Get the most out of your prep time as a DM

[Fuchs]

This post - and hopefully thread - is about making the most out of your time spent on DMing, or to be more precise, about how to spend the least amount of preparation time (and money) for your campaign. This is for those among us DMs who can't spend hours upon hours on preparing each week anymore yet still demand (and have the players expect) the best of their campaign.


Check what you have to do

First thing you have to do in order to be able to spend just enough time on your campaign is to take a look at what your players want and like.

If you have no one interested in dungeon crawling then you can drop all that mapping out and outfitting of the ultimate dungeon/cavern system and cancel those orders for the latest meat grinder mega adventure. If you have no player interested in puzzle solving or bypassing/disabling traps, don't spend time on thinking about puzzles and traps. If you have no one interested in intrigue and politics, don't spend hours making up a complex system of checks and balances. If no one really likes extended combat, don't prepare countless encounters.

So, take stock of what your players like, then concentrate on those points and wing the rest.


Start out small, then let it grow

I know, most will assume that buying a campaign setting is much easier than building one, but IMHO, this is not so clear. When you buy a campaign setting you have to read it, and often study it carefully to be able to run it efficiently. When you build something up from scratch odds are you know it better, which means less time spent rereading a book.

No matter if you buy a published campaign setting or build your own homebrew, start small. Concentrate on one region, and flesh it out/read it through so you know how it is supposed to work. Then look where the campaign goes, and keep adding as it is needed. Epic campaigns which are plotted out from the start require lots of work, and lots of adjustments during the campaign, in effect doubling your time spent on it. Much easier to just sketch a rough outline and then detail it as it fits.

This also goes for rules. It is much easier - and better for your mental health - if you don't allow every rule from all d20 books published. Especially if it concerns prestige classes and feats. You will have a much easier time preparing if you don't have to check up on dozens of books each time - much easier on your purse as well. A good rule is to force your players to type anything they want use down and give it to you so you have it handy. So, here as well, start the players with a small choice of extra material, and then add as you feel comfortable with.


Reduce to the essential

NPCs don't need to be statted out, especially at low levels. Odds are, no matter in what role they appear - combat, cannon fodder, services - they will never have to use all their skill points. So you can just use (level+3+X) for their "good" skills, X being stat adjustments and maybe Skill focus, and half that for average skills. During combat you can decide on the fly if your mook has power attack or dodge. To start you only need to know his weapon armor and level. Here you can cheat - if you got a name and a short description the NPC will appear much more "complete" than if it is just a detailed amount of stats and numbers.

Locations do not need to be mapped out either unless your players are compulsory explorers - just keep a basic outline in your head and steer the players to the locations you want them to visit. And if you map them out, don't fret over details - add them as needed during a game. A map only serves to make it easier to imagine the layout of a place, and sometimes to conduct combat easier. It does not have to be a piece of art.

Plots do not need to be detailed that much either - just decide who wants what, and then let the NPCs involved act and react during the campaign. This works for the Epic plot outline as well as for the thief trying to rob a party member.


Make the most of what you do

If you do spend the time on statting out an NPC or mapping out a lair, make sure you can use it as much as possible. Even if the NPC you painstakingly built with classes, feat, skill points and money spent to the last copper does not survive its first combat you can often have an evil necromancer make him into an undead, or an evil cleric raise him, and have another go at the party. Then, drop the description and background, and throw him in your NPC file - a couple levels later the one-man-threat will make a good, detailed set of stats should you need that new NPC statted out on the fly.

Same goes for maps - that one castle you mapped out can be revisited later, many times if you do it right, or can be altered a bit and reused.

Reuse plots and encounters that were not used - and even some that were used, with a twist.

Also make sure you keep track of the NPCs involved in an adventure - not only is it easier to reuse an NPC than build another one from scratch, stats and background and motivation and all, but it also adds to the players' immersion if they do not fight and rescue strangers they never meet again each adventure, but may meet people they know, friends and foes alike, from time to time, sometimes in different roles. Yes, this means, make notes during the game.

Finally, if you have a detailed campaign going, keep it going. Don't restart another campaign in a totally different setting each month. Don't TPK and end it. Milk the campaign for whatever it is worth, and the payoff for any work spent on preparing the region or world will be that much greater.


Wing it when possible

Be ready to open sideplots and twists when the situation allows for it, even if you did not plan for it. If you got a solid framework of stock NPCs, plots and notes you will be able to DM such things on the fly, taking an adventure in directions you did not plan ahead for without stumbling or railroading. The players get into trouble with the watch? Look if you can use this to get them into contact with that thieves guild you had outlined a bit, or as a start up to get them on the track of the corrupt mayor plotting against the king.


Steal, borrow, copy - from others and your players

Many people think you have to do all on your own, or it is cheap, bad or both. This is not true. If you truly want to be the best lazy DM there is you will have to drop false pride and take whatever you can from others. Again, this is about efficient use of your time - if you spend an hour searching the web for a map you could have drawn yourself in 20 minutes you are doing something wrong. This works best if you just keep and open mind, and note down a link when you see something you need (or are pretty sure you will be able to use later).

One of the best sources for tactics to steal from are your players. Look what tactics they use, and what feats, and make notes - what works for them works for you. If one of your players likes to summon monster you will get an insight in the efficient use of monsters, and their capabilities. A little time spent on EN world is also a very good source of tactics - as long as you can stay away from the discussion threads about roll-playing, gender in game and Magic.

Plots and NPCs you can get from anywhere - movies, books, story hours, web files. Don't be shy to adjust, and don't fixate on fantasy. That obnoxious police inspector playing the fool can make an interesting city watch official. Even that soap opera you zapped into by mistake can offer interesting plot twists.

Cultures and traditions you can take from history and contemporary countries as well as books and movies. Just having such an image makes it easier to decide how works the culture, and having such a role model also will enable you to use a fitting name list for your NPCs.


Let others work for you

This does not mean buy stock adventures - I found those are often more trouble than they are worth to adapt to my playing group's style and preference - but mainly, let your players do their part. If you have a player playing a cleric, let him add details to the church, add an order of paladins etc. - you can adjust those as you see fit.

It also works in game. Encourage players to start their own goals and plots, and go with it. Less work for you, both in and out of game.


Keep it all together

Making notes during a game is one thing, but I found that (at least in my case) as important is reviewing those notes, and organising them after the game. When I prepare each session I go through the notes I penned for and during my last game, and write a short synopsis of the game session - adjusting the notes for the NPCs involved, adding new NPCs I made up on the fly to my files, transferring dead NPCs to the "mook stats" file and tallying up what loose ends are left, and what consequences the party faces. Often, most of my preparation is finished after I have done this - hooks and ideas for the next adventures are often already there as a result of this.


Hope this helps a DM with time constraints.

[violence in the media]

Nice post, Fuchs.

[Thymos]

Agreed, I liked this post as well.

[mean_liar]

"Wing it as much as you can" is more succinct but less helpful. A lot of this advice grows organically as you simply play and run more games and you grow comfortable with the system and the players. It's a learned craft and all the tricky shortcuts don't generally come together until after you've done them the hard way.

The most important part of this advice is the part where you remind GMs to track at least some of the bullshit they've tossed out during the game session. God knows thats the part I fumble the most.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Excellent advice.

That obnoxious police inspector playing the fool can make an interesting city watch official.

And it's so much more satisfying when your Druid/Bane of Infidels traps him in a wicker man.

[Roy]

Funny how this is the same guy who filled a thread with terrible DMing advice. And now people don't have a problem with him.

[mean_liar]

Whatever. According to the posts I regularly read no Den member actually enjoys any RPGs because every single RPG has shit mechanics.

[Roy]

Whatever. According to the posts I regularly read no Den member actually enjoys any RPGs because every single RPG has shit mechanics.

Shadowrun doesn't get bitched at too much.

[Maxus]

This really reminds me of what someone did for his own games.

He'd use index cards and color-code them (using those little sticky rings which are for torn pages in three-ring binders) for encounter, trap, dungeon obstacle, etc. If the players went in an unexpected direction, he'd just shuffle the cards.

Encounters were simplified to the bare bones--what you need to know immediately, like the an ability forces. He also said he picked five or six abilities, usually. He said the most time-consuming part was deciding what loot the encounter had.

And, yes, he made loot cards, with the properties on the items and handed them to players. Made it easy to figure encumbrance.

Anyway, that's how he handled dungeoncrawling and NPC creation.

[Cynic]

Whatever. According to the posts I regularly read no Den member actually enjoys any RPGs because every single RPG has shit mechanics.

this has often been talked about by a few of the newcomers. I like to think of it as focusing on the weak points on the system mainly rather than extolling the strong points. Look at WOTC, Enworld, and GITP, and several other boards if you want to specifically talk about strong points.

But on the contrary to my above point, we also have members who do pros and cons of books, systems, homebrews, etc...

[Judging__Eagle]

Coming up with encounters

I cheat my players on the part where I "come up with" an encounter.

I use a modified version of the random encounters tables. These tables list amount and, type and CR of the creatures in the encounter.

So, it's no 1d6 Orcs, it's 1d6 Cr 1/2 Humanoids. It's not 1 Stone Golem, it's 1 CR 10 Construct.

With those 'results', I flip through a splatbook that has monsters (Libris mortis) or through one of the 3 MM's that I have (1, 2 and 3; MM4 is.... shit, utter shit).

Often, I tell the players to roll the d% and write down several rolls to get my encounters for the session. This serves two purposes:

1) I don't have to roll, then look up and record; so I'm splitting the work between me and the players

2) It freaks the players out, because they know that not only do they not know what they will face, I haven't even decided what I will throw at them.

3) The players feel responsible for whatever i throw at them. It's not like I "intentionally" chose an encounter, they rolled the dice, I just looked up what they would face from a table.

Of course, there is a bit of judgment on my part. I try to go with a theme for an adventure, or if a certain type of creature is first rolled up, I'll try to stay in theme.

One time it was all "ice" creatures, and half of those were flat-out RP encounters, the PCs made friends with some frost giants, and one of them got a frost salamander as a pet b/c it couldn't hurt her at all, and then she just started feeding the damn thing. An other time it was all "evil outsiders", the players got waylaid by nightmares, and paid a dues of 1 magic item per person (they could have fought, but honestly, if you're a bunch of bandits, you're not going to get off with no one dead if you tell a bunch of adventurers that you want all of their stuff); plus a bunch of other stuff happened that was pretty RP-related. An other time I used only Libris Mortis stuff, that was pretty cool, and I found out how to make RoW barbarians weaker from one battle to an other (Con damage >:3).

Initiative Countdown!

An other thing is to do Initiative in "countdown" format, don't go around the table, count down the initiative. I tend to ask if people have over 20; then over 30 on the Init rolls; then find the most outlying Init results. Then count down until all of the PCs and NPCs/Monsters are in a nice neat list. This helps if you have to move when someone changes their position in the Initiative order b/c they held their action, or entered existing combat.

[Thymos]

I haven't actually heard any real complaint about Feng Shui as well.

[Username17]

Reusing encounters is surprisingly easy to do, especially for wilderness encounters. If the players don't go off into the woods they won't encounter the dryad circle you had planned, but they will go into woods eventually and you can pop out that kind of encounter then. Preparations of any kind are never wasted. At least, not in the long run.

-Username17

[Thymos]

Come on Frank, preperations for 4e are wasted. 8)

[CatharzGodfoot]

I haven't actually heard any real complaint about Feng Shui as well.

Character advancement doesn't work very well, but it's also not very necessary.

[Frantic]

Funny how this is the same guy who filled a thread with terrible DMing advice. And now people don't have a problem with him.

I love how you use a locked thread to ad hominem someone. You're a genius.

The same thread where you supported some retard who wanted to brand Fuchs with a tattoo because you didn't like him. You are fucking insane, though given your nearly 17,000 posts on Myth-Weavers in under two years, this shouldn't come as much of a surprise. Feeling popular with 25 posts a day on that site alone?

Apologize to Fuchs for your fucking bullshit and I'll stop Smiting you like the Imbecile you fucking are.

[Cynic]

Roy, Frantic, Just give it up.

Just go get married. I mean a champel can't be far away no matter however far you gives live from each other. There's always the internet...

[Josh_Kablack]

I haven't actually heard any real complaint about Feng Shui as well.

Well if you want to start up a thread for that, I can give you a few.

But it really wouldn't be a productive use of the time I should be using to prep for my game

[Judging__Eagle]

Reusing encounters is surprisingly easy to do, especially for wilderness encounters. If the players don't go off into the woods they won't encounter the dryad circle you had planned, but they will go into woods eventually and you can pop out that kind of encounter then. Preparations of any kind are never wasted. At least, not in the long run.

-Username17

Absolutely.

You should, as a DM think up encounters or NPCs based on things that are memorable; and then use them when you feel is appropriate.

I've got a low level barbarian Asperii NPC named Frenzy, who wants the PCs to help find his boyfriend who got lost in the mountains. I got the idea when reading about Asperii, and recalling the first adventure that I ever saw them in; and how the description basically makes them look like My Little Ponies. Phrennzy was a poster on the WoTC boards, they were a gay gamer who had a fancy my little pony as his avatar. I respected what he wrote, and the character idea sort of came together. The NPC's personality is probably nothing like the person that inspired the NPC concept, but w/e; I get the make the players help a gay "my little pony" (who is actually pretty tough, I mean Rage Dice works on all natural attacks.. right?).

[Roy]

[Lago PARANOIA]

When I DM for 3rd and 4th Edition, I find that the use of a printer is invaluable for monster sheets.

I print about about 10 monsters I expect to use in an adventure and keep them handy. The cool thing about this is that since I printed out the sheets I can adjust stats on the fly by writing on the sheets and also keep track of monster hp. Even better. I can also just cut out relevant stat blocks and not have to spend as much time flipping back and forth between pages. It really cuts down on the prepwork, since I don't have to do the thing where I go through all of the pages and write down monster stat summaries, like I have to do with Mutants and Masterminds and Shadowrun (as I only own the hardcover books for those).

Of course, I won't be able to do this anymore since 4E stopped selling .pdfs. But little do they know that I have a scanner. Tee hee.

[Username17]

The only books that I as a DM feel the need to bring to a game are monster books. If you need to make an NPC in the middle of a game, do not juggle points around or select feats or any of that shit. Just a hoc that character based on the kinds of numbers you know he's gong to approximately have. Prefab beasts are great to have, especially in games with summoners; but you seriously can just throw in "An Orcish Barbarian whose attack bonus is 3 less than the player character barbarian's is." The players never get to see those sheets anyway, so characters not having them is not a big deal.

Just remember not to shift the goal posts. The players can see when they are rolling especially well or poorly. You know that a 4th level NPC Fighter type probably has ~34 hit points and so do your players. If they get a lucky couple of rolls and dish out 40 points in a round do not reevaluate the NPC's hit points in the upward direction to keep him going long enough to be a challenge or use his special gimmick. You can use whatever that gimmick was on another enemy encountered later. Let the PCs have their moment in the sun if honestly rolled.

-Username17

[Judging__Eagle]

I'll concur with both above statements.

The only books that I ever want to buy, are monster books.

You honest to god actually need those if you're going to DM. They will save you hours, and hours, and hours, and hours.

Splatbooks you can print off individual pages out of, b/c honestly, people just Dumpster-Dive them, no one actually uses the whole of a splatbook. With the Tome stuff, my gaming material constsits of: DMG, PHB, MM's (1, 2, 3, Libris Mortis), The Tomes stuff printed and 3-hole punched in a binder. Even then, I can do away with the DMG and PHB, there are players who have one that I can just grab from them.

Use monsters that looks the same, not that actually are the same.

The amount of times that I've "re-skinned" a monster to look/act like an other, is countless. You can make water elementals "ice elementals"; you can turn any scaly shit into any other scaly shit, and no one really cares (Yuan-Ti, Kobolds, Troglodytes, Lizardfolk, Draconians, Ophidians, Dracotaurs, and the dozens of other "medium/large scaled creatures" all go into a single minis bag in my mini box; and I seriously throw them all in mixed groups at my PCs.

The benefit is that your encounters all seem to be more cohesive, they are set up faster; and will be more challenging for the players since your scaled dudes, or "savage humanoids" or undead or whatever will have 4-8 diffeent creatures that you can use in each encounter.

Your job is not to fight the players. It's to be the DM and run an adventure.

If you are actively trying to kill your players, you'll do stupid stuff like keep boosting a monster's HP. Don't, just let it die. Seriously.

First, it lets the players feel that you're acting fairly, which promotes trust.

Secondly, you are actually rewarding the players. They don't realize it, but they will feel really good. The two most memorable encounters for players are 1) the encounters they WTFpwn; and 2) big challenging encounters that were very hard.

Thirdly, if you don't let the creature die, the players will resent you.

I know that I resent a specific DM that wouldn't let us kill a recurring NPC. In the end we didn't do what he wanted us to. We didn't actually kill the NPC. We just beat the ever-loving shit out of him instead of killing him, and verbally brutalized him as we brought him back to civlization. We were pissed the fuck off, and took out our frustration on the NPC (DM) that way. In the end we decided that handing the NPC over to the national espionage organization for "questioning" was what we would do.


End long encounters. Handwave away bullshit encounters

On the other hand, if a fight seems to be dragging, let the players kill the remaining monsters easier, or evaluate how the players fight, and even handwave away bullshit fights.

A DM in a living greyhawk game ended up handwaving some of the final encounters once he realized that my 1st level wizard prepared Enlarge Person, and that we had a 3rd level 1/2 Orc Barbarian. The first time that happened, we were facing some dire bats. They went down like sacks of bricks. A "giant snake" encounter was handwaved since it was pretty obvious that the Barb would down the snake easily enough.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Use arche/stereotypes to fill in large sections of the world

Part of the brilliance of movies like Star Wars is that they're able to sketch a detailed setting in a limited amount of time. How do they do this? Well, they take your preconceived notions of what a 'wasteland city' or 'swamp planet' would be like and only challenge them in details necessary for storytelling.

If you're making a city you expect the players to be in, you don't really need a lot of detail. The players know what a snow metropolis would look like and you do, too, so just sketch in points of interest. For example, the innkeeper is an enormous racist and only gives lodging to elves; the tavern is extremely upper-class but is the personal toy of the assassin's guild; there are hot springs right in the middle of the bazaar where people bathe naked, so on.

[Psychic Robot]

Apologize to Fuchs for your fucking bullshit and I'll stop Smiting you like the Imbecile you fucking are.

I'm going to kick myself for acknowledging this, but...

I'm really curious as to whom this guy posts as on Myth-Weavers and, more importantly, why he has come to the Den when his only contribution seems to be a) yelling at Roy while using Roy's own jargon, and b) posting guro pics. I find it difficult to believe that Roy could have made someone rage so hard that he has devoted himself to spamming the Den with crap.

There are more things in heaven and Earth, I suppose.