DMs: How Much of Your Prep Work Never Gets Used??

the Jester · Nov 13, 2005

Right... so I was reflecting on several hours worth of prep stuff I did for a recent adventure, and reflecting on the fact that it didn't get used.

I guess it was prolly, oh, 30% of the prep work I did.

Now, granted, I might get to pull some of it out again later- but at least some of it was time and place dependent, and would need extensive reworking to be of any use now.

So all you other dms, how about you? How much of your advance prep never gets used?

Sammael · Nov 13, 2005

Anywhere from 20% to 70%, depending on the players' actions. I do my best to reuse it at a later date, but some of it ends up never being used.

freebfrost · Nov 13, 2005

On average, I'd say about 20%.

I've gotten better through the years at predicting what my players intend to do, so I can focus more on creating encounters in that direction, but I try to keep a few ideas open in case they blindside me with a different choice. Usually, though, I can ad-lib enough to get them back on the main track, though sometimes I just have to follow them when they go astray.

Imruphel · Nov 13, 2005

My percentage is pretty good (closer to 90%) because I tend to have a Henry Ford-inspired campaign... and I wing it if they choose the same black twice in a row.

IronWolf · Nov 13, 2005

I would say 20% to 35% of the prep work I do doesn't get used directly. Of course I think some of the prep work can help the game flow better just because I have the full picture of what is happening which allows me to make the part of the picture the PC see a little more coherent.

Gilladian · Nov 13, 2005

I expect I use about 70-80% of the prep I do, as seems to be the average here.

But sometimes I do things and then realize I don't like them. I was modifying a series of rough adventure outlines I'd found online, and eventually realized that I didn't like where they were going, so despite the fact that I'd put 8-10 hours of work into one adventure, it's going on my "mudpile" of unusable things. Maybe I'll come back to it in another game, though I doubt it.

In another area, I'd done a whole couple adventure outlines that the PCs just baulked at doing. They chased a red herring instead, which has changed some of the campaign's focus; fine by me - some of one of the adventures I was able to salvage for later.

I think it all pays in the end, even the unusable stuff - because you learn from what you do.

Gilladian

Hussar · Nov 13, 2005

Yeah, I'd have to go with the 30 per cent mark or so. Sometimes more. Depends on the adventure. I've been trying to predict my party and I've gotten fairly good at it. OTOH, if I design a dungeon crawl, I've seen almost 70 per cent not get used as the party simply bulls in one direction and never bothers exploring the other bits. Sigh.

DonTadow · Nov 13, 2005

A thread after my own heart.

I was just fretting today (and will include it in my blog after session) about several well designed towns and a dungeon the pcs completely bipassed. I assumed from their banter the previous game that they were heading in the direction of negotiating a trade with a local town, unfortuneatly the pcs picked the wrong tribal village, there were some poor diplomacy rolls, a hostage situation took place and one of the pcs offered another pc as a negotiation trade. Lets say the interaction went completely south fast and all my prepwork for the town (including coming up with names like "running with trees" and Biting own tail" will go the way of the 8-track now. The session went as badily as an episode of Knights of the Dinner Table. Women and children were accidently killed by a misplaced fireball attack, the village had to evacuate for fear of the pcs and the pcs stole the food horde.

On average I lose 20 percent but this time around about 75 percent was lost.

Gahnomen · Nov 13, 2005

Of the directly adventure-related prepwork I do, I use almost all of it.. maybe there's 1-3% of it that doesn't get used.

NCSUCodeMonkey · Nov 13, 2005

IronWolf said:
I would say 20% to 35% of the prep work I do doesn't get used directly. Of course I think some of the prep work can help the game flow better just because I have the full picture of what is happening which allows me to make the part of the picture the PC see a little more coherent.

See, I was going to say that about 90% of what I prep gets "used" for this reason. Most of my prep consists of what's going on in the bigger picture, so usually the PCs bump into that in some way or another. I might not use what I have verbatim on the page, but I'm able to respond to actions faster because of the prep that I put in.

NCSUCodeMonkey