How I Learned To Stop Worrying About Game Prep

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One of the things that eternally plagues game masters is the subject of game prep. How do we find that balance between having more material than we will ever need, and having a session come to a stop because there wasn't enough prep done? This is something, I think that most game masters deal with regardless of how long of a time they have been sitting in the game master's chair. Really, as long as a game entertains everyone at the table, you've done the right amount of prep. However, the question will always remain.

I've been gaming since 1979, and by about 1980 or so I started GMing more or less full time. In the "old days" the answer to "How much do I prep?" was answered by the very robust publishing schedule of most role-playing game publisher. For example, I played a lot of the Marvel Super-Heroes role-playing game from TSR in college, and the years afterwards. I didn't read as many Marvel comics as I did (do!) read DC comics, so I was always at a disadvantage with the Marvel universe because of that. Because of the fact that TSR published so much material for the game between adventures and roster books, they managed to fill in a lot of the blanks for me with their official material. Many of the TSR published settings for AD&D around that same period gave you a lot of material to work with, regardless of whether you played in the Forgotten Realms or Al-Quadim or the Planescape settings, you had a lot of your prepwork done for you.

Publishers like White Wolf took this tact as well, sometimes giving you more material than you might ever even need as a GM.

Unfortunately, while we are in a different sort of golden age of riches as gamers, the day of the overabundance of pre-made material is in the past. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it sometimes requires adaptation from those of us who have been gaming for a longer time. I like a low prep approach to gaming as a GM, since I'm not 11 years old anymore, I don't have the time to spend on game prep that I once did (nor do I really have the desire, either). Sometimes my preferences for low prep games interferes with my running of older games at times, the techniques that work for newer games don't always work in older games.

This is why I was attracted to a system like Fate from Evil Hat Productions. I've played and run Fate games since Spirit of the Century debuted years ago, and the approach of the game has been becoming my default approach for a few years now. The first rule of game mastering is that no idea that you have (regardless of the amount of prep that you put into a game session) will survive its encounter with the players. They will zig when the story zags. But the nice thing about the system is that when this happens all that you need to do is come up with a couple of aspects, a skill or two (approaches if you use Fate Accelerated like I do) and roll with it. Games like the many, many variants of the Basic Roleplaying Game or the open content of Mongoose Publishing's fantasy RPG Legend (or their version of the Runequest rules from which Legend was derived) make that easy too. Come up with a couple of skills on the fly, give them percentages and worry about filling in the spaces later.

With our ongoing Marvel Super-Heroes game I find myself taking NPCs and working them into something close enough to work with. Our campaign is loosely based in the Marvel Universe, which works mostly because the players don't have a super detailed level of knowledge about the world, so that gives me plenty of wiggle room. Besides, the longer the campaign goes on, the less it has to do with the Marvel Universe proper anyway.

So, how do you balance these things out when you want to be a low prep sort of GM? There's a few guidelines that come from how I run a game:

• Know your system. This is probably the most important one. You hear a lot of people talk about "internalizing" a game system. What this means, for me, is that you have developed a high degree of system mastery in your chosen game system. One of the reasons that I like to use the Marvel Super-Heroes RPG is because I have run it long enough that I know the system really well, and can run it without having to flip through books trying to find something. I'll have a few pages of notes, NPCs written out if the game is complex enough to need them in advance, and then everything else during our sessions have me make situational rulings. I will use the game's universal table to resolve things, and come up with similar resolution ideas on the fly. But to do this, you have to know the system.
• Know your genre. This is almost as important as knowing the system that you're running. I've read comics for longer than I've played role-playing games. I have enough comic plots nearly memorized to be able to repurpose them for campaigns for years. If I don't, I can read a trade collection before a session and use the ideas in our game. Most GMs have read enough fantasy novels, or seen enough fantasy movies, to be able to do the same things. The trick is to find the things that the players don't know, so they won't think that you're just repurposing someone else's story.
• Be able to be flexible about things. One of the basic skills of a GM is that you need to be able to learn how to spin things out on the fly. If you can't be flexible as a GM, if you can't make things up on the spot as a reaction to what the players are doing, you are going to have a hard time being a low prep GM.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, but they are a good starting point. Not everyone is going to want to be a low prep GM, but there will be those times when it will be needed and you might want to know what to do.

I have a friend who is always amazed when I run an evening's game with just some notes in my gaming Moleskine and a copy of the Fate Accelerated rules. Sometimes I'll have a brief idea of what I want to use for the setting, and other times I'll see what bits and pieces the players give up, that excites them.

Recently, on Free RPG Day, I ran a three hour session of Fate Accelerated for eight people (only about half of whom I actually knew). The idea was that the whole game would be generated on the spot, and play would roll out of what the players and I created. Fate's game creation rules are helpful for this, because they quantify a way to make up a setting at the table. I started with some prompts for the game. I wrote up a set of basic genre cues on index cards which said things like "A Space Ship Adventure…but…" The players filled in the "but…" with "all the characters are robots." We were off. For the next few minutes we outlined the details of the setting: everything took place on a sentient AI-driven biomechanical space ship, except the ship's AI was getting senile and things were slowly starting to malfunction. While the players made up their characters I put together a few other details: the ship was on a ten year exploratory tour, beaming back information to a central command that would be used later for voyages with ships that were occupied with people. The ship itself was built with planned obsolescence in mind, and the "falling apart" was planned from the beginning. Within about half an hour we were ready to go, and we played for another two and a half hours, until we got to a stopping point. The game was still left open-ended, so that if we had all so desired we could have spun it into an ongoing game.

This shows the basic concepts of low prep play in action. If this is something that you want to give a try, you now know where to start. The genre of the game, the system that you use all figure into how you do this. Now you know.
What sort of prep do you do as a GM?

 

[Mercule]

Spending an hour modifying a creature seems a pretty clear case of preparation.

I'm asking about using a monster from a published book, or other published material like maps, vignettes, etc.

In general, I'd say that's no prep. I consider myself a "wing it" GM, most of the time. It doesn't bother me one iota to whip out the Monster Manual. Sometimes, I do actually create a custom/modified monster. That's the exception, though, not the rule and doesn't make me any less a "wing it" GM than when the "meticulous prep" GM has players who start asking about the blacksmith's family and whether he has relatives in Aundair.

The question of maps, though, makes me think: Is using published adventures -- and becoming deeply familiar with them -- considered prep or no prep? I'd lean towards prep, but it's a different kind of prep than the guy who rolls his own. Any doofus can flip open a published adventure and read boxed text, roll dice, etc. It takes some effort (and talent) to do it well.

Just using the map, though, and making stuff up as you go? That's totally winging it. Same league as stats in the Monster Manual.

 

[3catcircus]

In general, I'd say that's no prep. I consider myself a "wing it" GM, most of the time. It doesn't bother me one iota to whip out the Monster Manual. Sometimes, I do actually create a custom/modified monster. That's the exception, though, not the rule and doesn't make me any less a "wing it" GM than when the "meticulous prep" GM has players who start asking about the blacksmith's family and whether he has relatives in Aundair.

The question of maps, though, makes me think: Is using published adventures -- and becoming deeply familiar with them -- considered prep or no prep? I'd lean towards prep, but it's a different kind of prep than the guy who rolls his own. Any doofus can flip open a published adventure and read boxed text, roll dice, etc. It takes some effort (and talent) to do it well.

Just using the map, though, and making stuff up as you go? That's totally winging it. Same league as stats in the Monster Manual.

The most difficult part of using published adventures for me? One of two things:

1. One little tidbit of info obscurely buried on page 123 that affects something on page 7 (Mysteries of the Moonsea I'm looking at you...).

2. Adventures written so tightly to a specific campaign setting that it takes prep time just to restage them in your campaign.

 

[Mercule]

1. One little tidbit of info obscurely buried on page 123 that affects something on page 7 (Mysteries of the Moonsea I'm looking at you...).

Oh, yes. This just bit me with Curse of Strahd. I'd forgotten about the "Events" section in the back of each chapter.

Spoiler

Other than doing the Death House intro, the party pretty much made the fastest path possible to make friends with Ismark and Ireena, bury the Burgomaster, have the priest advise they take Ireena to Krezk, and then go there. Once there, that burgomaster asked them to get the wine shipment in exchange for granting Ireena protection. The party left Ismark and Ireena in town and headed for the winery. End session. Next morning, I'm thumbing through stuff and read the bit about Ireena being drawn to the pool and Sergui taking her. Oops. Well, guess what happened off camera. Maybe the PCs shouldn't rush-rush, next time.

It's kind of a game-changer, though, because Strahd stops being playful, at that point. *sigh*

2. Adventures written so tightly to a specific campaign setting that it takes prep time just to restage them in your campaign.

And, this is why I've skipped many of the 5E adventures. After trying to convert Tyranny of Dragons to Eberron (or anywhere that isn't the Realms), I realized that it would actually be easier to just build my own adventure. When the idea behind using a published adventure is to save time (IMO), that's silly.

Princes of the Apocalypse wasn't bad to either understand (other than the couple of flat-out missing bits) and convert/run. It was just such a slog that the group eventually decided they didn't care enough. Part of that was because the players had voted to continue on with the "test characters" that were built to do LMoP and see if we liked the new edition. That was a mistake because the characters were built to test certain rules, not to actually have much flavor. There was only one player who was really invested in his character and one other who was able to add any depth to her character after changing gears.

 

[Von Ether]

Just dropping this in. There is also the third version of prep: The Sandbox version. Some claim this version is great because it's just as much a surprise to the GM as well as the players as to what happens.

The stereotype version of this is approach is the old D&D joke. "I am," *rolls dice,* "perplexed to see you." i.e., the GM only makes the rolls as the encounter comes up, flipping through pages and looking up charts.

Some DMs play it smarter by getting the PCs to commit to their next destination at the end of their current session. This way the GM makes all the rolls "off stage" so to speak and avoids wasting play time flipping through the book for the "NPC inn keeper names, Slavic" table. Or for some GMs, this style avoids writer's block, letting them jazz on stitching the random elements into an adventure rather than trying to come up with concept and then fill in the holes.

 

[Aldarc]

Fate seems very good for short session pick up games and one-shots (if everyone understands the core conceits of the system).

Fate is good for one-shots, but I have been surprised by how well it can handle campaigns. Fate gives the GM, in some regards, a pretty easy metric for character advancement through milestones.

Lately my almost zero prep game is the Cypher RPG, which is pretty asymmetrical when it comes to what the GM needs and all stuff the players get to work with.

All I really need is two base numbers (Task number and Task number x3) to determine baseline and then adjust as needed. There have been nights that my players had no idea that I was winging it all night long. Not saying you can't do that with other systems, but it seemed to come faster to me while running Cypher.

Similar experiences here with the Cypher System. Almost ridiculously easy on the GM side of things.

And I'm still not convinced that a GM could do that week after week and not manage to create Lost or the BSG reboot, rather than Babylon 5 or the Avatar: The Last Airbender cartoon.

Neither B5 nor A:TLA should be ideal goals for GMs, IMHO. Those were pre-planned stories with scripted seasons and character arcs that go beyond the realm of "tabletop roleplaying games" and more into the realm of "railroaded novels." A:TLA even follows a transparent three act structure. Though we may loathe to admit it, roleplaying stories even with tremendous amounts of prep more often are the cinematic equivalent to soap operas or radio pulp serials.

I've really been eyeing Fate and Savage Worlds a lot, lately, though.

I have greatly enjoyed my experiences with Fate so far. It generally requires far less prep time than most other games I have run, especially 3E and Pathfinder. A lot of the story prep responsibilities are shared by the GM and players in Fate's Session 0 when players help shape the narrative premise and issues.

 

[Celebrim]

So, we seem to have some argument going on over terms.

I would consider all the time a GM spends thinking about the game outside of the game to be 'prep', including brainstorming, research, planning, note taking, reading rules or modules or other resources relevant to the game, and generating documents (maps, encounter notes, randomizing tables, background lore, stat blocks, etc.). Anything the GM does that increase their ability to respond to events in game session is 'prep'. Some GMs spend a lot of time thinking and relatively little time taking notes and generating documents, and basically store everything 'in their head'. Other GMs rigorously document all their ideas. But it's all preparation even if you aren't spending most of the time generating documents. If you are running a supers game - and the OP correctly calls this out - all the time you spend reading comic books and immersing yourself in the lore of the genre is preparation to run the game. If you are running a D&D game, all the time you spend reading modules and prepublished adventures is preparation, if you are in fact taking ideas from that time spent studying and using them in your games.

So to give some scale to what I would consider typical levels of preparation.

High Prep: 10 or more hours of prep per session run
Low Prep: 5 or less hours of prep per session run
No Prep: 1 or fewer hours of prep per session run

In general, I find that for a given GM, there is a linear improvement in their game related to the investment in time that they put into it. That isn't to say that there aren't exceptions - it is possible to prep badly, and in a way that is actually less than useful, and we could talk about that - but in general good preparation is always good in the way that good preparation for any demanding task (giving a speech, writing a book, doing a business presentation, building a building, painting a painting, playing a sport, etc.) is always a good thing.

Preparation time doesn't have to be smoothly spread out over the course of the campaign. If you are going to sandbox with the players having a very free hand to set goals, you might up front typically invest 200+ hours in preparation inventing, investing in, and describing the setting to yourself, and then just 2-3 hours per session collecting some ideas based on what you think might happen during the next session. If your game goes say 24 sessions, that was 'high prep', even if each week of the game you only spent a few hours getting things ready. That's why you can meet GMs that have spent literally a decade investing in some homebrew setting, that can 'improvise' an adventure on the fly that is seemingly rich in detail, NPCs, and even philosophical depth. They've reached the point that whole portions of that world are alive in their heads.

There is a great story about MAR Barker where a player off-handedly asked what people in a particular city typically ate for breakfast, and MAR Barker rattled off without thought that they ate cottage cheese spiced with cinnamon and the player realized that MAR Barker was not just improvising this - he'd already spent time thinking what the local cuisine was like based on the culture and availability of food stuffs. The conclusion was that there was so much in his head that wasn't written down, that only he could truly run Tekumal as it was intended.

In my opinion, I don't think 'no prep' works in the long run, and 'low prep' only works if you are offloading a good portion of the mental work to some other GM who has done the prep for you. That said, the more mechanically simple the system, the easier it is to prepare. And some sorts of games - traditional mega-dungeons for example - can achieve very high play to preparation ratios because it takes so little to create a mega-dungeon if you free yourself from economics, ecology, and other unnecessary 'realisms'. Likewise, you can get really good play to preparation ratios by going completely the other direction as well, and playing 'all the world is a stage', preparing only NPCs and motives and going high melodrama. This is typically marked by games were stereotypically, all combats occur 'on the street' or 'outside' and the world has no tangible or important physicality to it, as if the whole game was played on a single stage and the GM just changed the drapes and the props.

 

[Celebrim]

Neither B5 nor A:TLA should be ideal goals for GMs, IMHO. Those were pre-planned stories with scripted seasons and character arcs that go beyond the realm of "tabletop roleplaying games" and more into the realm of "railroaded novels." A:TLA even follows a transparent three act structure. Though we may loathe to admit it, roleplaying stories even with tremendous amounts of prep more often are the cinematic equivalent to soap operas or radio pulp serials.

I think you vastly misunderstand me. I'm not saying that the preparation required to run a good game is the exact same sort of preparation you would undertake to create a TV series. That would indeed be wrong-headed preparation, that would - even if it could have created a good TV series or radio serial - be unlikely to create a good game.

I'm saying that to achieve the same quality of storytelling achieved by creators in other story telling medium in the medium of a RPG, you need to expect to put into it the same sort of effort as those other mediums.

I am certainly not saying that a GM running an RPG should ever set out to tell this particular story that was planned out in all the details even before it began as I totally agree that is a recipe for failure, and if that is what you think of as 'preparation' then yes, not doing that and even doing nothing at all would probably work better.

 

[Aldarc]

I'm saying that to achieve the same quality of storytelling achieved by creators in other story telling medium in the medium of a RPG, you need to expect to put into it the same sort of effort as those other mediums.

I have a better idea of what you are trying to say, or so I hope, but I also think that this also can come across a little too much as OneTrueWayism. That is to say that objective X is only possible through method Y. I don't think that is necessarily the case. I have been involved in some top quality roleplay storytelling only to find out that the GM prepped little beforehand; they just kept their fingers on the pulse of the group and improved accordingly. And I have also been in some atrocious stories where the GM prepped far too much, and often these would be the GM burnouts. MAR Barkers are rare. I don't think it's healthy to link "lots of prep" or X amount of effort to the quality of a story in tabletop gaming, and I find that the below statement can be particularly harmful in that regard. (And it's also where I got a OneTrueWay vibe from.)

In general, I find that for a given GM, there is a linear improvement in their game related to the investment in time that they put into it.

 

[fjw70]

I try to be as low prep as possible. I mostly use pre-made adventures but don't stick to them verbatim. Ther are more guidelines than anything. I work full time and have a wife and 4 kids. Most of my time at home is spent with my wife and kids. My prep comes as I am driving to and from work (an hour each way), from my lunchtime reading at work, and some light nighttime reading.

This is one reason I am excited about DDB. Since most of my adventure reading is done at work I don't want to bring my books back and forth so it will be easy to read electronic versions when I am away from home.

 

[Celebrim]

[MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION]: I understand, and I'm quite aware that that is the sort of statement that makes people uncomfortable.

But I'm afraid I still have to stand by it. There has been a trend I've been seeing over the last few years that basically amounts to, "If you play our game, then you don't have to do any prep." And I find that statement to be particularly harmful, because it would be astounding - and to me literally unbelievable - if being a Game Master was the one thing you could be skillful at without preparation. I might buy the statement, "In our system, we will teach you processes to prepare for play and processes of play that will make your preparation very efficient and effective.", and such a thing would be a good thing to teach and educate prospective GMs of your system in.

But to be honest, while I've seen some good ideas about processes of preparation presented in systems like FATE, I don't think I've seen anything that leads me to think you could get by just doing that sort of preparation. I think the whole 'no prep' thing is a fad, contrary to the highest standards of DMing, and I'd encourage any GM I met that wanted to get better at what they do to prepare more.

However, that said, I also agree that there is more to DMing than just hard work. It's possible, even probable, to inculcate in yourself bad habits through poor preparation. For example, it's lethal to your skill as a GM to fantasize to much about how cool a scene is going to play out, and the exact particulars of how a scene is going to play out. It's lethal to your skill as a GM to engage in any ego tripping about how cool your story is going to be when this particular things happens. It's lethal to your skill as a GM to insist that having prepared something, that is going to be what is played during this session. It's lethal to your skill as a GM to fantasize about how impressed your players are going to be by the lethality and coolness of a particular NPC or monster, and how tense the combat is going to be.

It's likewise true that you could prepare a ton of stuff, and it all be crap. The length of a novel doesn't determine its quality. Until you've gotten feedback, you don't have opportunity to learn from your mistakes. And you have to be willing to learn from your mistakes.

But that's all bad preparation and bad attitude as a GM, not an inherent aspect of preparation.

However, I will say of all this sugar coated crap about how you can be a low prep GM, this article was one of the best and least offensive because far from telling players to just show up and wing it, it actually encouraged them to change how they looked a preparation. It's core advice - "Know your system.", "Know your genera.", "Prepare to be flexible." - is actually very good advice on how to prepare. But that's very different than saying you shouldn't, and "low" isn't the same as "none".