DUNGEON MASTERS: How do you do your session plans!?

Hey everybody. I'm a longtime 3.5e and Pathfinder DM, and I'm trying to up my game. I find that I spend way, way too much time prepping my sessions. 4-6 hours sometimes for a 3-4 hour game. These are 100% custom adventures in a homegrown world, but still. I've been trying to figure out why this is, and I think I have a clue: The only DM notes I've ever SEEN aside from my own are the official modules, which are pretty dang verbose. And I learned to DM by emulating those.

But a lot of DMs, I understand, get by with drastically less prep work. I've been searching for examples of other DMs session plans, and I've only found one scanned page so far.

What I want? Scan a couple pages of your past notes, or copy paste if theyre electronic, and post them, so we can all benefit from seeing how other people do it! The kinds of labels and shorthand and format you use might spark ideas for others... I know I could use the help.

There's a lot of collected wisdom on the site. Here a few examples I came across first.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/tabletop-gaming/316091-full-time-dm-part-time-prep.html

http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-pathfinder/295041-weekly-dm-process.html

http://www.enworld.org/forum/tabletop-gaming/309198-planning-sessions.html

http://www.enworld.org/forum/tabletop-gaming/88857-minmaxing-dm-how-lazy-dm-still-have-success.html

Kind of you to post links to those, and I'll read them through, but to be honest I'm pretty up on most articles like this... I periodically go into a research and developement phase for my DMing (such as now) and read eeeverything I can find.

(Hey wait... a closer look some of these did yield exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for, with some pdf session plans... Thanks Nagol! I'd welcome other examples though, peeps.)

What Im looking for more specifically is actual example notes scanned straight out of a notebook. I want to see what format people use for the physical recording of their ideas and hopefully rapid mental retrieval of them during the game session. Or does everyone else do it like me, writing things out in incredibly verbose and formatted detail as if they were submitting it to an editor for print tommorow? Does everyone type up 12 pages of material for each gaming session?

I'd post notes, but for two facts.

1. I've developed a personal shorthand. I joke that if my players stole my campaign journal, they'd end up knowing less than they did before.
2. My note style varies all over the place -- sometimes I'll create a 20 page module, other times I'll have a couple of scribbled single words for the session.

I create a detailed design when I want to concentrate on other aspects of the game during the session, I feel the need to vet the difficulties/rewards available in a scenario, or because I think the prep will be fun. I skimp on design when the situation is more comfortable and/or previously established in the world. Not uncommonly, I am only reusing elements previously introduced and my prep is just a list with some arrows.

The first adventure of a campaign tends to get heavy treatment and any area where I'm introducing new gameplay elements. Even in these cases, the docs don't stand alone. There is a continued reliance on previous work.

My strategy tends to mean I have heavy prep at the start of a campaign that tapers off relatively quickly once the environment is introduced to the players and I get a feel for the game.

I used to (when DM-ing AD&D) write exactly one A4 page of notes before the session started. Typically I had a short blurb of 5-6 sentences and then I had some notes of names, locations and motivations. I also noted some encounters and the monsters in them. Typically on the format: Troll 42,31,36. Orc 5,4,4,2,1. Maybe with some notes on how they were going to do the ambush or could be ambushed. Usually not, I just winged it when it was time for the encounter.

I try really hard to get 2 hours of playtime out of 1 hour of preptime. Most of my preptime is spent working on stat-blocks and the like, especially as the game goes up in level.

For preparing the adventure itself, I typically scribble down a node diagram, showing all the decisions the PCs are likely to come to, the likely options, and the consequences thereof. (This may be analogous to a dungeon map, but not necessarily - it can apply equally to a mystery or political adventure.) I then scribble down some bullet points for staging each scene that's likely to come up - enough for me to wing it from there.

That leaves things like the generation of monsters and treasure. As noted, that takes considerably longer. However, where possible I try to transcribe monster stats to a single reference document prior to the game (to speed play by removing the need to reference books), and I try to reuse stats as much as possible to reduce the need for dedicated preparation.

At some point, I really want to start building up a master document containing all the monster stats I've used, item cards, and the like. The problem with doing so lies in finding time - I think that's one to start with my next campaign.

Thanks a lot to everyone so far, even without actual posted notes, this is providing me and hopefully others, eventually, with a lot of insight. Anyone else?

I've been doing Rise of the Runelords recently and doing things a bit differently there. I've actually been doing more prep, which is funny. I've been drawing out maps beforehand, printing tokens, and condensing a lot of stat blocks.

I think the stat blocks are the hardest part for me. I have a lot of problems running monsters from 3e/Pathfinder stat blocks, so I end up either just making stuff up as I go or pulling out the pertinent information and reformatting it.

When I'm running a homebrew game, I usually don't bother with much prep. I just come up with the plots during lulls in other activities and make sure I have tokens for any specific monsters (I print my own monster tokens).

My notes for those games are usually just lists of names with a few words to remind me of who they are and maybe pertinent stats.

For example:
Rheena - cure moderate wounds 2d8+4, goodberry 2d4
Mara - crush on Renn
Omrin - Traveler's Guild wizard, rock climber, mostly on the up and up
Omrina - Traveler's Guild sniper, Omrin's older sister and protector, doesn't trust Ulfgar or Vadrax
Vadrax - Traveler's Guild warrior, Ulfgar's man, Sixth Legion werebear, amulet for control

And that could be my whole notes. Rheena was introduced a while ago, so I only need the stuff I don't remember offhand. And I'll remember the rest of each person's biography reading their entry.

It's really a question of writing enough to remind you of what you'd thought earlier. Writing more than that actually makes it harder to find what you need in a lot of cases.

Cheers!
Kinak

Attached are the monster stats that have got me through my last few sessions and will probably do me for another few, plus some photos: my Underdark overview map; some handwritten notes; and the map where a big fight happened.

That's not all I use: I have some typed up campaign notes (a background history and a timeline, at present 4 pages each) which have been developed over the course of the campaign (from 1st to, currently, 18th), and from time to time I might refer back to handwritten notes generated in preparation for, or coming out of, other sessions. I also have a page that indicates the treasures that I am intending to give out at each level (although that is highly subject to revision). And I quite often use ideas or maps from other sources (for example, if I need to run a fight with any duergar, I will probably pull a map from the duergar chapter of H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth). I often run monsters straight from the relevant monster book.

My session planning mostly involves preparing any monster stats I think I might need, or that will come in handy (sometimes typed up, sometimes handwritten), drawing any maps I think I might need, and thinking about how to push things along (if it's not already obvious from the previous session).

My prep consists of a page or two of monster/NPC stats per session and thinking about plot possibilities. Sometimes for magic item-rich NPCs I'll put together a sheet explaining items and costs.

This isn't to say I'm going lowbrow here; I run very sophisticated serialized plots. I spend a lot more time writing summaries of what happened after the fact than I do prepping.

The only DM notes I've ever SEEN aside from my own are the official modules, which are pretty dang verbose. And I learned to DM by emulating those.

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Yeah, I think that's the issue. The question to ask is how much you really need to do. Your (understandable) perspective is to start by emulating people who are trying to create material as detailed/convoluted/thorough/excessive as possible, so they can get paid.

Instead, I'd try running a session 100% improv; no prep of any kind, and then ask yourself: what do I wish I had done? Build your own style from the ground up. What do I need to run a session?

Not much, IME.