GMs: What is your prep to play ratio?

[Benjamin Olson]

I think it averages an even split for me when running online, because I usually have battlemaps, tokens, and character art prepped for everything. For in person games I usuaully do a fraction as much of that sort of stuff, so typically I'm spending maybe half as much time on prep.

It's hard to account for everything because often I prep things that don't get used for 2 to 4 sessions.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

Just a guess, but I probably prep for 1 hour for every 2 hours of play. But it's not consistent. I might go for weeks with minimal prep. But that's because I spent hours and hours prepping the campaign before the first session.

 

[overgeeked]

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.

Yeah. I’ve been looking at a lot of modules lately and the amount of note taking, rewriting, reading, and re-reading you’d need to do to make most modules even barely functional is astronomical. Thankfully OSR/NSR modules are designed for use at the table with lots of bullet points, succinct writing, good page layout, and bolded bits. Why most modules still use page after page of giant walls of text you have to repeatedly pick through to actually find information is beyond me.

 

[Reynard]

Yeah. I’ve been looking at a lot of modules lately and the amount of note taking, rewriting, reading, and re-reading you’d need to do to make most modules even barely functional is astronomical. Thankfully OSR/NSR modules are designed for use at the table with lots of bullet points, succinct writing, good page layout, and bolded bits. Why most modules still use page after page of giant walls of text you have to repeatedly pick through to actually find information is beyond me.

This has been my complaint for years.

The answer, according to James Jacobs and in relation to Pathfinder anyway, is that lots of people don't run adventures, they just read them.

 

[Time_Feather]

Typically speaking, how much time do you prep for any given unit of time you actually play?

For example, when I run convention games, I typically prep for an hour to effectively run a 4 hour game slot. it is less (half an hour) if I am running something a little lighter like Shadowdark, and a little longer if I am running something more complex like higher level D&D. Note also that I don't "write adventures" -- I sketch out the situation, maybe write a few words of lore/description, and gather my maps and statsblocks as needed. Everything else is improv'd in play.

How about you? How much prep time do you spend for every hour or session of time at the table? If it varies from game to game, let us know that, too, and what kinds of games or campaigns need more prep time.

Thanks!

It really depends for me - a lot of sessions I go more of your route, but I'll spend time making randomized special lists to keep things fun for myself - so there are 'random encounters', but they're all things I have outlined but the order isn't important, so I know what COULD happen, but I get to find out what will happen with the players to a degree.

 

[Reynard]

It really depends for me - a lot of sessions I go more of your route, but I'll spend time making randomized special lists to keep things fun for myself - so there are 'random encounters', but they're all things I have outlined but the order isn't important, so I know what COULD happen, but I get to find out what will happen with the players to a degree.

I'm a big fan of curated random.encounter tables. This particular Dark Forest possesses certain traits, so it's encounter table should be distinct.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

My actual functional prep I try to keep at 30 min for a session.

But I generally have a at least a dozen or two hours of prep ahead of a campaign.

And I tend to do so loose prep here and there when I go to coffee shops or have some free time. Just jotting down ideas.

 

[guachi]

I'm retired now and have a gaming group of 5 (was 6 but 1 moved to attend college) with 4 players new to D&D. We are playing Level Up so they are even more clueless and so am I as I've owned the rules but never played. None but me own any Level Up books.

So, I've spent a huge amount of time reading the rules as well as making Word/pdf documents of all sorts of things to hand to the players such as condensed rules for combat and exploration, summaries of their background information, weather, price lists, condensed class rules, etc. All of that took a lot of time.

For each session I make a map to print (if necessary). We're playing B10 Night's Dark Terror and printed up a big fan-made map on 20 sheets of paper of the homestead that gets attacked in the adventure. It was really useful!

I'll also print up all sorts of notes for me to use to keep from looking through books. I've got an Excel worksheet with condensed A5e conversions of all the encounters for B10 that I've printed and used a comb binder to bind together.

Lastly, I'll look for pictures, videos, or music to play. Not only do I think it enhances the session it also allows me to do nothing for a few minutes.

All told it was easily 20 hours per week for the first few months and now it's down to one or two. B10 is an adventure I've run before so once I updated it for A5E I haven't had to do much.