What I would like to know is, as DMs, how long does it take for you to prepare your games? For me, it seems to take forever. I can't just throw "empty" monsters at my group anymore. Now with the feats, skills, special attacks/defenses, etc... It takes me major preperation and even if I use printed adventures (thanks Dungeon!) it still takes hours of studying to make sure I get everything right (or I don't forget that special skill wich makes the foe a threat). It can take me several days to prepare for ONE session. I must be getting old. Got any pointers?
Well, I usually run published adventures and work them into my camapign. Still, I usually give the adventure two read throughs, Then go back and pick out miniatures for each monster so that I can have them on hand. I then see if their are any tactical maps I can make to use. I then set up the table before my players arrive (usually). In all I guess I spend maybe an hour in prep, not counting random brainstorming that I do between games. But then I have been DMing almost exclusively for 15 years so I am prety comfortable with things.
If you are completely writing your own adventures, then set up can take much longer. I've seen professional adventure authors take a month or more to write an adventure.
ASEO out
Dependeing on the adventure, it takes me from 1 to 3 hours to prep. I make most of my adventures myself, but I adlib a lot, so I just prep the stuff for the main plot (encounters, treasure, backstory, etc.). My players are so chaotic that they almost never go the route I plan for, so I have to be ready to change it on the fly. But you have to consider, I've been DMing 3e/3.5 since its release, and D&D in general for about 12 years now.
Don't get me wrong... I've been DMing for almost 20 years too. I miss the old kinds of modules with "drop anywhere" dungeons. Now, it seems, that all the printed adventure have complexe political plots (and sub-plots) with more NPCs than I can account for. Maybe I'm just having plroblems adjusting to the 3rd edition rules. All those skills and feats (there's so many of them!), I can't possibly retain what every on of them does.
And what do you Dm's do for random encounters between cities. I used to roll on tables and my players would face a multitude of monsters along their paths. Then I wondered, where are all these creatures comming from? How do commoners get from town to town with all the dangers lurking out there?
Too many questions?
And what do you Dm's do for random encounters between cities. I used to roll on tables and my players would face a multitude of monsters along their paths. Then I wondered, where are all these creatures comming from? How do commoners get from town to town with all the dangers lurking out there?
Too many questions?
Depends. If I just need some random encounters I roll a bunchof them up before the game. And then look for common threads and work them into a sort of off the cuff mini-adventure. So if get results of 6 orc warriors, an advanced ankheg, and a pair of ogres while the party is wandering through some farmland I can say the party is passing by one farmer's house when theywitness the farmer being attacked by the ankheg. If the characters help out the farmer takes them inside for some tea and cornbread and tells them to beware an ugly pair of giants that live in the area. The party then leaves and later encounters the orc warriors who perhaps are after the same ogres for reasons of their own or perhaps they have been terrified into helping the ogres. Clues gleened in this encounter could lead to the characters then battling the ogres.
As the character's lives are supposed to be as exciting as a certain middle-aged New England mystery writer's who lives in a small town whose population should have been killed twice over - I wouldn't let the questions get to you. If you need an excuse for the players though, people in the real middle-ages almost never travelled except in large groups and with guards if they could afford it. There were always small wars going on, bandits, sickness, wild animals, no roads, and poor protection from the elements to worry about.
GGG
And what do you Dm's do for random encounters between cities. I used to roll on tables and my players would face a multitude of monsters along their paths. Then I wondered, where are all these creatures comming from? How do commoners get from town to town with all the dangers lurking out there?
En Route & En Route II from Atlas Games.
Scavange individual encounters from any of thousands of adventures.I almost never use random encounter charts in between adventures.
ASEO out
About 2 hours of preparation before each game. I almost always run published material, but I put all the monster/NPC stats on 3x5 or 4x6 index cards to reduce page flipping during the adventure. If Dungeon published the stat blocks as a PDF file, my prep time would be cut in half.
Thanks 'Green'. Nifty advice.
And stat blocks in pdf files? That would be outstanding!! I too re-write the stat blocks to avoid page flipping during the game. And, as it turns out, that is exactly where I loose most of my time while preparing. Hear THAT Dungeon magazine? What an improvement it would make on an already great product.
What I would like to know is, as DMs, how long does it take for you to prepare your games?
The truth is, I'm always preparing. When I see something I want to use, it immediately gets put into the "Stack of Stuff," and rolled out when I get a chance. What I've been doing for the last few years is putting all my campaign stuff on a locally (on my computer, only) hosted website. As I add new things, I slip them in where I want them to go. This way, I never have to remember where something it, or how it links to other items in my campaign. It's labor intensive, as I only know basic HTML and use Notepad as my editor. Over time, though, it's grown to quite a resource.
That said, I still spend at least two hours preparing for each session. After a while, I get to know how much ground my group will likely cover in a given session. This allows me to keep my prep time to what I think they'll get to (and a little bit more). I spend those two hours rereading encounter entires, updating NPC stats and attitudes, and refreshing my notes from the last session.
Are there any areas where you feel you're spending too much time? Areas where you feel, "There must be an easier way to do this?"
Well, I tend to spend my preperation time spread out over the 6 days in between sessions. I will work on it more if I have great ideas, which allows me to have, say a week of downtime. I usually run my own adventures, which is where all of my time goes, but I am planning on running some adventures in Dungeon as well as another of my own and an Iron Heroes version of City of the Spider Queen. It definitely takes alot of work to make your own adventures, which is part of the reason I am going to run a few pre-made adventures until my big FR rogue/spy campaign.
WaterdhavianFlapjack
Well, I always read pre-made twice, then select and put all the minis behind the screen. I never forget to adujust it to my world and the series I'm doing. I cut out maps and tape them to the DM screen also. I have a small table or chair next to me where I keep the adventure or a rulebook. I set all the minis and character sheets out and we are ready right when they walk in.
As for homemade, I come up with the ideas while day-dreaming at school and write them on notecards. After homework I write the main encounters and dungeons out and from there I do the same thing that I do with the pre-made Dungeon adventures.
I'm in the absolutely endless catagory. However I've been upgrading a campaign from 2nd edition into 3.5. Currently that is mostly done and I'm mainly just working at a fast clip to try and stay significantly ahead of my PCs. ts my ferverent hope that I'll find myself in a position where my next adventure is complete in the next few weeks and yet it will take my PCs 6 weeks or so to go through it thus allowing me something of a break.
Thanks 'Green'. Nifty advice.
And stat blocks in pdf files? That would be outstanding!! I too re-write the stat blocks to avoid page flipping during the game. And, as it turns out, that is exactly where I loose most of my time while preparing. Hear THAT Dungeon magazine? What an improvement it would make on an already great product.
I have been harping this point for months, on several different threads....<sigh> I even offered to pay an extra dollar per issue for this feature, because it would save me that much time!!
I'm in the absolutely endless catagory. However I've been upgrading a campaign from 2nd edition into 3.5. Currently that is mostly done and I'm mainly just working at a fast clip to try and stay significantly ahead of my PCs. ts my ferverent hope that I'll find myself in a position where my next adventure is complete in the next few weeks and yet it will take my PCs 6 weeks or so to go through it thus allowing me something of a break.
I'm with Mac Donald on this one. There always seems to be one more thing to do, or that could be done. Players can be so unpredictable! I would say that over the course of the week I spend between 2 and 3 hours reading and preping for the next 5 hour game session, then another 3 to 4 hours that week trying to stay one step ahead of my players as far as new suppliments and rule books are concerned. (A new rule book a month may be cool for players but it is giving me a headache!)
I was just thinking about this very topic earlier today. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I spent just as much time preparing for a session as I did running a session. It doesn't seem to matter if I run a weekday night session that might take 4-5 hours or a weekend session that might run 7-8 hours. Or even if I am creating an adventure from scratch or altering a pre-written module to meet my campign storyline.
Mmm...I'm lucky if I get two hours in for prep. I've found that I DM better when I leave it very loose - keep some seminal "start" stuff, a couple of possible midpoints, and not worry too much about the ending. The campaign's been going for a while, so my players and I have gotten very comfortable with each other (so I can afford to do this kind of looseness). Players can be so unpredictable...
...There always seems to be one more thing to do, or that could be done...
I'm with you on this one. Yesterday, my players got up dangerously close to the end of the stuff I had prepared for that session. I guess I incorrectly estimated how much they could get done in 4 hours! So, I have a lot of work to do for next Saturday...
WaterdhavianFlapjack
...There always seems to be one more thing to do, or that could be done...I'm with you on this one. Yesterday, my players got up dangerously close to the end of the stuff I had prepared for that session. I guess I incorrectly estimated how much they could get done in 4 hours! So, I have a lot of work to do for next Saturday...
WaterdhavianFlapjack
This happened to me, as well - but I managed to pull something completely out of my rear end that turned out to be the best adventure I ever did. Nothing was prepared, nothing was written ahead - it was only tied in to the adventure they had just completed.
I would have a couple of spare "side quest" stuff that you'll be able to drop in should it happen again. You can categorize them by Urban, Forest, Desert, etc. That way, if you see that the game is progressing really quickly, you can toss it in. You'll have to think quick on your feet - my players get awfully cantankerous if they've been distracted from the main quest if the side quest has nothing to do with it. Tie your side quest in, and you should have no problems lengthening your session (if that's the issue).