them about 6 sessions to get through all this content if they want to do it. That was done before the hiatus break.
While on the hiatus, I am slowly working on what I think (based on their statements) may be the next city/quest area. I have detailed the town I think they may go to, and mapped it, and built a quest area they may also go to. I don't know if they will do that or go somewhere else (it's a big empire, and there are many main quest places for them to go), but if not, they'll go there eventually so I have it banked for later.
The *main* issue with working too far ahead, since I use Foundry hosted by the Forge, is just the limitation on not having too much crap in Foundry to slow it down -- everything affects resource use, even maps you are not actively on. So I can't import everything into Foundry way ahead of time... I just keep it on my local HDD. But other than that... I work way more than 1 session out. I'm usually working 1 adventure ahead, if not 2, and each adventure takes a few sessions.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I write about a page outline for the upcoming session. The top headings are typically
Front Matter (recap, inspiration, other things I don’t want to forget once I get in my flow)
Events
Characters
Locations
We typically might get to half the material and I roll the rest over to the next session if the players didn’t bypass it.
Multi-session adventures have their own linked notes page, maybe 2-5 pages of Events, Characters, and Locations. Major characters and locations have their own pages too.
I'm prepping less and less each time as I'm realising that it takes longer to get from a to b than I had perhaps considered, and the players like to take their time rather than just steam through things (which is really great). I had prepped what I thought was one session, we've now had 3 sessions and we're almost at the point where I expected them to get in session 1! so less prep than there used to be when I first started!
If there are going to be combat encounters, I prep exactly what and how many monsters in advance. I'll prepare maps for any combats that have interesting terrain. If it's just taking place in an open field or empty room, then we can do theater of the mind.
Occasionally my players might go off the rails and wander into a combat encounter unexpectedly. In that case, I'll take a short break and come back with a roster of monsters and do theater of the mind. But I'm not very confident in balancing combat encounters without a lot of double-checking, so I make the combat on the easier side just to be safe. I'd much rather plan combat encounters in advance.
My combat prep is pretty loosey goosey, but I sometimes roll a few rounds of attacks/saves ahead of time to keep things moving. My sessions are only 3 hours long and online, and I hate having to stop in the middle of a fight.
I put most of my prep time into fleshing out leads for the party to follow (which NPCs know what, and how much they'd say). I run an intrigue/mystery campaign, so lore and world building really needs to be as consistent, thorough, and airtight as I can make it. This means that I'm usually planning way in advance and reacting to what my players poked at. To that end, I also prep some important dialogue and puzzles. And then mood music, lol. The music takes me longer than it should...
My prep consists of two parts: the world building and the storytelling.
The world building consists of creating and queuing up Zones (large areas of unexplored land or water) that contain dungeons, towns, and other adventure points. I keep it all highly modular, so a dungeon or town can be placed anywhere in a zone where I need it when I need it. When the players reach the edge of a zone, I can flop the next zone queued up down for them. The prep comes from staying on top of these queues and keeping them loaded with content. (Zones, towns, dungeons, events, etc). Sometimes it is a lot of work, other times not any work at all. Just depending on how fast players are burning through content.
Next is storytelling. This is where I prep for what my players will likely do next session, specifically. I’m also advancing the rest of the world’s agenda while having it react to the agenda of the players. By tying this together, I’m telling a story for the players, which is important.
Then I added stuff as time went on. However, my level of prepping rapidly moved ahead of the PCs actions. I ended up designing the entire area map that will take them to level 11 by the time they were level 7. As such, I have the next 5 months of areas, NPCs, dungeon maps, random encounters, and everything else prepped. Basically, I've written the whole 'module.'
I make amendments weekly as the players make choices (they have obliterated my planning for a couple of things, and some NPCs have travelled to places I didn't intend due to the PCs actions, etc) but the locations are all set.
I appreciate that this is probably quite unusual. This campaign runs in a fairly self contained peninsula, and the PCs are invested in the story enough that they won't try to do something random like fly off to another continent. If they did, I'd have more prep to do.
I understand that you typically prep only one session in advance, but what does that prep entail? Do you write room/setting descriptions, know exactly how many monsters are where, and create maps for each adventure location? Or do you make it less detailed and do the rest on the spot?
It depends on the situation.
I have a number of encounters mapped out and set up ready to go, they are all things the party are likely to do soon. So there is a sewer map sketched out, a series of caves etc. I roughly know what will be in them but won’t set loot or monsters until I know they are def going.
Roght now the party are roleplaying through some social encounters, we are now 2 sessions into them talking to various people in the town they are in, attending a party and then meeting important NPCs the next day. These are all TOTM. I have bullet points noted for each person, what they know, what they will share and why/how.
Now in terms of time I spend prepping, I am thinking all the time, any spare moment I get my mind wanders and I think about specifics. Not random ideas but, what does this cave smell like, what is this NPC’s color eyes. I just immerse myself in the details of the next couple of sessions and understand exactly what my world is so when it comes to the session I can improvise most of it.
I love prepping. But both me and my players really enjoy roleplaying and the social pillar, so most of my prepping for that is frontloaded with political agendas and webs within webs of intrigue - that stuff is constantly on the move in the background and changing depending on player actions.
As to "dungeons" and combat stuff, I try to make stuff interesting to explore, so I usually spend lots of time on mapmaking, and prep all combat encounters in advance with thoughts of tactical options. But most of all I keep a good grasp of why the "dungeon" exist, and what each creatures task is at the current time. Then it's easy to improvise when the players start their inevitable sh*tshow :-)
But I don't write box text, unless it's an important/special setpiece, or it's verbal cluedropping where I need things to be tight. Oh, and NPC/bbeg monologues. I REALLY love writing monologues 8-P
I probably spend way to much time prepping my sessions. Mapmaking takes me the longest, as I do everything on paper. I do a lot of work designing dungeons, since I like to make sure each available path is different for the players.
I don’t plan out NPC encounters too much, apart from noting how much info each character would be able or willing to give. Sometimes, I will write specific dialogue lines if I want to make sure the line gives the right impression, or just make sure it is said. I also make sure I’m planting seeds for the overall plot, and plan for “shopping expeditions” since I’ve got a couple players who are obsessed with visiting every potions or weapons dealer available. I planned all of my important NPCs before the start of the campaign, so they are all fleshed out and easy to RP. Sometimes though, I find it necessary to flesh out new NPCs in-between sessions... like when my players kidnapped a random baker...
I only map towns if something significant is going to happen there. Most of the time, I improv what is there, only giving the players a description of what they can see upon entry. If they ask after a location I haven’t planned for, I make one up, then take note of where I placed it in case a map is ever required.
I always plan encounters, but I don’t always use them since most of the time I give my players an opportunity (whether they realize it or not) to avoid combat. If there is an encounter or event that is critical to the plot, I plan ways to nudge my players in the right direction—or just improv it as they unintentionally mess up all my plans. Honestly though, my favorite moments always come from when my players do something totally unexpected.
This is all great information! How do you make your maps- paper or digitally, and if digitally, what program is best?
We only play digitally (Above VTT), and I use Dungeondraft and Wonderdraft. I'm really happy with those - easy to use, fantastic results, and it's pay a modest price once use forever software which I like.
I understand that you typically prep only one session in advance, but what does that prep entail? Do you write room/setting descriptions, know exactly how many monsters are where, and create maps for each adventure location? Or do you make it less detailed and do the rest on the spot?
It depends on what I expect to happen in that next session.
If the party is about to plunge into a dungeon or explore a specific important spot, I'll map out and populate it fully (which could end up being enough work to cover multiple sessions depending on how big it is or how much combat there ends up being).
If they're traveling towards a specific spot, I'll prep some "random" encounters that won't be quite so involved, with the number depending on the area/how long the trip is.
If the party is just wandering around and doesn't have a clear direction at the moment, I'll prep a wider variety of possible encounters, NPCs and locations but keep them a little looser so I can react more organically to whatever they end up doing.
Some of that prep I can then recycle later if it doesn't get used, or if the party passes that way again.
That's all with having already fleshed out the campaign world, the main arc of the campaign, important NPCs and a handful of subplots/quests long in advance, before the campaign began. All the more short-term prep is informed by and incorporates that info as a backdrop, foregrounding it when necessary.
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I understand that you typically prep only one session in advance, but what does that prep entail? Do you write room/setting descriptions, know exactly how many monsters are where, and create maps for each adventure location? Or do you make it less detailed and do the rest on the spot?
Only spilt the party if you see something shiny.
Ariendela Sneakerson, Half-elf Rogue (8); Harmony Wolfsbane, Tiefling Bard (10); Agnomally, Gnomish Sorcerer (3); Breeze, Tabaxi Monk (8); Grace, Dragonborn Barbarian (7); DM, Homebrew- The Sequestered Lands/Underwater Explorers; Candlekeep
My prep is constrained to maps of the location that they will see, and the room descriptions and populations. Loot that I want them to have, and any secrets that support the plot maybe some red herring plot hooks to distract them from the main plot.
Prior to the first session I focus on NPCs and towns. I generate town maps for starting town and one town away from their starting location, and the list of merchants and rumors in that town. Some plot related, some red herrings. Once the PCs arrive at the next "horizon", the I expand to the next corresponding horizon.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
I do D&D work (prep) every day that I can. In advance of a campaign I put together a flurry of documents that detail the style of game I'd like to run, the basic story of the adventure land(s), and the type of characters that make sense in that land. An old school players guide type of document with an index.
Behind the scenes I draw a regional map for my use as DM and then a player version of the same map that I give to them before the game starts.
Then I put together a list of adventure seeds before game launch (and character creation) to get the ball rolling. Just simple problems like "Hunter's have gone missing in the Woods of Strange Adventures and the local Lord is offering a reward for their return."
As the characters get made and my players start to puzzle out which adventure seeds they are likely to take up, I start doing work on the actual plot of the adventure, the reasoning behind all the NPC actions and setup, and then the encounters and answers to how it might resolve when the characters get involved.
I start high level and, as players express interest, detail the next deeper level. As the campaign launch approaches I directly ask my players what they want to explore/find/solve in the first adventure(s) and that's when I get down to the encounters and locations and specific adventure details. I don't like the "You all find yourselves in a tavern with no goals." campaign start as a DM. The tavern is fine, but I want each character to have a few goals and a plan that I can work on as those final details before they jump in. Waiting to see what happens in the tavern pretty much ensures they'll go for something I didn't prepare. Asking them improves the odds (surprises still happen, I give my players complete character agency).
I do mine over a couple of days in short bursts.
Day One A: Review the previous session outline (see below) and break off what had not been completed and start it as a new Session Outline.
Day One B: Brainstorm. This is where I'll take some notebook paper and write, a single sentence, all the ideas that spring to mind related to the game. This is also where I review what happened in the previous game and if it has any impacts on the next or future sessions. This helps me refine the upcoming session like plot points, NPC interaction, locations, as well as future game plots and characters.
Day Two: Brainstorm review. This is where I'll look at the notes I wrote up and transcribe them to my game document in my Notes section categorized by Plot, NPC, and Locations. The goal here is to take a look at those ideas from the previous day and start refining if they work or prune them if they don't to the game. This is usually the day that takes the most time as new ideas related to the brainstorm will creep up that helps create more depth to my three core development topics
Day Three: Outline. Review the session outline for the week and then update it with new notes and direction ideas even if the notes pertain to few sessions in the future. I continue to write out the game session in outline form as I don't expect the game to be 1-to-1 how I write it out because...well...players do the darndest things, but at least I have some 'guidance' on how I would like to play things out. I'll rarely write out full dialogue or description for NPCs and locations-- I'll have a written out general features but mostly I'll improve during the game.
Day Four: Review Outline: Quick read-through of the outline just to make sure everything still makes sense. I'll make slight changes as needed but I fully expect that Day Three was all the heavy lifting of edits. Next, I'll make sure my Random (male/female) Name lists do not need replenishing as well as any maps I could use for encounters. I subscribe to a few mapmakers Paetron is where I find the most of my maps otherwise I used DungeonDraft to create my own if necessary but if I'm constrained for the time I'll just sketch out a battle map on the VVT for play. Finally, I use DDB for my encounters and I create what encounters I may need for the upcoming sessions.
As time goes on I have a master document with multiple game sessions already outlined that I review and refine each week. All this helps me see the bigger picture of the campaign and makes sure I'm still heading in the intended direction. It also helps me look at plot holes or dead space that I can fill in with a side quest or RP moments.
All in all, for twice-a-week game sessions the total time I spend preparing is less than an hour. Now some people may say that is way too much time and you should only prep no more than fifteen minutes if you wish to be a "lazy" dungeon master, but I enjoy the prep and refining my games. There was a lot of upfront work when I got started but over time that workload lessens as my session document grows beyond just what is supposed to happen in the next session.
I prep way more than 1 session ahead. Since it typically takes more than a session to explore even a mid-sized dungeon, I have the whole thing done, ideally, before they walk in. This doesn't account for them surprising me with stuff -- obviously I can't prep that beforehand.
We are on hiatus right now but before the break, the party had just reached Ostia, the port of Rome (we are campaigning in an alt-Roman Empire). There is a magic item "exchange" that allows for anonymous transfer of items and money (the exchange is the middle-man) and items can also be offered for "service" (think "jobs board"). I picked 3 items I thought the party might want, and worked out 3 small adventures, one for each item. I also detailed the 'main quest' part of Rome (although that's not really a "dungeon" in the typical sense). My guess is, it will take them about 6 sessions to get through all this content if they want to do it. That was done before the hiatus break.
While on the hiatus, I am slowly working on what I think (based on their statements) may be the next city/quest area. I have detailed the town I think they may go to, and mapped it, and built a quest area they may also go to. I don't know if they will do that or go somewhere else (it's a big empire, and there are many main quest places for them to go), but if not, they'll go there eventually so I have it banked for later.
The *main* issue with working too far ahead, since I use Foundry hosted by the Forge, is just the limitation on not having too much crap in Foundry to slow it down -- everything affects resource use, even maps you are not actively on. So I can't import everything into Foundry way ahead of time... I just keep it on my local HDD. But other than that... I work way more than 1 session out. I'm usually working 1 adventure ahead, if not 2, and each adventure takes a few sessions.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I don’t do box text. I make that up on the fly.
I write about a page outline for the upcoming session. The top headings are typically
Front Matter (recap, inspiration, other things I don’t want to forget once I get in my flow)
Events
Characters
Locations
We typically might get to half the material and I roll the rest over to the next session if the players didn’t bypass it.
Multi-session adventures have their own linked notes page, maybe 2-5 pages of Events, Characters, and Locations. Major characters and locations have their own pages too.
I'm prepping less and less each time as I'm realising that it takes longer to get from a to b than I had perhaps considered, and the players like to take their time rather than just steam through things (which is really great). I had prepped what I thought was one session, we've now had 3 sessions and we're almost at the point where I expected them to get in session 1! so less prep than there used to be when I first started!
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If there are going to be combat encounters, I prep exactly what and how many monsters in advance. I'll prepare maps for any combats that have interesting terrain. If it's just taking place in an open field or empty room, then we can do theater of the mind.
Occasionally my players might go off the rails and wander into a combat encounter unexpectedly. In that case, I'll take a short break and come back with a roster of monsters and do theater of the mind. But I'm not very confident in balancing combat encounters without a lot of double-checking, so I make the combat on the easier side just to be safe. I'd much rather plan combat encounters in advance.
My combat prep is pretty loosey goosey, but I sometimes roll a few rounds of attacks/saves ahead of time to keep things moving. My sessions are only 3 hours long and online, and I hate having to stop in the middle of a fight.
I put most of my prep time into fleshing out leads for the party to follow (which NPCs know what, and how much they'd say). I run an intrigue/mystery campaign, so lore and world building really needs to be as consistent, thorough, and airtight as I can make it. This means that I'm usually planning way in advance and reacting to what my players poked at. To that end, I also prep some important dialogue and puzzles. And then mood music, lol. The music takes me longer than it should...
My prep consists of two parts: the world building and the storytelling.
The world building consists of creating and queuing up Zones (large areas of unexplored land or water) that contain dungeons, towns, and other adventure points. I keep it all highly modular, so a dungeon or town can be placed anywhere in a zone where I need it when I need it. When the players reach the edge of a zone, I can flop the next zone queued up down for them. The prep comes from staying on top of these queues and keeping them loaded with content. (Zones, towns, dungeons, events, etc). Sometimes it is a lot of work, other times not any work at all. Just depending on how fast players are burning through content.
Next is storytelling. This is where I prep for what my players will likely do next session, specifically. I’m also advancing the rest of the world’s agenda while having it react to the agenda of the players. By tying this together, I’m telling a story for the players, which is important.
When I started my latest campaign, I designed:
Then I added stuff as time went on. However, my level of prepping rapidly moved ahead of the PCs actions. I ended up designing the entire area map that will take them to level 11 by the time they were level 7. As such, I have the next 5 months of areas, NPCs, dungeon maps, random encounters, and everything else prepped. Basically, I've written the whole 'module.'
I make amendments weekly as the players make choices (they have obliterated my planning for a couple of things, and some NPCs have travelled to places I didn't intend due to the PCs actions, etc) but the locations are all set.
I appreciate that this is probably quite unusual. This campaign runs in a fairly self contained peninsula, and the PCs are invested in the story enough that they won't try to do something random like fly off to another continent. If they did, I'd have more prep to do.
It depends on the situation.
I have a number of encounters mapped out and set up ready to go, they are all things the party are likely to do soon. So there is a sewer map sketched out, a series of caves etc. I roughly know what will be in them but won’t set loot or monsters until I know they are def going.
Roght now the party are roleplaying through some social encounters, we are now 2 sessions into them talking to various people in the town they are in, attending a party and then meeting important NPCs the next day. These are all TOTM. I have bullet points noted for each person, what they know, what they will share and why/how.
Now in terms of time I spend prepping, I am thinking all the time, any spare moment I get my mind wanders and I think about specifics. Not random ideas but, what does this cave smell like, what is this NPC’s color eyes. I just immerse myself in the details of the next couple of sessions and understand exactly what my world is so when it comes to the session I can improvise most of it.
I love prepping. But both me and my players really enjoy roleplaying and the social pillar, so most of my prepping for that is frontloaded with political agendas and webs within webs of intrigue - that stuff is constantly on the move in the background and changing depending on player actions.
As to "dungeons" and combat stuff, I try to make stuff interesting to explore, so I usually spend lots of time on mapmaking, and prep all combat encounters in advance with thoughts of tactical options. But most of all I keep a good grasp of why the "dungeon" exist, and what each creatures task is at the current time. Then it's easy to improvise when the players start their inevitable sh*tshow :-)
But I don't write box text, unless it's an important/special setpiece, or it's verbal cluedropping where I need things to be tight. Oh, and NPC/bbeg monologues. I REALLY love writing monologues 8-P
Always too much and never enough.
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I probably spend way to much time prepping my sessions. Mapmaking takes me the longest, as I do everything on paper. I do a lot of work designing dungeons, since I like to make sure each available path is different for the players.
I don’t plan out NPC encounters too much, apart from noting how much info each character would be able or willing to give. Sometimes, I will write specific dialogue lines if I want to make sure the line gives the right impression, or just make sure it is said.
I also make sure I’m planting seeds for the overall plot, and plan for “shopping expeditions” since I’ve got a couple players who are obsessed with visiting every potions or weapons dealer available.
I planned all of my important NPCs before the start of the campaign, so they are all fleshed out and easy to RP. Sometimes though, I find it necessary to flesh out new NPCs in-between sessions... like when my players kidnapped a random baker...
I only map towns if something significant is going to happen there. Most of the time, I improv what is there, only giving the players a description of what they can see upon entry. If they ask after a location I haven’t planned for, I make one up, then take note of where I placed it in case a map is ever required.
I always plan encounters, but I don’t always use them since most of the time I give my players an opportunity (whether they realize it or not) to avoid combat. If there is an encounter or event that is critical to the plot, I plan ways to nudge my players in the right direction—or just improv it as they unintentionally mess up all my plans.
Honestly though, my favorite moments always come from when my players do something totally unexpected.
This is all great information! How do you make your maps- paper or digitally, and if digitally, what program is best?
Only spilt the party if you see something shiny.
Ariendela Sneakerson, Half-elf Rogue (8); Harmony Wolfsbane, Tiefling Bard (10); Agnomally, Gnomish Sorcerer (3); Breeze, Tabaxi Monk (8); Grace, Dragonborn Barbarian (7); DM, Homebrew- The Sequestered Lands/Underwater Explorers; Candlekeep
Remotely I use inkarnate I pay for the full access, in person I just use graph paper or a white board generally
We only play digitally (Above VTT), and I use Dungeondraft and Wonderdraft. I'm really happy with those - easy to use, fantastic results, and it's pay a modest price once use forever software which I like.
I use DungeonDraft which is an amazing tool that you can easily import your maps in VTT.
It depends on what I expect to happen in that next session.
If the party is about to plunge into a dungeon or explore a specific important spot, I'll map out and populate it fully (which could end up being enough work to cover multiple sessions depending on how big it is or how much combat there ends up being).
If they're traveling towards a specific spot, I'll prep some "random" encounters that won't be quite so involved, with the number depending on the area/how long the trip is.
If the party is just wandering around and doesn't have a clear direction at the moment, I'll prep a wider variety of possible encounters, NPCs and locations but keep them a little looser so I can react more organically to whatever they end up doing.
Some of that prep I can then recycle later if it doesn't get used, or if the party passes that way again.
That's all with having already fleshed out the campaign world, the main arc of the campaign, important NPCs and a handful of subplots/quests long in advance, before the campaign began. All the more short-term prep is informed by and incorporates that info as a backdrop, foregrounding it when necessary.
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)