Experienced GMs - How do you divide your preparation time?

[innerdude]

As a long-time player but fairly new GM, how do all of you more experienced GMs divide up your time for game preparation for maximum effectiveness?

Is it helpful to spend more time on situation/plot/location ideas, is it more important to have all of the NPCs fully "statted" before running a session? Does encounter design/balance take more work?

Obviously, a lot of this is rule-system specific. Having never GM'ed 4th Ed. (and only played it a handful of times), most people seem to say that encounter prep is greatly reduced in 4th Ed., but for older editions, what are the primary factors that take the most time? What stuff have you found is easiest to just "hand wave" and roll with? I'm primarily looking for 3.x / Pathfinder tips, but obviously a great deal of advice will carry over from edition to edition.

 

[Nonei]

I prefer to spend the bulk of my time on plot/situation/locale, but statting out NPCs and monsters and picking the monsters for probable encounters (although not necessarily how many of each) is also important. It's good to have a toolkit for coming up with things on the fly, and you can also create a lot of connections 'after the fact' (hmm... maybe that surly shopkeeper was actually working with the bad guys) - as long as it fits with what the PCs know, then you can change whatever you want.

I usually think of the plot in terms of: black and white (you usually can prepare pretty solidly for the next session), grey (you kind of have an idea what will happen in the next 2-3 session) and murky (a very vague idea of overarching plot) - this lets me be more flexible and avoid the temptation to railroad.

For being prepared and being flexible I've found "How I Prepared for 19 hours of gameplay in just one hour" extremely helpful, although I've never been prepared in one hour LOL. Dungeoneering on the WOTC boards made a spreadsheet from the info, available here, although the monster groups are 4e the rest is neutral.

I use the encounter calculator at d20srd.org to balance things for 3e (well, I did as a new DM, until I got the hang of CRs). There's also a guide to "Super-Quick NPC creation for all levels" at immortalshandbook.com.

 

[MerricB]

Honestly, it depends very much on the type of adventure I'm running.

Dungeon Crawl
Most of my attention will be given to a few key rooms; these will be major encounters that relate to the purpose of the crawl in the first place. Descriptions, monsters, traps, with the first being quite important - dungeon dressing and the little things that make exploring interesting rather than one combat after another.

The rest of the rooms I'll probably stock randomly; they'll be there for excitement, but not *important*.

Story
For these sessions, I sit down and try and work out the most likely paths the session will take, and break it down into scenes; these might be linear or flowcharted. After that, I can analyse which scenes will probably have the bulk of the interaction and design the elements in there more thoroughly.

As a rule, non-combat stuff doesn't get fully statted-up by me; I go decidedly mechanically loose in those situations.

Cheers!

 

[Shemeska]

Is it helpful to spend more time on situation/plot/location ideas, is it more important to have all of the NPCs fully "statted" before running a session? Does encounter design/balance take more work?

I spent around 90% of my time prepping places, background, and NPCs. I detail the setting, the NPCs and their motivations, and plan for likely happenings based on PC interaction with what's going on in that world. There aren't set encounters necessarily, and while there's usually some flavor of metaplot moving along within the game (regardless of PC interaction at every stage) it's not a case of encounter 1 leads to encounter 2 leads to encounter 3, etc. Lots more wiggle room in what can and does actually happen, and the PCs may drive things off a cliff based on their actions if they so choose.

And I haven't written full stats for anything for years. Waste of my time to pin down precisely how many points in skill X or how many arrows they have. Much more important that I know who they are, what they do, etc and run from that perspective more so than the numbers.

But I run very very rules light (no grid, no minis, lots of off the cuff stuff). My prep style would fail if you're trying to run a heavily tactical, heavy combat sort of game.

 

[Nonei]

Dungeon Crawl
Most of my attention will be given to a few key rooms; these will be major encounters that relate to the purpose of the crawl in the first place. Descriptions, monsters, traps, with the first being quite important - dungeon dressing and the little things that make exploring interesting rather than one combat after another.

Agreed. Although note that "dungeon crawl" can actually mean "travelling through a designated area that is full of baddies and likely not too many friendlies or safe resting spots" whether it's a dungeon, an abandoned monastery, the path through the mountains, or the goblin forest.

All styles vary, and some styles work for others and some not, so I will tell you what I do and please steal what you like:
I don't make detailed maps, other than perhaps of key areas.
What I do is (and these are not in order - I usually am writing in a notebook and jump between pages scribbling when I get ideas)

1. Brainstorm and then kind of finalize the basic storyline/motivations - don't forget to think of the 'third option'. The 'third option' is the one you think of after you start with the most obvious two alternatives and discard them.

2. Think of what sort of creatures (and generally how many - a lot, a little, a few) will be there based on the storyline, and usually try to think of a couple interesting-but-fitting things - like having whoever was there before the current guys trying to fight their way back in.

2.5. Jot down who might be where in the 'dungeon' (or building, or wild) in general. For example: maybe the hobgoblins and goblins are the patrols and so likely to be encountered out and about.

3. Write down as many clues to the story and 'flavor' things you can think of, to be inserted during play at opportune times (you won't use them all). For example: The LBEG has a wand of fireballs? They might run across a tunnel that has a couple crispy bodies on the floor. It could also include notes, symbols, carvings or drawings on the walls, a hidden niche in the second in command's quarters, etc. The key here is to make no one clue that is most important - these are the little things that build up the ambience of the area or give clues toward the storyline, without the players necessarily knowing which is which.

4. Write down as many things that you can think of that seem 'interesting' to play through. Several different kinds of traps, stuck doors, things to break up the fighting like bookshelves with tomes to explore, prisoners or someone that's stuck holed up in a secret room because they are afraid to make a break for it, and so forth. This also includes potential details about the sorts of rooms/areas you'd expect to see (perhaps on a separate list) - storerooms with casks of ale, or a open area in the woods that's an obvious recent camp, etc. These are also to be inserted into play at opportune times.

While you're writing and as soon as you think you're done, read through everything you've written and add/edit whatever comes to mind.

Then, just before (and during) play, you can glance through the lists for inspiration while they are running through the dungeon. I've found that I only occasionally refer to the lists while we're actually playing - simply generating them gets me in the mind of creating things on the fly.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

My ratio of prep time to game time is about one-to-one. A little bit less. (I usually spend about four hours prepping for a five-hour session.)

I spend about one-quarter of my time thinking up and writing down plot-points that are going forward, of course bearing in mind that character interaction can change these in play. (So some of this time is spent revising previous preparation based on the events of last session.)

I spend another quarter creating an outline of how I expect ongoing events to happen in-game, along with branching notes when I'm iffier on what my players are likely to do or try. Luckily I've gotten pretty good at pulling some of my players' motivation strings, so I'm accurate in my guessing.

Yet another quarter goes toward creating and writing down evocative descriptions, in which I try to engage at least three or four senses for everything, and toward finding and printing illustrations or photos.

(My M&M game is set in San Francisco, for instance, so although we're all familiar with The City, I'll still go on Google Maps and grab satellite and street-level images to show, such as when the Grey Gull (and his Grey Chick minions) recently robbed the First Republic Bank at Front and Pine). For the same game, when my players went through a faerie ring in Golden Gate Park and met the Queen(s) of Faerie, I'd found good illustrations for them (and their faerie minions) online.)

The rest of the time goes toward stat blocks and rules refreshers. I try to familiarize myself with rules that I know will be coming into play, and I try to have as detailed a stat-block as I can without it being unwieldy. Right now this block of time is about the same size as it was when I was DMing 3.5/Pathfinder, but as I memorize M&M's (less complex) rules, I expect the time devoted to this to shrink.

In addition to this dedicated prep-time, we communicate throughout the two weeks between sessions via Google Wave (rules discussions, session critiques, and so on), and that takes significant time if you total it up, although because I do it only a couple of minutes at a time, I couldn't guess how much.

 

[howandwhy99]

As a long-time player but fairly new GM, how do all of you more experienced GMs divide up your time for game preparation for maximum effectiveness?

I divide between scenario prep and module conversion. If I'm putting a module into the world, then I have to finish it before I prep the scenario. But if I am simply reading through a published setting or module, I'll start converting on the fly. Sometimes without even knowing whether or not I will be used it later. It just speeds up later conversion, if the product is asked for.

Is it helpful to spend more time on situation/plot/location ideas, is it more important to have all of the NPCs fully "statted" before running a session? Does encounter design/balance take more work?

Statting isn't important in earlier D&D... until it's important. In other words, don't roll anything to determine a result when you don't need to know the result to prep the scenario or run the game. It can always be rolled up later during the game. However, knowing how much to roll up prior and how much to leave off is a bit of a art form.

Designing modules is game design, so I don't really work on plot unless I am authoring my own.

Obviously, a lot of this is rule-system specific. Having never GM'ed 4th Ed. (and only played it a handful of times), most people seem to say that encounter prep is greatly reduced in 4th Ed., but for older editions, what are the primary factors that take the most time? What stuff have you found is easiest to just "hand wave" and roll with? I'm primarily looking for 3.x / Pathfinder tips, but obviously a great deal of advice will carry over from edition to edition.

Scenario prep certainly takes the most time. It's a lot of map and note tracking as well as dice rolling. No stuff is "hand waved", so a ref never has to worry about improvisational acting when running a game.

Personally, I don't believe much of the older ways of running the game are going to carry over. But it depends on who you talk to and how they ran/run their games.

 

[the Jester]

It really depends on what I'm running. I enjoy statting up new monsters and stuff an awful lot; I really like making cool villains' plans and stuff; I get the most long-term use out of campaign world creation stuff. I dunno. DM prep is like a fruit salad: a good mix of different stuff.

 

[Desdichado]

As a long-time player but fairly new GM, how do all of you more experienced GMs divide up your time for game preparation for maximum effectiveness?

Is it helpful to spend more time on situation/plot/location ideas, is it more important to have all of the NPCs fully "statted" before running a session? Does encounter design/balance take more work?

I hardly spent any time on statting and encounter design, in 3.5. It's simple as pie to handwave all that.

 

[Keldryn]

I find that I'm spending the overwhelming majority of my prep time on creating battlegrids. I've got 3 sets of Dungeon Tiles, but they are somewhat limiting if I restrict myself to those alone, and they rarely fit for creating maps in published adventures unless those maps were designed to use them in the first place.

My prefered method of creating the battlegrids is to draw the maps in CC3 and print them out in sections, but it is extremely time-consuming to do so. I've never liked the dry-erase mats with the red, green, blue, and black markers, but I might have to start doing that anyway, as my preparation for other parts of the game is starting to suffer due to my desire to have accurate, attractive-looking battle grids.