What's the hardest thing about preparing for RPGs

[The Fighter-Cricket]

So the question what is the hardest thing in prepping for a session really depends on what your overall philosophy of running a session is.

You can say that a DM should prepare quite a lot for a session: Maps of the land, the city, and the dungeon, NPC stats, wandering monster tables, motivation resumes and biographies for the major NPCS, possible sidequests, riddles, items in the most important shops of the city, exposition and monologue of the BBEG. The list can go on for a long time.

I tried to do that and I felt really bad after a while doing something like that. DMing was a chore and not so pleasant like I wanted it to be.

Then I read Sly Flourish's "The Lazy Dungeon Master". It was enlightenment. Basically the philosophy is: When you feel that you overburden yourself with preperation and the game isn't fun for you, then try to step back and let go of overpreperation.
It has a great mechanic of how to prepare for a game in 5 minutes.

It worked wonders for me.

The only thing that approach can't solve is how to prepare NPC/enemy stats because that is often a thing dictated by the game system you are running. And that I find annoying.

 

[pogre]

I'm a high prep DM and it really is part of my enjoyment. However, at a certain point - usually around 9th level in D&D - I struggle to keep up with my standards of prep. Printed adventures help, but a certain malaise falls upon me and I struggle. One of the things that can get me over the hump is highly engaged players.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I'm a high prep DM and it really is part of my enjoyment. However, at a certain point - usually around 9th level in D&D - I struggle to keep up with my standards of prep. Printed adventures help, but a certain malaise falls upon me and I struggle. One of the things that can get me over the hump is highly engaged players.

I am fairly high prep as well, though not to your insanely awesome standards. I want to run a game with full minis and terrain and all that jazz...but my players while ooo-ing and ahh-ing when I just put out some simple rock formations and trees last week don't contribute to things at all. In all these years of gaming since we got the band back together with 3.0 I think they have purchased 2-3 miniatures..that I had to paint...and that was over a decade ago. So I end up providing all the minis, terrain, maps, etc. They just don't care as much and if I don't drag boxes of stuff to game night they will use anything they can grab as a stand in and are fine with it. Which is fine but if I say lets play without minis they are like "oh no that won't work anymore". So I find myself putting in more and more focus on wargaming, where my whole group is bringing terrain, buildings, armies, etc. I wonder if I will even be playing RPG anymore in a year, or at least putting in the time to run one.

 

[76512390ag12]

My internal terror that I will fail.

Once I get over that I can cope with full prep or lazy GM prep.

 

[pogre]

They just don't care as much and if I don't drag boxes of stuff to game night they will use anything they can grab as a stand in and are fine with it.

If I had to drag my stuff around it would dampen my enthusiasm as well!

 

[Reynard]

Pulling the important information from published scenarios. I vastly prefer home brewing but sometimes I just don't have the time to do the prep (which I greatly enjoy) so I gran a published module. I always regret it. It is so much more work than running on the fly or even designing a scenario. Modules should be written like games, not books. Ugh.

 

[ChaosGenerators]

I am fairly high prep as well, though not to your insanely awesome standards. I want to run a game with full minis and terrain and all that jazz...but my players while ooo-ing and ahh-ing when I just put out some simple rock formations and trees last week don't contribute to things at all. In all these years of gaming since we got the band back together with 3.0 I think they have purchased 2-3 miniatures..that I had to paint...and that was over a decade ago. So I end up providing all the minis, terrain, maps, etc. They just don't care as much and if I don't drag boxes of stuff to game night they will use anything they can grab as a stand in and are fine with it. Which is fine but if I say lets play without minis they are like "oh no that won't work anymore". So I find myself putting in more and more focus on wargaming, where my whole group is bringing terrain, buildings, armies, etc. I wonder if I will even be playing RPG anymore in a year, or at least putting in the time to run one.

It sounds like the group is in a rut. Could you try a few sessions of "theatre of the mind" to shake things up a bit?

See how much your players (and you) miss the terrain and minis. Maybe follow up with a discussion about how much it means to you.

 

[Imaculata]

Preparing the stat blocks for opponents, and creating maps. Those two things take up the most of my time. I'm one of those DM's who doesn't make up skill statistics on the fly. I make sure that for planned encounters I have the actual stat blocks ready to go, so everything is fair. Sometimes I even take the time to find concept art that fits homebrew monsters and npc's, even though I may never show it to the players.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

I think the "hardest" thing for me is finding, and taking, the time needed to do the prep in the first part. That said, the term (and general idea of) "prep work" seems...incorrect? It's like claiming making a character is "prep work". It is part of the game and part of the fun of being a player in an RPG: rolling, imagining, and creating a PC. Being a DM is much the same...taking an hour or 14 before next weeks game isn't "prep work" so much as it's just part of the act of playing the game from the DM's side of the screen.

My group and I have been playing Dungeon World for the first time over the last four sessions. The first session was a hot mess of confusion for me. It was confusing because of the supposed "lack of prep work" I was being told over and over... "Draw an entrance, toss in a couple of rooms or caves, don't connect them all...leave a lot of blank spaces to fill in as you play". Same with creating "The World". After re-reading and hitting the net for others experiences and suggestions I started to get a more clear idea of what the writers actually meant. By the third session I came to the realization that the vast majority of the supposedly "unique and different" means of playing this game is something that I've been doing for decades.

The point I'm trying to make with the Dungeon World realization is that "prep work" isn't so much "work" as it is "solo fun the DM gets to have".

In that regard, simply finding and taking the time out of the day/night to doodle up maps, jot down ideas about traps or puzzles, fiddle with rules, write history for a town that the players and their PC's will likely never actually enter into play, etc...that's the hardest for me. It's like working out; the hard part is getting your work out clothes together, putting it in your gym bag, getting to the gym, getting changed, and starting to work out. That's the hardest part. Once you are in the gym and working out, no problem at all. Same with DM'ing for me...eventually I will get to the point where I have time (and energy) to do some of the "solo DM fun stuff". Alas, another problem for me is I usually start this at about 11pm and by the time I stop it's a quarter to five in the morning.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[MNblockhead]

Getting up for my Saturday morning game because I barely slept Friday night prepping for it, because I have not time during the week.