Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sam Witt" data-source="post: 1140468" data-attributes="member: 1449">I guess I should have pointed out what I based my opinion on - I could be entirely wrong about this, but here's what I've seen over the past 20ish years.About half the DMs I've talked to on a personal level winged their games entirely. Their games were cool, but fluky - dramatically appropriate stuff worked, sometimes for no logical reason, while perfectly logical plans could fail due to scripting. These guys spent virtually no time on prep, maybe an hour or two a week just keeping their world in order. The worlds, by the way, were almost entirely built incrementally as the campaign progressed.About 25% of the DMs ran modules exclusively. Their total prep time was probably about an hour a week, mainly with a highlighter to remind themselves to change place names where necessary.Maybe 20% of the DMs ran structured games using all the rules and original adventures, using an existing world (either their own developed incrementally over years or a published world) that they sort of tinkered with on occassion. They had a pretty high prep time, I guess about five to ten hours a week.The last 5% of DMs did no prep and ran modules straight out of the package with no pre-read and no care about how they fit together.I've yet to meet a player that didn't spend an hour or so each week at least tinkering with the character concept. d20 has really amped up the options for characters, which has probably increased this time by a couple of hours, especially amongst those who purchase games regularly. In the age of character web-pages, experience point for journals, and other player-invested activities, the prep time could be considerably more.From my experience, the d20 industry specifically caters to 'character engineers' those who like tons of options and like to play with them. There is a reason why the vast majority of books are player-friendly first, and DM-friendly second.Anyway, everyone has their own experiences, just thought I'd share mine -Sam</blockquote>

Verification