Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Piratecat" data-source="post: 355087" data-attributes="member: 2">In an email the other day, I was asked how long my prep time was for games. I thought I'd answer here.In general, I do very little prep time. We play once every two weeks, and I probably noodle over ideas for 2-3 hours before each game. I do my best thinking in the shower or while driving, and that usually relates to general plot arcs or cool scenes.  Things are seldom written down other than cryptic notes scribbled on notepads.  As a result, I've lost some really good ideas, but I remember most of the good ones, thank goodness.Lately, with the high-combat nature of the underdark, I've become a little more dilligent. I've always used Jamis Buck's NPC generator (best utility ever) to make on-the-fly combat stats, but recently I've put a lot of time into learning how to correctly advance monsters. As a result, it's been a bit time consuming, but I've gotten better at it. I have a word file full of bad guy notes, and I just print out the correct page or two before each game. Writing something like Sluuth took me maybe an hour, and creating the Excel map of the CCC took me about 2 hours total. Well worth it, IMO.I've always designed by the "cool scene" method. I think of a neat visual - giant pulsing creature, fight on huge bridge, clambering up under a waterfall - and then build an adventure that will probably lead the PCs to that scene. If I'm lucky, I've imagined the scene in a modular enough fashion that I can move it from plot thread to plot thread, depending on what the PCs decide to pursue.When I'm trying to come up with a cool scene, I often sit there and run through possibilities. When I hit the right one, there is often a palpable "clicking" as the pieces fall into place. It's really weird!  That's how I know I've hit it, though; it's like finding a puzzle's corner piece that makes assembling the rest of the puzzle much easier. Anyone else have this happen?Anyways, I'm babbling. Hope this helped!</blockquote>

Verification