4everdm said:Don't give a DM too much time to prep - we just have more time to plot out the nasties and villians, for better or worse - LOL
The most relentlessly brutal fights in my current weekly campaign came right after we got back from taking December off... I'd had a month to prep and create monsters that just plain shouldn't be (certainly not with the MM's stated CR). So now my players get really paranoid about having to skip a session for fear that more bizarre and hideous things will be showing up in their path.
Anyway, I spend a lot of time on the plotline (who's who, who's what, who's where and why anybody cares) but I've stopped doing hardly any per-session prep work because my players always go off on an totally unexpected tangent within the first few minutes anyway in an effort to outsmart my NPC minions.
"Here's that tool you need to execute a sneak attack on the enemy fortress," I say, "the reinforcements to replace the last PC you lost will be here in a couple of days."
"Okay," say the players, "since we're shorthanded anyway, let's go harry that front gate in a suicidally insane fashion!"
I have yet to figure out this latest strategy of theirs...
::Kaze