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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rmcoen" data-source="post: 9801537" data-attributes="member: 6692404">I'd say my prep time averages about 1 hour for a 3.5 hour session, but what tends to actually happen to make that average is several hours of thinking about things while mowing or doing other chores, anywhere from 1-4 hours writing up notes from the vague thoughts, then 30-60 minutes making sure I have statblocks pulled up for the night's likely encounters... and then discovering that "this will be a great night!" turns into "this will take them 2-4 sessions to complete, at least", which means the next several sessions require only 10 minutes to pull the statblocks up again right before the game.Campaign prep is a whole other beast, of course.  I mention it, though, because after an "adventure" completes, I generally also have some campaign-work to do, advancing plots and stories based on how long the party was away, so the world feel more "alive" and time spent actually matters.  Getting the dungeon done in single day instead of "we long rest after each fight so we can nova" has impacts on the world around them!And of course, I need to have some 1-to-3-line notes of other things that could happen when (not if!) the PCs go a completely different direction than what I expect.  I don't want to spend hours prepping a really amazing "convention experience" session with amazing maps and copious details and whatnot, only to have them decide not to "do the thing".Having said all that, last session the party was pretty much fully committed to a spectacle ("Battle of the Bands", starring the party's bard, in the kingdom's capital), so I felt more comfortable in dedicating a Saturday afternoon prepping for the event. (And part of Sunday, and maybe a little more just before the session.)  There were a dozen impactful options of things to at the Carnival before the Performance, nuances of impacts each PC could do besides "watch the bard play", NPCs to encounter, judges to influence, and a "surprise event" that would bring everyone back together, with a carefully crafted map.(And the very first player I asked "so, what do you do?", after laying it all out, still went off-script and pursued a PC-specific side quest rather than interact with the Carnival.  And another one decided to run his own "charity battle event" halfway through the Carnival!)</blockquote>

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