What is "Prep"?

[Reynard]

ETA: This thread isn't really about what you do for prep -- although feel free -- it is about what you think constitutes as prep. Does collecting random tables and NOTHING ELSE count as prep? Does reading the adventure one time through count as prep? That sort of thing.

This came up in another thread and i wanted to discuss it a little bit on its own.

What constitutes "prep" to you, from a GM perspective? And for that matter, what does "running on the fly" mean? How do they interact? Can a GM do prep and still run on the fly?

 

[TheSword]

Increasingly for me, Prep is adapting what I do to VTT.

I’ll also usually read a section 2-3 times. Possibly making notes of tactics and abilities. Looking up spells and feats. Changing things that need to be changed.

Also getting a feel for a setting. Browsing maps. Watching films or Tv shows along a similar theme. Listening to music.

Plus huge amounts of looking for NPC portraits on google

Reading forums/articles from people who have played before.

 

[payn]

Prep for me is preparing material for the game. System will effect heavily the amount necessary. Some games are very impromptu and thus involve little prep at all. Whether you prep a lot of material, or a little, on the fly to me indicates that the GM is willing to improv and act in extemporaneous fashion. Even then, prep likely includes random tables for NPCs, rumors, monsters, etc.. to aid in running a game.

 

[Velderan]

Prep for me is refreshing my memory on what the players were last doing, what they said their intended next steps were at the end of the previous session, and making sure I have enough material prepared for the likely directions they might go. As @TheSword mentioned, currently this means making sure I have everything in the VTT that I'd need to smoothly keep things moving. Since my current campaign is my first time running a PF2e campaign, this also means looking up the NPCs the group may encounter and making sure I understand how the spells and abilities they have work. The current campaign is a dungeon crawl, so I follow a few different paths the party could go and familiarize myself with the rooms they'll be able to enter.

 

[thullgrim]

A part time job with no benefits.

More seriously prep is the process through ideals become playable.

Personally, these days, most of my gaming is via Foundry so I spend time on maps, tokens, and images I can use as virtual props. It also means setting up journal entries or campaign shared documents with information in. I try and focus on actionable, gameable material.

Then there’s the reading. Currently I’m running a Night Black Agents Zalozhniy Quartet game in Savage Worlds. Which means I need to read both the NBA material and the ZQ material and synthesize it into SW. generally this means keeping Gumshoes clue philosophy paramount as I start preparing scenes and how the players are going to find things out. This campaign has been a little different than most nice had to improvise more, and the feedback I’ve gotten from players about it has helped with my confidence about doing they.


I run mostly pre-written stuff. A lot times that means taking the material and turning it into something useable at the table. That stars with One Note and dumping the material into it so I can reorganize and adjust it.

 

[overgeeked]

Prep. Anything and everything you do before a game or session to get ready for that game or session, even if it’s only a potential future game or session. Like right now I’m prepping for an Eberron game that might never happen. But it’s still prep.

On the fly. Whatever you do during the session that was not prepped. Unless you wrote it down or thought about it ahead of time, it’s on the fly. Do you have the King’s favorite color in your notes? No, then coming up with that during the session is on the fly.

 

[John Dallman]

For me, "prep" is scene-setting: working out the initial situation in a scenario, who is involved, what they are trying to do, and so on. I take particular care to have names for the people involved, because I find improvising those hard. Most of what I run is investigation or exploration, rather than combat-based.

Given all of that, I then run "on the fly" by playing the NPCs and adjudicating the attempts of PCs and NPCs to do things when the game system and setting don't solve those problems for me.

 

[aco175]

I tend to break it down to general and focused prep. General prep is getting lists and maps or making stuff not directly tied to a campaign. Focused prep is tied to the game at hand. So writing encounters and statblocks or creating the innkeeper NPC in the town the PCs are in now is more focused. It seems that it can overlap a lot.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Can a GM do prep and still run on the fly?

I would argue that one MUST prep and still run on the fly. I'm not sure that you could DM without doing both of those things, even if all you do for "prep" is develop story-telling skills. The best way I know to do that is to read, and read everything (not just fantasy, or whatever type of game you're running).

Obviously, other kinds of prep exist - and I believe that it's ALL "prep" - from reading a published adventure, to sketching out world or location maps - to just spending time thinking about what might happen on your next session.

And you have to "run on the fly". No matter what you do, no (GM's) plan survives contact with the players. That's the fun of playing (and the frustration, but it's the fun, too!).

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Prep is a wide-ranging term. It can be sitting down and writing the stats for an encounter, it can be practicing NPC voices, it can be worldbuilding, it can be re-reading a module or setting section, it can even be staring into space just thinking.