DM, How much time do you prepare before a session

[Bryan898]

I probably spend about 4 hours preparing an 8 hour gaming session. After my last two epic campaigns writing up a stat block seems to come naturally and quickly. I also have a lot of monster books so I tend to use more monsters from those than my own handcrafting NPCs.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

I spend about 1 hour at max in preparation for a 4 hour session. This time includes fleshing out what will happen as well as drawing maps and making any important NPCs. I mostly do things on the fly.

Brainstorming takes more time but I don't consider that preparation since inspiration usually just strikes like a bolt of lightning.

 

[The Shaman]

4hours of prep time for every hour of gameplay at a minimum

Sounds about right for me.

The main benefit of detailed prep time is that it makes it that much easier to wing it when the adventurers do something totally unexpected. A lot of my prep time is preparing NPCs and adventure background rather than detailing plots for just that reason: if I understand the NPCs' personalities and goals, then I don't really need a story line - the NPC just does what s/he does and that becomes the plot.

 

[Evilhalfling]

Im usually a 2 hrs of prep per 1 hour of game.
in small increments to mull over ideas, and a push at either the begining or end to stat out crap. The key I have learned is do no more than brainstorm plots that are more than 1 session away. This saves lots of useless work, but occasionally sends me winging stuff. Having 2 weeks between tabletop games makes finding the time a little easier.

Exception: Lairs and sites get fully developed upfront, even if I estimate 1-3 sessions to finish it. (never more than this, most of my sites are small.) Reactions to ongoing raids have to be decided on however. This normally requires rewritting where the sites inhabitants are, and where the valuables have been moved to.

I have a small pile of adventures that I designed that slipped out of place and were never run from earlier campaigns.

 

[Jolly Giant]

For my last campaign: Minimum 10 hours of prep for one hour of gaming, not counting all the time spent mulling things over and thinking about what to do.

That was towards the end of a four year campaign, with one 6 hour session per week, though! For the last six months of it, the PCs were demigods with divine rank 3 and 35-40 class levels and were part of a major divine war... Statting up outsider lords, deities and their mortal champions is a lot of work!

 

[pogre]

Around 6 hours for a three-hour weekly session.

 

[Runesong42]

I usually muse about what I'd like to happen or see in a game over the course of a week, and jot down a few ideas here and there. Once I have an idea firmly in mind, I'll go through the bother of statting out the monsters and NPC's so I don't waste time digging through books for them. I'd say about a good 60-75% of my game time is spent 'winging it', as I like to use a lot of NPC interaction and banter. Also, once the players starrt formulating ideas about their situation at hand, I listen and take notes, because sometimes what they come up with is better than what I had planned. In fact, one of my now famous taglines is, "It is now!".

Example:
Me, as DM: "You enter the nightclub. It is dark, with violet accent lighting spread throughout. Small, lithe waitresses serve neon-colored drinks out of test tubes as they sashay all over the place. The music is typical of most top-40 dance joints."
Player: "I thought this was more of a goth place."
Me: "It is now!" and I proceed to re-describe the scenery, making adjustments as I go.

 

[Thanee]

I want to know how much time do your prepare your gaming session ?

When I DM a module, maybe half an hour. Otherwise pretty much none. Most preparation is done prior to beginning the campaign, thinking up a campaign background, that is.

What take you the most of your time in your preparation ?

Reading.

Do you rely much on not much preparation and you do thing on the fly during the session ?

Pretty much all is done on the fly. In my whole time playing D&D 3rd/3.5 now, which is basically from the beginning, I have prepared only very few NPC opponents (I can think of 2), for example, which I believe (also from other threads) is the most time consuming factor for most DMs.

I really only need an idea (and sometimes a nicely drawn map), the whole adventure is dynamic, there are usually very little static events (dynamic meaning environment reacting to the party actions).

Reactive DMing really cuts down the preparation time.

This is for P&P, of course. In PbP the preparation time is much, much higher.
Most time consuming factor there so far was the scripting of battle maps and making graphic tiles (usually taken out of existing pics and modified).

Bye
Thanee

 

[Zappo]

For my Warcraft campaign, I spend in preparing less than 10% of the time spent playing. For my Planescape campaign, it's about 50%. Both campaigns are quite successful, but the Planescape one is more complex and involved, and it is also the one which gives me the most fun.

 

[Bloodstone Press]

I usually spend 3-6 hours preparing for a game. It always seems that no matter how much I prep, I near get enough done.

I used to "wing it" a lot when I was younger, but over the years I learned that you always end up winging it anyway. The key is to take care of as much of the details ahead of time as possible, so when you get to the table you can spend your creative energy on developing the plot and making good, fast decisions on the fly, rather than dreaming up the basics of every encounter on the spot.