D&D 5E DM Prepared one page of notes.

[GameOgre]

I played in a great game of D&D 5E yesterday with a DM who walked up to the table with the three core books and one page of notes. That's it. He ran a game for seven hours off one page of notes and we had a blast. He did look up a lot of monsters out of the book(we sure didn't mind or anything) and he wrote down notes on a second sheet of paper stuff that he needed to remember later.

After the game(it was a one off) I asked if I could see his prep notes and he handed it over.

It was filled with ideas and traps and monster/room descriptions(just enough to jar his memory of what he had planned I guess) a doodle map(encounters listed as easy/normal/hard/deadly), seven different one line adventure ideas(in case we didn't follow his plan) a word puzzle, a joke, the lyrics to Wild Boys,a short list of npc's,a short list of shops, a doodle of a bridge that collapsed into a cage and notes on our past games(like remember Barbie has a assassin still looking for her and Jammor is still haunted by the dead god).

That's it. He said he spent about 45 minutes total preparing for a game though did admit that mostly he works out the specifics of a encounter during play. His notes say orcs/hard and so he just figures out how many orcs equal a hard encounter on the fly.


Normally I DM and spend hours and hours getting prepared and even at times let my laziness prevent me from running a game(we could play tomorrow night but heck if I feel like spending three hours tonight getting ready, instead lets go see a movie).

I really want to adopt this style of DMing. It's amazing to me.

 

[edhel]

I don't usually bother with session notes unless I have something special in mind (like a cool cursed magic item from Ravenloft). Before I run a campaign I figure out the main conflict in the campaign, the antagonists, their resources etc. I (among other people) wrote about this in another thread: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ing-Dungeons-HELP/page2&p=6356202#post6356202

That said, I often have my DM notebook next to me. It's basically a scrapbook filled with tables for npc traits, good bits from different books (e.g. Pathfinder GM guide, AEG's Ultimate Toolbox, Vornheim). It's there to help me improvise, and that could/should be your goal while prepping. I often have nothing specific in my mind when I start a session but I know "what's happening". Player characters get into a conflict of interest with whatever is going on and it all grows organically there.

 

[Manbearcat]

He ran a game for seven hours off one page of notes and we had a blast.

I really want to adopt this style of DMing. It's amazing to me.

That is precisely how I've been GMing since about 2004. Except I don't use a piece of paper. Typically its 2-3 flash cards, front and back, flagged in the upper left corner for their content. In my head I carry the primary fronts of antagonism for the PCs, prior continuity/backstory, and where we are right now. On the table (and in my head) are the PC sheets so if I need to look at something on them, I do. The cards are reserved for:

- Pithy, provocative scene openers that hook into the thematic meat of one or more of the characters.

- A few, pretty nebulous at the outset, complications that have the opportunity to snowball and that I think might be cool to introduce if the situation calls for it.

- 3-4 syllables for surnames that I can mix and match as required for the session's new NPCs. Same thing for towns/ruins/adventuring sites except words instead of syllables.

- Monster themes/hazards and numbers/DCs (the math) related to current PC level.

We'll have a pretty low resolution map on the table that we sort out and fill in as we go. No GM screen. Everything is out on the table.

Its extremely liberating from a mental overhead perspective and I've found my mental engagement with each session and each session's dynamism and pacing is markedly improved. And I've removed 100 % of the creep of GM fatigue. It no longer exists.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I switch back and forth... one week I might have no notes, and just run with some ideas, other times I have a comp not book with 30-40 pages and a map... each level of prep is a different tool

 

[wedgeski]

Not to take anything away from your obviously skilled DM, but it's very easy to run a session like this as long as the session takes a certain form, usually the "get from A to B"-type adventure.

It's very hard (or at least, it is for me) to run more complicated sessions where the players' actions intersect with multiple NPC's and ongoing story-threads. If you don't prepare properly, your NPC's become mushy and bland, you start contradicting their previous behaviour or motives, and carefully-shepherded world-building can suddenly fall flat on its face. Aversion to those outcomes can cause over-preparation as well, something I'm often guilty of as well!

 

[fuindordm]

Maybe he spent 45 minutes writing up the sheet, but probably hours and hours thinking about the mood he wanted to create, how to structure the encounters, the plot, the NPC personalities, and so forth.
I also often only have a page or two of notes, but they're there to reference the bits in my head. It takes me usually a couple of weeks to think up a scenario in enough detail that I feel ready to run it.
In fact, I find it MORE difficult to run an adventure from a published module because all the interconnections between NPCs and monsters and encounters are not in my head but stuck on the paper.

 

[Imaro]

There was an article during the 4e run of Dungeon/Dragon ... Dragon 426 called "The Improviser's Cheat Sheet". I found it pretty interesting and while I don't use the exact form in the article now... it's what I started out using as a basis for good game improv notes. Admittedly I don't use this alone as I run a sandbox where I usually know what my player's plans are from the past week and if necessary can flesh those out in greater detail, but when they do something unexpected it's pretty handy to have.

On another note, a few things I worry about with using this type of prep exclusively is depth of setting (I feel like something tends to get lost in my descriptions/mood/feel when I'm going solely off of improvisation), and consistency (it's maintainable but now instead of pre-prep I'm doing post prep so I don't forget anything especially in a campaign as opposed to a one shot).

 

[TarionzCousin]

... the lyrics to Wild Boys....

Um, what?

[sblock]The wild boys are calling
On their way back from the fire
In august moon's surrender to
A dust cloud on the rise
Wild boys fallen far from glory
Reckless and so hungered
On the razors edge you trail
Because there's murder by the roadside
In a sore afraid new world

They tried to break us,
Looks like they'll try again

Wild boys never lose it
Wild boys never chose this way
Wild boys never close your eyes
Wild boys always shine

You got sirens for a welcome
There's bloodstain for your pain
And your telephone been ringing while
You're dancing in the rain
Wild boys wonder where is glory
Where is all you angels
Now the figureheads have fell
And lovers war with arrows over
Secrets they could tell

They tried to tame you
Looks like they'll try again

Wild boys never lose it
Wild boys never chose this way
Wild boys never close your eyes
Wild boys always shine
[/sblock]

 

[halfling rogue]

I played in a great game of D&D 5E yesterday with a DM who walked up to the table with the three core books and one page of notes. That's it. He ran a game for seven hours off one page of notes and we had a blast. He did look up a lot of monsters out of the book(we sure didn't mind or anything) and he wrote down notes on a second sheet of paper stuff that he needed to remember later.

After the game(it was a one off) I asked if I could see his prep notes and he handed it over.

It was filled with ideas and traps and monster/room descriptions(just enough to jar his memory of what he had planned I guess) a doodle map(encounters listed as easy/normal/hard/deadly), seven different one line adventure ideas(in case we didn't follow his plan) a word puzzle, a joke, the lyrics to Wild Boys,a short list of npc's,a short list of shops, a doodle of a bridge that collapsed into a cage and notes on our past games(like remember Barbie has a assassin still looking for her and Jammor is still haunted by the dead god).

That's it. He said he spent about 45 minutes total preparing for a game though did admit that mostly he works out the specifics of a encounter during play. His notes say orcs/hard and so he just figures out how many orcs equal a hard encounter on the fly.


Normally I DM and spend hours and hours getting prepared and even at times let my laziness prevent me from running a game(we could play tomorrow night but heck if I feel like spending three hours tonight getting ready, instead lets go see a movie).

I really want to adopt this style of DMing. It's amazing to me.

cool! could you upload a pic of the page?

When I ran my first session I used the Lost Mine adventure and drew up a one page note sheet. On it had all the monster stats I figured they'd fight and a few options in case something went awry.

 

[delericho]

Blimey, I don't think I would ever risk doing that with D&D! (But then, I've barely run 5e, so maybe... hopefully... it's different.)

But the best game I've run in recent years was a Hunter: the Vigil one shot I ran with a single page of notes (that was a list of NPC names plus a node diagram) that I scribbled out in about 20 minutes. Didn't run for 7 hours, though!

 

[Fralex]

Maybe he spent 45 minutes writing up the sheet, but probably hours and hours thinking about the mood he wanted to create, how to structure the encounters, the plot, the NPC personalities, and so forth.
I also often only have a page or two of notes, but they're there to reference the bits in my head. It takes me usually a couple of weeks to think up a scenario in enough detail that I feel ready to run it.
In fact, I find it MORE difficult to run an adventure from a published module because all the interconnections between NPCs and monsters and encounters are not in my head but stuck on the paper.

This, speaking from personal experience and things I've heard other very good DMs say, is exactly right. It can totally work to run an entire campaign with just a few scraps of paper covered in random scribblings about ideas you have, but don't think for a second you can just make something up as you go without spending a ton of time fleshing out places and characters you plan to use first. You don't set in stone the way everything fits together, but the pieces need to be developed enough that when you see the right opportunity you can just weave one into the story. It's a little harder than it looks from the outside.

That said, it is a FANTASTIC way to DM. You're never worried the story is getting off-track because you can always gently guide it towards one of your pre-made plot points or something you can use will come up on its own. And if you're worried you won't be good at this sort of improvisation because you were always bad at those improv games your drama-inclined friends liked to play, well, I'm no good at those either and can still pull this off. I recommend this campaign journal for inspirational reading (it's also just a really fun collection of stories, so your time won't be wasted whatever you learn or don't learn).

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

The best game session I ever played in was a chase/investigation adventure playing Expert set D&D, where my character (can't recall who it was, now, after 25 years+) spent the whole session unravelling an intrigue around the town of Threshold. Absolute blast and afterwards my DM admitted he'd made the whole thing up on the spot. I was so impressed!

 

[chaochou]

I really want to adopt this style of DMing. It's amazing to me.

Yeah, great when it comes together. The good news is that with a bit of practice and a smattering of confidence it comes together surprisingly often!

I would say that if you want to learn to GM like this, there are games out there written specifically for it and which explicitly guide you through how to do it in the game text. Apocalypse World, Dungeon World, some of the FATE games. I very much doubt your one-shot GM runs just D&D or learnt these techniques through D&D.

I've been running FATE and now Apocalypse World. My current game of AW I've run five sessions, each of four to six hours, with less than a page of notes in total - usually nothing at all. And it is stupidly good fun for all of us. The game codifies what you need to do to run it - and prep isn't one of those things. It's more about trusting yourself and your players and having faith in your own imagination. Once you've run a game like that there are a lot of transferable ideas and skills into other games.

Skills and techniqes take you so far and the rest is down to the players and whether there is any mojo around at the time. Great games are a group responsibility - its always the collective contribution between me and my friends which creates anything beyond 'decent'. Player buy-in and willingness to act are critical and when I'm in the zone I find improvising is less about 'running' a game and more about 'allowing it to happen'.

Best of luck with it.

 

[Schmoe]

It's really not my style to just go in with minimal prepared material. I find I can craft much more compelling scenarios and scenes when I have time to think them through. If I'm running homebrew material, preparation for an adventure goes something like this:

Develop an area (I'm always doing this)
Develop NPCs (I'm always doing this)
Flesh out likely developments in the plot the group has been following
If those developments seem like they are leading to a site, flesh out the site
Come up with a few updates for character-specific plots

When we sit down to play I try to be very reactive and let the game go where the players want it to, but I wouldn't be able to react in a compelling way without all of the preparation.

I'll give an example from one campaign long ago. By the end of a session, the party had decided to seek out some information from a sage who lived in a forest about a 2 week's journey from the town. I spent the week developing an adventure around the tower that involved a goblin druid, his corrupted brother, a rift to the Shadowlands, and slowly spreading corruption in the forest. The adventure included the druid's tower, shadow-templated creatures (this was 3e), and a cave complex. There's no way I could have come up with all of that or even most of that "on the fly". Taking the time to develop it ahead of time allowed me to include subtle details that tied in with long-term plot arcs, details that I just wouldn't have thought of in the moment.

I think it's amazing that some people are able to use so little preparation and run a great game. However, I know that I'm not one, so I'm going to stick with what works for me.

 

[Blue]

Most excellent. I run sandboxy with lots of plots thrown at the wall that the characters can choose to follow or not. I find that if I plan a lot on concept ahead of time, just a little bit of notes on options and things from previous sessions can let me improvise no matter which way the party goes. Often a session will start that I have no idea which of several plots they will follow up on, and often they will come up with an option I never saw coming.

That said, easy printing has made me lazy. I've got a cheatsheet with pertinent plot info about characters that I keep for every session, reminders of pipe I want to lay and things that might come back from other sessions. Notes on NPCs. Oh yeah, and some stuff about this session. Then handouts, any new magic items (I hand out cards), and monster stats.

Also have a document called "checkovs_armory" (a play off Checkov's Gun) with all sorts of open plot threads and NPCs that I can have reoccur or influence the session that I add to after a session and browse every couple to see if there is anything I can have boomerang.

 

[GameOgre]

I remember back in my AD&D days long ago I used to run adventures on the fly with nothing but my DM notebook but those days were decades ago. Somewhere along the way I got it in my head that I needed to stack my prep work sky high and devote more time to prep than actual playing.

I'm determined to get my low/no prep mojo back after playing in that game.

 

[Fanaelialae]

The best DM in our group has always run this way. Although instead of a page of notes, he draws a one sheet map with virtually illegible scribblings on it to jog his memory. I've collected his notes after the end of each campaign for years now, trying to decipher the madness to his method. He's told me that he spends a lot of time during the week thinking about game, but it usually only takes him about 30 - 60 minutes to actually put his "notes" in order.

I tried to mimic his style for years, unsuccessfully, but with 5e it suddenly "clicked" for some reason. Last session I ran an impromptu game (one of the players couldn't make it last minute, and "best DM" didn't want to run without him) using notes I had left over from the previous session I'd run, and I was able to run a great 8 hour session, despite having already run an 8 hour game from those notes in the previous session. I was really surprised it worked out as well as it did, because they'd actually finished the "adventure" in the previous session, and this session was mostly just tying up a few lose ends and interacting with NPCs.

The Lazy Dungeon Master, by Michael Shea, has a lot of great advice for prepping this style of game (though being a VERY lazy DM, I have yet to actually finish reading it).

 

[drjones]

I enjoy the writing process and because of the time constraints of old people even though I DM with two groups I get more time to write than to play. So I don't mind a little prep but as I have gotten into creating my first 5e campaign using the DMG and MM I have found that I am spending all my writing time on ideas: cool locations, encounters, npcs, plots, background etc. and when I actually get to the part where I decide how many monsters should be in this fight and what their loot is and such that part just takes a few min and occupies a line or two in my notes.

I'm sure it will get a little more complicated at higher levels, especially with spell casting monsters, but so far I am quite impressed with how little of my time is about the mechanics and how much of it is about making an interesting story. I could easily see running a session off a page of notes and a second page of monster/trap stats for quick reference. My main inspiration for writing stuff out more is that I want to have story arcs and recurring NPCs and locations and want those things to not contradict each other because I forgot something important.

 

[KirayaTiDrekan]

I DM this way as well, though I generally don't have any notes, keeping it all in my head. The thing is, as someone else mentioned, I am nearly constantly paging through the books, thinking about the upcoming session, and "prepping" for hours before a session - basically, whenever I'm not doing real life stuff or intentionally doing something else with my leisure time (watching a movie, playing a video game, etc), I'm thinking about gaming.

It usually goes pretty well, but there have been times when it just doesn't click - for whatever reason, my improv skills are off that day and the session turns in to a dud.

The most time I have spent prepping was when I wanted to use minis and maps (I usually don't) and spent a few hours setting up a battle map with dungeon tiles or whatever. The main reason I don't generally go that route is that, at least with my players, the game goes from "I charge in with my battle axe, yelling a dwarven warcry" to "Somebody move my dude up to that funky looking orc so I can hit it."

 

[Rocksome]

That's how I've been doing it since 3.0.
I get down what I want to achieve (where I want the PCs to be for the finale), then list a series of encounters, and outcomes I am hoping to achieve.

I might write a small descriptive sentence and a note about a particular "thing that happens", and possibly some page numbers of MM entries.

I find my players respond better to this, as it makes them think they've "gone off book" and they feel less like they're being railroaded.

I find that long block text entries shatter the illusion that your PC has free will.