GMs: What is your prep to play ratio?

[Nebulous]

I suppose it changes session to session, but I only game on VTT now and I like to make it look as visually appealing as possible. I have probably put 2-3 hours of prep into a single 2 hour session sometimes. There have been some Saturdays where I will spend an entire afternoon prepping a single map, but I get multiple sessions out of it. I know the work needs to be done, so I just buckle down and do it (and enjoy it). I generally have notes prepped as well, so each session has 1-2 pages of notes scribbled down. I don't even refer to them in game usually, I just read them right before gametime. Exceptions are speeches, I will read those from the notes. On VERY rare occasions NPCs will give a backstory of exposition that has gone as high as 2000 words that I try to roleplay in their voice and make it sound like i'm not reading a script. EDIT: actually, I remember this particular speech now. I wrote it out and shared it with the players to read along so they didn't have to just listen to me talking. It had far too many plot points and foreshadowing for me to rely on memory alone.

 

[John Dallman]

It varies widely, over the course of a campaign. The stuff I run is generally semi-historical investigation, without much in the way of fights. My current campaign had the first killing by a PC in the 19th session.

When I'm in the early stages of a campaign and feeling out the setting, there is often quite a lot of research and worldbuilding, taking several times longer than the session, but fun in its own right.

In the middle period, I tend to work through variations on themes, which means coming up with session outlines is easy. However, I need to get the motivation of the NPCs right, since that sets up the situation the PCs need to find out about and deal with.

In the endgame, I understand the setting and the motivations of the groups involved, and don't need much prep time at all.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Since (general) you are here, what does your prep actually look like (some of you have answered this already)?

It varies wildly depending on the genre and kind of campaign. Probably the most consistent is notes about current events in the part of setting the PCs are interacting with, and where they are liable to go if the PCs do not intervene. That's one that can apply all the way from quasi-sandboxes (quasi because very few games I run any more are all the way there, in part because not that many of my players are interested in them--I think the last one I ran was the Morrow Project and that may have been a decade ago)) to fairly linear games like my current 13th Age game or mission-oriented games like my upcoming Eclipse Phase game. Most games also involve some production or selection of maps and tokens for combat encounters, the degree of which varies depending on how combat intensive the campaign is.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Maybe this is my own biases showing, but I feel like there's a correlation between "using modules" and "greater prep time". I think there's a tendency that if you're not using modules, you're not instead spending tons of hours making your own homebrewed adventure, you're simply more willing to ad-lib and improvise with less prep.

I admit I both lean into the latter and very rarely use pre-published adventures and modules (I tend to find them constraining).

 

[Thomas Shey]

It really does vary.

I found when running PF1 on VTT (Roll20) that prep took much longer than for face to face games. Doing up maps and NPCs on VTT could be very time intensive. Although it did have the advantage of making the play very quick. I should say that I couyld have easily done my NPCs by hand and just rolled real dice. But I was trying to get the benefit of VTT, e.g. linking character sheets to map icons, health bars, one click attacks, and such forth was a thing I was trying for. In the end, although it looks pretty, for me the amount of work is not worth it.

This is why I find some expectations on VTTs counterproductive. For years all I asked of them was to support maps and tokens (and do some fog-of-war) and even now all I have added in is a little die-roll related automation. All the stuff we did face to face manually (referencing character sheets, bookkeeping) can still be done that way without having to either have a VTT module set up to do it for your or doing that setup yourself.

Edit: I forgot one thing--initiative management. That's been, to one degree or another, kind of a nuisance in every game I've ever run ever, and I'm perfectly happy to let a computer mostly take care of it for me.

 

[Thomas Shey]

In-person, my prep was like... 15 minutes of picking out minis, 5-10 minutes of writing down names and places, and 15 minutes of driving to the game and thinking about what could happen.

Online I need to make it all nice to satisfy my own standards, that's like... 2+ hours per session.

That is, I'll admit, one thing a VTT can do to you--make you fussier about how things look and are put together. Its not intrinsic, but its an easy thing to fall into.

 

[LordEntrails]

I found when running PF1 on VTT (Roll20) that prep took much longer than for face to face games. Doing up maps and NPCs on VTT could be very time intensive. Although it did have the advantage of making the play very quick. I should say that I couyld have easily done my NPCs by hand and just rolled real dice. But I was trying to get the benefit of VTT, e.g. linking character sheets to map icons, health bars, one click attacks, and such forth was a thing I was trying for. In the end, although it looks pretty, for me the amount of work is not worth it.

Does Roll 20 not let you re-use stuff from campaign to campaign? Or is it just that you don't have pre-done resources to pull from to leverage?

I've found with FG all of that is usually already done, and when I create a custom NPC I can use it over and over again in limitless campaigns. So the first time might take 15 minutes to do something "custom" but then the next time it takes second to re-use it.

 

[ART!]

Right now, my prep-to-play ratio is N:0

That said, I'm planning a campaign right now, and past of that planning is figuring out how to reduce my prep (and anxiety).

 

[Retreater]

Since moving to GMing Daggerheart, I prep about 15 minutes for each 2 hours played.

 

[LordEntrails]

Right now, my prep-to-play ratio is N:0

That said, I'm planning a campaign right now, and past of that planning is figuring out how to reduce my prep (and anxiety).

There's some good advice in these resources on how to limit/maximize the effectiveness of your prep time. Been over a years since I validated the links, so some might be bad.

• Sly Flourish - Though Mike focuses on D&D 5E, he has a lot of useful articles. Start with the section on General Dungeon Master Tips about a third of the way down the page.
• Game Mastery 101 - Jason writes what may be the most accessible and intellectual articles about gaming and GMing, you will find many hours of thought provoking reading within his site.
• The Angry GM - He cops an attitude and rambles a whole lot. But he also puts a lot of thought into the points and suggestions he makes. If you can find what interests you, it can be very interesting.
• Matt Mercer GM Tips (video) - From the popular DM of Geek & Sundry, videos from Matt to help you GM.
• How to Be a Great Game Master (video) - He holds your interest and has some interesting things to help you improve.
• Matt Colville's Running the Game (video) - Another D&D guy, but he has lots of popular videos that can help you get started if you have never DM'd before.
• DM Sage - Lots of thoughtful posts, they don't quiet resonate with me, but they might with you.
• DungeonMasterpiece (video) He has great advice on how to tie in random encounter tables, sink quest hooks into locations, develop factions, and interesting analysis on the geopolitics of various D&D settings
• Newbie DM - Targeted at the new DM, this blog has a selection of articles and DIY tutorials for various projects.
• Musing on Master GMs - Wonder what one experienced GM thinks it take to be a Master GM?
• The Lazy Dungeon Master (slyflourish.com) FREE online

And where all of these are from and where there are more links to specific resource types: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?36014-GM-Advice