[DMs] How much time do you spend preparing the game from one session to the next?

[Arashi Ravenblade]

1-2 sit down hours. 20+ mind hours. Ive got nothing better to do.

 

[DestroyYouAlot]

Myself, probably 4-6 hours for a session (at least), more if I have time (which I usually do, as most of my prep is while I'm on the phone at work). Most of it's number crunching, which I'm getting much better at, and coming up with filler / diversions, on-the-road encounters, etc. Dungeons take up a lot of time for me, because I'm of the "grow your own dungeon" school - i.e., design the complex the way its original inhabitants would build it, then "invade" it, age it, break doors, move different factions in, move easy-to-find treasure out, hang a few dead adventurers here and there to spruce up the place, etc.

Unfortunately, my real weakness is "winging it", or at least having the confidence to let the chips fall where they may when I do. I'm trying to develop this, and going with more of an "outline and statblocks" style adventure may be the key.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Dungeons take up a lot of time for me, because I'm of the "grow your own dungeon" school - i.e., design the complex the way its original inhabitants would build it, then "invade" it, age it, break doors, move different factions in, move easy-to-find treasure out, hang a few dead adventurers here and there to spruce up the place, etc.

Yup. Fun stuff.

 

[igavskoga]

I marked off 0-1 hours but that's a bit misleading. I typically do an obscene amount of work before a campaign starts following in line with my own "Prep to Wing It" approach towards the game. Stat up major NPC's, get statblocks for throw-away fights (Generic_Assassin_01, Bunch_O_Orcs, Guard_53, etc), and sketch out the timelines for all the major current events. The list goes on.

*Most* sessions will be little more than refreshing notes, looking over all the threads the PC's are pulling (or are pulling them) at the moment, updating timelines and Who's Who When and Where lists. Making sure everything in my head is synched up with everything on paper. Nearly all encounters are triggered by things the group does. Prep time only goes above an hour when I want to put that much time in or when I know I'll need to (PC's planning on raiding a house for documents requires a floorplan, guard rotations, a few quick statblocks, checking to see if anybody important is there at the time, potential traps or surprises, and laying out any additional plot hooks found while inside, etc etc).

I imagine the fact that I only make battle maps for very important or difficult to explain/visualize fights cuts down on that considerably. Random fights were generally sketched on paper or a dry erase board to keep distancing, environment, and visuals - the fights then took place organically, rather than statically at X intersection or Y clearing. I grew up on AD&D without battlemaps and have never had a problem visualizing, nor my players, even with 3.x. I tried it out for a few months right when 3.x came out but I found that it unconsciously led me to guide towards encounters I prepped much more than I was comfortable with, as well as muchly increasing prep time, and when the players started asking why the game felt tighter than it usually did that's when I stopped using them again.

 

[WizarDru]

I voted 1-2 hours, but it varies wildly. Currently using Paizo's Shackled City hardcover, so my prep time is significantly less (and more of the customization, mind-share variety). I don't consider e-mail exchanges really prep, but part of the actual game.

Ditto what PC said. By the time my last game had reached Epic levels (27-28th), I had learned to change the ground rules of how I prep for an adventure to minimize the efforts spent in preparation. I have spent more than 10 hours for an individual session, but generally think that's overdoing it, unless it's a special session. Brainstorming is usually the bulk of effort.

 

[cmrscorpio]

6-10 hours. I typically spend my breaks at work brainstorming about the next session, then the day before I hunker down for several hours to set my ideas in some semblence of order and stat out my encounters.

My prep time would probably by cut in half if I wasn't obsessive about having encouters specifically tailored for my whims at the time. I keep a comprehensive record of every npc and templated monster I've run, but I just never seem to want to reuse them.

 

[Gundark]

I voted 1-2 hours. This isn't because I am a d20 encyclopedia, but rather that I am running the Age of Worms. Thus all I do now is read the adventure, create tokens, print up some of the pictures and maps and I'm good to go.

Now on the other hand if I made the adventures from scratch? That time would go up significantly. I purchased etools to help with the monster stating which takes the most time IMHO.

Also IMHO this is the biggest problem existing with the D&DE ruleset. I'm constantly surprised that a publisher hasn't stepped up to the plate to and designed a faster D&D NPC and Monster design system. We've seem some systems of faster NPC generation , Spycraft 2.0 or Iron Heroes for example but they're designed for their own system. IH is the only one that you could port over to D&D.

IMO it would need to be a 3rd party publisher as I don't think WotC would bother. I'm thinking that WotC is waiting for 4th ed. to tackle this.

 

[Shade]

I honestly can't put a finger on an exact time. I tend to prep in "chunks", which might last for 10 or more sessions.

Sometimes I may spend an hour or more filling in some details, and other times I don't have any prepwork between sessions.

My party just encountered some monsters I statted out over a year ago.

 

[the Jester]

This varies widely... some games take me prolly 100 hours of time to prep for, especially big, climactic battles in my epic game (such as the one I'm running right now). On the other hand, sometimes it takes 0 time to prep. I can't really give you an 'average' on this, I'm afraid.

 

[Thanee]

0 pretty much.

Bye
Thanee