My group was in the early stages (6 sessions) of a 2E campaign but due to low player count (4) we decided to return to 5E. We play every Sunday and we made this decision on Tuesday. That night I ordered Ghosts of Saltmarsh and it arrived Thursday. Friday I spent an hour or so reading through the Town of Salmarsh section and the Sinister Secret (1st adventure). Friday I picked up the Essentials Kit and skimmed over Dragon of Icespire Keep which is very non-linear, almost like a sandbox. Placing Saltmarsh in Forgotten Realms puts it near Phandalin so I will be combining both adventures, scaling the Icespire one as needed.
Today is session 0 and one of our 4 players is on a safari in Africa so I don't want to start them right into the adventure, so I am going to run a short level 1 encounter that will bring them from Waterdeep to Saltmarsh and set the stage. I probably spent about 2 hours working on that. I ran this group through Dragonheist and probably 60% of that campaign was homebrew content I added. Most of it is done on the fly depending on my player's actions. We did a lot of roleplay and they loved it. I expect that there will be quite a bit of that again. I have enough between making characters and this small encounter to fill our 5 hour session 0. In the next week I will spend a few hours rewriting the Town of Saltmarsh chapter changing details from Greyhawk setting to Forgotten Realms, 3D printing minis/terrain for the campaign, and just odd prep stuff. All told I think with less than 6 hours prep I have enough material right now for about 6 sessions (30 hours).
Now that said, I do have quite a bit of downtime at work and I frequently spend that reading all types of materials. While I am not counting that, it's most definitely part of my prep.
Today is session 0 and one of our 4 players is on a safari in Africa so I don't want to start them right into the adventure, so I am going to run a short level 1 encounter that will bring them from Waterdeep to Saltmarsh and set the stage. I probably spent about 2 hours working on that. I ran this group through Dragonheist and probably 60% of that campaign was homebrew content I added. Most of it is done on the fly depending on my player's actions. We did a lot of roleplay and they loved it. I expect that there will be quite a bit of that again. I have enough between making characters and this small encounter to fill our 5 hour session 0. In the next week I will spend a few hours rewriting the Town of Saltmarsh chapter changing details from Greyhawk setting to Forgotten Realms, 3D printing minis/terrain for the campaign, and just odd prep stuff. All told I think with less than 6 hours prep I have enough material right now for about 6 sessions (30 hours).
Now that said, I do have quite a bit of downtime at work and I frequently spend that reading all types of materials. While I am not counting that, it's most definitely part of my prep.