Psion said:
5) Spend less time on ENWorld.
YES, but I LIKE reading and posting here. It feels like I'm discussing the game with my gaming buddies--who won't (or will no longer) so indulge me. So, I could have spent today prepping to DM my game next Wednesday, but instead I'll post my time-savers here. The following steps are what works for me right now. I like to think of them as the current refinement of my gamecraft. These are the tips I'll be using for this week's game.
#1) Run what you want and make it exciting for the players so it's what they want, too. My current game is The Shackled City Adventure Path from Dungeon with elements from other games that I like: Star Wars, Judge Dredd & Omega World. I also added aasimar paladins with no ECL to encourage the players to play good characters. I knew I couldn't bear to play another plain vanilla D&D game (reinforced with the last 2 weeks in a classic 1e game), so I added in the elements I wanted. It upped the power curve, so the players love it, too.
#2) Don't sweat the details. I didn't do a lot of work to write conversion manuals for jedi, judges & mutants. I just told the players basically how it works and we play the game. Plus, there are plenty of unintentional mistakes (even after 25 years) that help & hurt the PCs so that it all evens out.
#3) Use preprinted adventures. I subscribe to Dungeon, so it's easy for me to pick out an adventure or a campaign to run. I have made adventures from scratch, but nowadays I mainly use modules. There's still plenty of work to do.
#4) Keep the game heroic. I give bonus chips for cool or clever roleplay. A chip can be cashed in to reroll a d20 or for a 5% expereince bonus at the end of each night. This allows the players a little more control over the game and allows me to instantly reward the kind of play I want to encourage. I'm also experimenting with Adventure Cards (a free demo download from great white games--ful version for sale at rpgnow).
#5) Initiative cards. Essential for my game. I should buy the Game Mechanics' preprinted set at rpgnow for this weks game (and in thanks for the free ones I've bene using for a couple of years).
#6) No minis for the bad guys. I use counters. This really saves me time & effort.
#7) Minis for the PCs. It's the players' responsibility, though. Having a pianted one gets a bonus chip. This keeps the players invested in their characters and helps me keep friend & foe separated on the battlefield. Which gets me to tactical maps.
#8) Easy tactical maps. Recently, I've gotten a lot of mileage out of using player's maps. Ideally, one comes with the adventure. If not, I just give one to a PC who might have reason to know the layout of a place. I even prepared one for this week's game by scanning & manipulating it on the computer to take out the room numbers, traps & secret doors. I plan to give this information as a reward to the PC who captured a foe last week. I tried to poster print the map on my computer printer, but the scale is just too small. Sometimes it works great. I'll let the players draw out the areas for combat durung the game. Although I have the big, quad-ruled easel pads with 1-inch squares, making maps ahead of time is very time-consuming (although very fun, too).
#9) Last but not least is the theorem: no matter little preparation I've done, it's enough. The corollary: no matter how much preparation I've done, there is always more that could be done. I figure that there is at least 1 hour prep time for each hour of game time. It may actually be a 2:1 ratio some weeks. There is a lot of work in the front end of a module, and at times I can coast through the later weeks.
Well, that's it for now.