By Popular Request: Rodney Thompson's Session Prep Examples

WotC's Rodney Thompson spoke the other day about creating a session cheat/prep sheet for a game of D&D. It sparked some lively discussion, and a number of people asked for examples of a prep sheet. Rodney, being that kind of guy, obliged and provided his session prep from a Greyhawk campaign. It's five pages long, and should give you a great idea of what he means.

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[howandwhy99]

It's interesting to see how the game of another DM works, especially a designer of said game. It strikes me as sort of like the material we find in the Dragon and Dungeon magazines now. And of course, plenty of interesting ideas seeded in just 5 pages.

Myself, I could never prep so much text. I count it as a strike against me as a DM if I had to read a book when running the game. Scanning through blocks of text halts everything.

 

[werecorpse]

I am grateful for this being made available. It really helps understand what was being said in the advice column. It is an impressive amount of work. I am not going to nitpick or criticise it for not being the way I do it, or not right for new dms etc. I have been gming for over 35 years and can still learn and be inspired by seeing how others do it. This stuff is is a complex, interesting story told well. You don't have to be identical to be inspired you can take some things and ignore others. New GMs can learn from it.. So can old GMs.

I like the fact the prep work is all story and setting not encounters and tactical stuff, that it is Greyhawk and what an interesting scenario and story is in play. That encourages me as the style of creative mind behind the game at the moment.

Rodney, write up the adventure and publish it.

 

[Eric V]

Makes me want to be a PC in his game.

 

[Patrick McGill]

Really cool. This is the amount of prep I tend to like to do. Others like less, but I don't think there's a wrong way. There's simply your way.

 

[dd.stevenson]

It's too high a word count for my prep needs.

Still, I really like the idea of breaking out interludes as a sort of middle ground between random encounters and on-rails. That's not something I've done often or systematically; but I may give it a shot.

Glad he chose to share this.

 

[Curmudjinn]

Just remember that this isn't a per session prep, merely collected prepping along multiple sessions that stay useful and relevant throughout the current arc of the campaign. Not unlike writing novel, you add a bit here and there and over time the collected vision is something special.

I hardly ever prep encounter stats. To me, that is the draggy part that makes boredom creep in. I can write down some encounter ideas and simply write them down quickly as we enter that scene. The stats are right there in the MM, so a few changes here and there are easy and fast.

 

[Hussar]

Let's not forget that he's also writing this for an audience as well. He's putting this out there for general consumption, so, I imagine it's been cleaned up a bit, properly formatted, all the good stuff.

For someone at home, let's be honest, no many of us are going to go through that much work. Point form, shorthand, typos and all.

But, if you step back and look at the basic format here, it could be condensed way, way down for personal game session notes. For example, instead of having canned speeches for NPC's, you could point form a couple of notes and move on.

Interesting stuff though.

 

[Mercurius]

Nice. I'll add my voice to the mix of those saying "too much," although with a slightly different take. The original article talked about a "cheatsheet" - I don't think five pages constitutes a "sheet." How about condensing it to two? Smaller font, reduced text, so maybe still three-quarters of the material.

I think this is really great.

Its too much for a session...but it is an alternate format for an adventure, which is what makes it interesting. Assuming you can role this over a few sessions, I think it like what a lot of us do--when not using modules, which you should use, though you may need to converts, oh wait--but somewhat more organized.

Yes, I agree. This is a great template for a more open-ended approach to adventure design and DMing.

 

[Geirmund]

Very nice. Need to start doing this myself..........

 

[Nellisir]

Myself, I could never prep so much text. I count it as a strike against me as a DM if I had to read a book when running the game. Scanning through blocks of text halts everything.

Personally, I've found that I remember things much better if I write them down. I've gotten to the point that when I meet someone new, I'll write down their name on a scrap, and then throw away the scrap. So, I _would_ write this out because the act of doing so would make me less likely to need to scan blocks of text