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 have a "session notes template" that you could share with the class? How much time do you spend for a single session? How do you know when you're over-prepping? And how do you keep the hard work of planning from ruining the fun of improvisation?
Honestly? I spend more time finding maps and making tokens for the NPC's and enemies that the players come across than actual prepping for story and plot. But that comes more from having spent countless hours designing and crafting my own homebrew setting, and campaign story arc. I know, intimately, the world in which the characters adventure. I know just about every important NPC and various encounters they can have ahead of time.
More to the point, I spend about two to three hours a week prepping for the three hour session I hold on Monday nights (a PF1 mythic gestalt game) and about an hour for the game (PF2 adventure path) I run on Fridays. Since roll20 has premade material for that adventure path, my prep time is vastly decreased. I spend more time statt-ing out NPCs that I find interesting.
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My game notes are jotted down as this or that occurs to me in the time before the next game. I will admit that I've had a LOT of free time with my game being on hiatus since November for one thing or another. Do I use it to work on my campaign? No. I do not. It could be DM fatigue after years and years but I usually wait until the week before a game to actually put it together.
I have a medium sized three ring binder with a heavy, stiff paper that I prefer over anything else that I use to write down ideas for everything I want to have happen in the game. I write down the names of creatures I want the players to encounter, the treasure list (generally pretty vague then I go to the internet), and any story line ideas that occur to me. I also throw in some notes on what an NPC might have to say or how they might react to the PCs' shenanigans. I learned long ago not to plan everything down to the finest detail because the players are not going to follow the plan you want them to. They are independent thinkers with a penchant for anarchy so I only have very general ideas of what and where things are to happen and I just ride along with them until I find the right spot to drop something in.
When I get ready to run the game I go online and bookmark the various creatures I want as encounters, make a quick and dirty character sheet for any baddies with classes, in a text document, pull up any magical treasure they might find from the internet, then email myself all the links to the creatures and items, as well as the character sheets for the NPCs. I email them to myself because I use a desktop PC in my room to work on the game but I have a small laptop I use in the living room where we play. There I have the emails open with the links to whatever I want to use and then just click on them as needed.
It's a system that has evolved over the past 35+ years and this is its latest iteration and works pretty well for me and the whole Hee Haw gang on game nights.
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I'm both a prep and an improv GM, but I find that the more I've prepped, the easier it makes the improv. Before sesh, I always make sure to have about 10 male and female names of Humans, Orcs, Dwarves, Halflings, Elves, and whatever other races I think the PC's might run into, that way when they come up to Random Half-Elf NPC1 and say "My name is Ethranuelle the II, pleased to meet you, what's your name?", then I'm not standing there like a deer in headlights trying to come up with a name I haven't used before.
I will usually try to plan out "plot twists" as massive story hook derailers that hopefully get resolved within 6-10 sessions away, and some actually survive that long, but most don't. A perfect example was my last sesh 2 days ago, I thought I had an iron-clad plot twist with an up-standing Commander of the Guard human character I introduced 3 sessions ago, and he was actually a shapechanged Votavi Elf (homebrewed very evil elf), and I had hoped that it wouldn't get figured out for a couple months'-worth of sessions, and they figured it out in 3 sessions.
Anywho, PC's will always jack up the GM's best-laid plans.... *shakes a stick*
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Step 1) How pissed off have my players made various NPCs.
Ok bit of an over simplification but What did the PCs do last game, that the major NPCs of the campaign (good and bad) would have noticed and how would they react.
Making sure the NPCs react to what the PCs have done, is one of those things that I think adds a lot to the game. Even if it's just "The Innkeeper gives you a free dinner for saving those farmers from Orcs"
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I an running an AP at the moment, which I spices up a lot. I like to prepare a lot. Mostly extra NPC’s and making encounters a lot harder.
I prepare maps for encounters and come up with crazy memerable NPC’s - most of them just for flavor, but some get to tvist the plot.
I have about 20-50 Pages of notes to each book in the AP and a lot of handouts ect. besides.
At the sessions with the players I improvise a lot, but the preparing helps keeping the story together.
It became quite regular lately:
1) Define goals for the next session. The campaign is a series of one-shots, so I always end up with "significantly different from last time" and "done within a single session". The rest of the goals is about the number of players, the wish to advance the story, the wish to hand out a lot of / little wealth etc..
2) Write a single bullet point as a starting point, like "undead waves attack players' base town". Probably find one or two others that (hopefully) fit the goals, and pick the best, or combine them to something that's better than the single ones. In theory I have a list of session ideas in a text file, but in practice most of them stay unused.
3) Write a plain text file for the sketch, bullet point style, with a lot of blank lines and indentation. Chapter structure is roughly: Goals and approaches, maps to be used, opponent goals and builds, a general sketch of the session, loot needed and distributed (I believe in WBL), actual areas with their encounters. I found it very difficult to afterwards pick maps that fit to my encounters - so I include the map choice early, even let it drive the encounter design somewhat.
4) Fill the sketch. Order is pretty random, sometimes I feel like making up the boss first, just to continue with the whole session's loot. Usually I do only little work until the date is closing, then I get stressed out and my work load explodes. Sigh. At least nowadays I manage to not having to prep at the day we actually play.
5) Write a new text file, to be used for the actual session. A lot of points from the sketch file get copied and pasted, but I cut all the reasoning (session goals, where HP and AB come from etc.). Locations and NPCs get names and some lines get reordered. If I have the time left, I go through the entire file, trying to fix odd dialogues, sniff out plot holes and make the loot a tad more interesting. If time is running out, I will cut some cool but overly ambitious stuff and hope it's still enough content for the session.
6) Upload tokens and maps to Roll20. Well, honestly that partially happens during 4) and 5) already. In theory, I have a library of NPC images, in practice I end up googling and pillaging Pinterest. When it comes to maps, I randomly alternate between Paizo flip-mats and material from other people. I try to keep the style consistent within a given session, at least. Some time is spent on optimizing NPC tokens (transparency, correct size) and cutting maps with the free tool paint.net. Nowadays I try to avoid NPC images with complex backgrounds (a nightmare to cut!) and maps with bad resolution (less than 20*20 pixels per square).
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Most of my prep involves writing up the NPC’s the party will interact with. Any significant NPC is written up in as much detail as I would a PC that I am playing, if not more. Doing this gives me a chance to developer their personality and figure out their tactics. Knowing the full capability of an NPC gives you a much better idea what they are capable of both in combat and out. This is really important when dealing with spell casters especially prepared arcane and spontaneous casters. Wizards are limited by the spells in their book and too often people assume they have every spell they need. Just because a wizard can cast 5th level spells does not mean they can cast teleport.
The rest of the prep is analyzing the combat capability of the planed encounter. This often involves creating spread sheets to figure out how fast the party can put down the opponents and how long it would take for the opponents to put down the party. I run the number both with and without buff for both sides to see how close their combat capabilities are. This allows me to fine tune the encounter to achieve what it is supposed to be. Not all encounters are supposed to be challenging, some are created to cause the party to expend limited resources. To get the players to use up some of their resources often requires making sure the encounter looks serious enough to be worth using those resources.
I have learned to never count on players doing what I think they will, because usually they do not. So, for the story I plan out what the opposition is doing and then let the players do whatever they want. Most of the encounters are either static in nature or planed out just before the session is played, based on what happened in the last session. I keep the plot fairly loose because the players are going to do the unexpected. Knowing the capabilities of the opposition is the key. This goes back to what I was saying about spending time developing the NPC’s.
Do any of you guys do "event based planning?" I'm talking stuff like:
1. They wake up after their hangover.
2. They sheriff shows up with a warrant for their arrest.
3. They receive a sending from an unknown mage asking if they'd like their sword belt back.
4. Fighting the wererat gang members who insist they cheated at cards last night.
Event X: Looking for the missing party member at his favorite hangouts, A, B, and C.
etc. etc.
I mean, there's a tacit understanding that these events can be rearranged depending on what the players actually do, but I find it's nice to have a step-by-step of a "most likely path" to vary up and return to at need.
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Well, I generally have 'packages' of events bundled together that fit into different choices or paths that the players choose to explore. If players do X, the story offers these X options for them to pursue. If one (or more) of X are not addressed or resolved, a number of Y happens. About half the time, I roll on a random results table to see how those particular unaddressed events play out and what random consequence occurs.
I like to be surprised too.
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Do any of you guys do "event based planning?" I'm talking stuff like:
1. They wake up after their hangover.
2. They sheriff shows up with a warrant for their arrest.
3. They receive a sending from an unknown mage asking if they'd like their sword belt back.
4. Fighting the wererat gang members who insist they cheated at cards last night.
Event X: Looking for the missing party member at his favorite hangouts, A, B, and C.
etc. etc.
I mean, there's a tacit understanding that these events can be rearranged depending on what the players actually do, but I find it's nice to have a step-by-step of a "most likely path" to vary up and return to at need.
When I GM, I stay away from linear paths that feels like the DM is dragging the players through as much as possible. Instead, I make the world as "sandbox-y" as possible, so the players are driving the story, and they're the ones who are actually dragging me along. So at the beginning of a campaign, you'll start in McSleepyTown or a McMajorCity at level 1 or level 3 (I've found that level 1 is better for newbies, level 3 is better for experienced players), and I will have already come up with an Over-arching Story that will be fully-resolved around levels 14-20 (<---- And THIS is my Event Style Planning), but the players will see the symptoms of this Over-arching Story as a constant theme every level starting at level 1 and all the way to level 14, and each level they can decide what to do with these events (if they decide to act, then it doesn't worsen, but if they ignore it, the symptom worsens). Meanwhile, I have all sorts of non-story related villains that I place out on the map. I never actually "plan" on the PC's meeting any of them, but if they DO go to wherever I've placed these villains, then the PC's start seeing symptoms of whatever evil they're brewing when they start getting closer and closer to whatever their evil operation is, and the PC's can decide to do something about it (or not). And then I bring in their backstories at various times as well, and this is more of a GM intrusion than anything; if there's a spy/double agent in the party, or if a PC has gambling debts, or if a PC has a Draco Malfoy style character in your backstory, then I will intrude upon the story hard with these things, preferably in the most inconvenient way possible, and whenever the intrusion "feels right" to me. <---- And I don't do this to be as a form of punishment, but rather it's meant to make this PC feel like he's a real part of this world, and that not only is his backstory a visceral and tangible thing, but it's also a "your story isn't finished yet" sort of thing... it's meant to be really cool, and give serious depth and mystery to your character that the other PC's get to witness.
As far as the "Sandbox-y" world, I'll start the characters in McSleepyTown at level 1, and prior to the campaign I will have already built the entire mapped out area that they'll be playing in, but I've also fully fleshed out story hooks and events in the neighboring 2-6 settlements/towns/landmarks that are closest to McSleepyTown, and there will be roads and story hooks leading in every direction out of McSleepyTown, and whatever direction that the PC's decide to go, I start "building/fleshing-out" in whatever direction they're going. I typically try to stay about 4-8 weeks ahead of the PC's at any given time, and if they ever catch me off guard, I improvise if possible, or I throw them in combat and then build hard during the week in order to catch up to them before next sesh.
As far as the logistics of building a sandbox world, Microsoft Excel is your friend. You can build maps by coloring the Excel Cells, insert comments/notes and store tons of data in small spaces, and I can build and access this information quickly, as well as organize all of this in a plethora of Excel Sheet Tabs. Some of my previous Campaign files have over 50 Tabs worth of info in them.
^---- This sounds like its a lot of work, but it really isn't, especially when you get used to building this way. My sesh prep can be done in as little as 2-3 hours out-of-sesh per every 1 hour spent-in-sesh.
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Hi Mark
I tried another approach in my current campaign.
I introduced “active background NPC”. People their character knows that they can include in the campaign. Each player get a d20 active NPC for the entire campaign.
Upon meeting any (non plot) NPC any player can declare that they know this person, using one of their total campaign “active NPC”.
The player then tells how the PC knows this person and describes the person and their former relationship.
They could be former associates/partners, childhood friends, a mentor, the angry ex-girlfriends father, their nemesis or what ever they like that fit in with their background story.
The idea was that PC should have lots of relations before the adventure starts. This was a way for the players to interact with a chosen few of them.
Only two of my players have used this from level 1-7 so far.