By Popular Request: Rodney Thompson's Session Prep Examples

WotC's Rodney Thompson spoke the other day about creating a session cheat/prep sheet for a game of D&D. It sparked some lively discussion, and a number of people asked for examples of a prep sheet. Rodney, being that kind of guy, obliged and provided his session prep from a Greyhawk campaign. It's five pages long, and should give you a great idea of what he means.

​

 

[PBEM66]

Awesome!

 

[TarionzCousin]

I don't know if I'm more impressed by his sheer volume of work or depressed that I don't have the time and willpower to do something like this for my own game.

 

[painted_klown]

VERY cool!!!

 

[JTorres]

This is really great! Thanks to Rodney for sharing and Morrus for posting it here. This should be easy enough to replicate in my campaign notebook. And I noticed how Rodney uses the advice from the DMG on building your own random encounter tables per adventure; seeing his example about random encounters at the Fool King's Court is giving me some ideas for my game.

 

[turkeygiant]

It's nice that they listen to comments!

 

[KarinsDad]

Way too much prep.

 

[Tormyr]

Way too much prep.

For one session, sure, but most of it would be useful over several sessions. I get the feeling like extra stuff was smashed in to give a complete picture of what is available for a session. If Rodney is a fast typist, he could probably bang this out in about an hour. Since this seems to have content that would work over several sessions, it seems like a decent trade off for the value it can offer.

Regardless, it paves the way for a story environment that is ready to flow in several different directions, and no single direction takes too much work. I especially appreciated the ideals, flaws, and bonds on the NPC. Too often for me, my NPCs are very similar. Having those at the ready means that it is easier to remember how to role play the various NPCs so they stay true to character.

 

[Paraxis]

Agree, way to much prep work. Especially if trying to help new DM's. There was a thread around here a little while ago about a DM running a great adventure at a local shop with something like 45 minutes of prep work and a single page of notes, that is the kind of stuff that is awesome.

Here are some blogs about adventure design that I think are pretty helpful.

http://www.critical-hits.com/blog/2009/07/29/using-the-5x5-method-for-adventure-design/

http://angrydm.com/2013/07/how-to-build-awesome-encounters/

Don't get me wrong Rodney's way of doing is obviously good for him, but it is almost like writing your own full blown adventure and I don't think that is either common or good advice for new DM's.

 

[TerraDave]

I think this is really great.

Its too much for a session...but it is an alternate format for an adventure, which is what makes it interesting. Assuming you can role this over a few sessions, I think it like what a lot of us do--when not using modules, which you should use, though you may need to converts, oh wait--but somewhat more organized.