D&D 5E How Would You Run a Game with 5 Mins Prep Time

[Zardnaar]

Tonight my wife wanted to play D&D with DM+ 1 player. I let her start at level 5 and she chose a water elemental Druid from the EN5ider Circles of Power article. Similar to a PHB Land Druid:Coast but you can turn into a water elemental at level 10.

And since it was DM+ her I let her use method 5 dice rolling from Unearthed Arcana. That is the 1E UA, heard of 4d6 drop the lowest? this one is something like 4-9 dice keep the best 3.

Str 6d6
Dex 5d6
Con 7d7
Int 4d6
Wisdom 8d6
Charisma 9d6

No surprise lots of really high scores but since it was the two iof us I did not care.

While she was making her character I had to make an adventure. With 15 minutes. I decided on a hexcrawl printed out the player map and DM map for Monkey Island for the Basic Fantasy RPG (B/X clone free adventure) borrowed the random encounter tables, mnade a 1d6 list of NPCs to meet, wrote a quick plot hook (washed up on island) and designed a quick modifier to the chance of having a random encounter. (1d10, 3 times per day encounter occurs on a 1 or a 1-2 if less than 50% health).

On most dyas she would only have 1 encounter, one day she got 2 but one of them was a weather event, the worst encounter as a sea one after she fixed her boat and got attacked by a giant crocodile in a storm (4d10 call lightnings)

Each keyed encounter on the map was a 100% chance of a random encounter. I made up names for non hostile NPCs, rolled a 1d6 for one of my "important" PC and winged it from there. 2 hour session and bobs your uncle.

Things she defeated solo.

4 dire wolves (solved with non combat/charm animal on pack leader)
Minotaur (Conjure Animals 2 dire wolves)
Giant Croc

and help from NPC

2 Manticores

By the end of the session I had a plot line about demonic ape men (Thanks Savage Tide AP) and Demogorgon cultists on Monkey Isle (Think Isle of Dread Ape themed).

Well thats what I did how would you run a game with 15 minutes of prep?

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Here's one example of how I've run a campaign with 15 minutes of prep:

Friends show up and want to play some games, I grab up my AD&D 2nd books and say "Alright, let's play... how does being students at a wizard academy sound?"

The players say that sounds good, so we proceed to roll up some characters that are all wizards with different specialties. As the players are determining bits of their characters, I'm establishing some details about the school, so that by the time about 15 minutes later the players are done rolling up characters I've got a doodled map of campus and a staff roster.

Then we just start playing improv style, with the characters finding themselves all sorts of hijinx to get involved in.

The campaign lasted sixth months, spawned 3 sequels, and is among the most talked about campaigns within my group despite having been a whim that struck more than 5 years ago now.

 

[Zardnaar]

Here's one example of how I've run a campaign with 15 minutes of prep:

Friends show up and want to play some games, I grab up my AD&D 2nd books and say "Alright, let's play... how does being students at a wizard academy sound?"

The players say that sounds good, so we proceed to roll up some characters that are all wizards with different specialties. As the players are determining bits of their characters, I'm establishing some details about the school, so that by the time about 15 minutes later the players are done rolling up characters I've got a doodled map of campus and a staff roster.

Then we just start playing improv style, with the characters finding themselves all sorts of hijinx to get involved in.

The campaign lasted sixth months, spawned 3 sequels, and is among the most talked about campaigns within my group despite having been a whim that struck more than 5 years ago now.

Heh we did something like that in 2E the all wizard party and winged it. You get the idea from the 2E Complete Wizards handbook?

 

[Rya.Reisender]

I really have no problems with coming up with a quick adventure on the spot (I'm a game designer, so...). Or I just use an adventure path I already played with others.
Character creation might be a bigger problem, but I guess you could just use pregens. WotC offers a bunch of them. Easy to print twice for me and my players.

When I make up something on the spot I flesh out things while going. It works pretty amazing in Pen&Paper. Like, you don't know anything as DM at first, only when a player actually asks you, you give any reply and from that moment on it has become a fact.
I also love to traditionally start with "NPC wants you to exterminate rats in his cellar". Last time I did "spontaneous" Pen&Paper with two friends, the NPC actually locked the cellar door and the players had to find an alternate way out. Plottwist!

 

[Li Shenron]

Well if time was really that short, I think it's near impossible to squeeze character creation in 5 minutes... Assuming you don't have pregens at hand, to speed it up as much as possible I'd probably:

- start at 1st level
- use standard array
- human PCs only
- pick Class but don't force secondary choices yet (e.g. allow to pick just a couple of known spells, leave the rest for later)
- pick Background (or even skip for now)
- use default equipment

I wouldn't worry about the adventure, coming up with something on the spot is easy. Make the rest up while the game is rolling, based on whatever comes to your mind, what the PCs do, and open the MM at some random page now and then.

 

[orderofthings]

Have a favorite 1-off from Dungeon Magazine.
"Old Man Katan and the Incredible Edible Dancing Mushroom Band" [issue# 41] is always in my folder for the quick go-to quest.

 

[Mercule]

Improv. I find town-based, investigative games to be the best, especially for solo games. When you have a group, a lot of the RP aspect comes between the players. For a solo game, you really need to be able to flesh out the NPCs. I also find it a lot easier to remember personalities and motives for NPCs in a town than I do to sketch a coherent map and populate it, on the fly.

 

[delericho]

Well thats what I did how would you run a game with 15 minutes of prep?

Assuming I didn't have something I could build off of, some issues of Dungeon easily to hand, or whatever...

I think I'd quickly brainstorm for "three things" on which to build a quick adventure, which probably means three monsters of an appropriate sort. Then I'd cobble together an ultra-quick plot, slot things into a rough "four act" structure, and then improvise like crazy.

 

[Corwin]

Here's one example of how I've run a campaign with 15 minutes of prep:

Friends show up and want to play some games, I grab up my AD&D 2nd books and say "Alright, let's play... how does being students at a wizard academy sound?"

The players say that sounds good, so we proceed to roll up some characters that are all wizards with different specialties. As the players are determining bits of their characters, I'm establishing some details about the school, so that by the time about 15 minutes later the players are done rolling up characters I've got a doodled map of campus and a staff roster.

Then we just start playing improv style, with the characters finding themselves all sorts of hijinx to get involved in.

The campaign lasted sixth months, spawned 3 sequels, and is among the most talked about campaigns within my group despite having been a whim that struck more than 5 years ago now.

Awesome!

Many, many moons ago (AD&D), as a teenager hanging out with my Uncle on a random Sunday, he turns to me and says, "So what's this D&D thing all about? You and your friends seem to have a lot of fun playing it."

An hour later, I've given the pitch and he's rolled up his first character. Your typical human fighter, "knight of the realm" type. I totally wing it as he is sent out on some otherwise innocuous mission for his king. But along the way, trouble finds him and a series of events spawn a campaign that would stretch nearly 5 years of regular, continuous play. Several friends quickly joined of course, over the next session or three, to round out the party. We even eventually came up with a name for the campaign, "Knightfall." Named so because there were a handful of memorable, hilarious moments throughout the campaign where my Uncle's fighter was knocked prone.

Like in your example, this also spawned a pretty cool sequel campaign years later. With the premise being a direct result of the epic conclusion from this one. Though that campaign only lasted a little less than a year it was still a lot of fun to run.

Side Note: My Uncle is still an avid gamer and a member of my regular game group.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Oof, once I was done panicking, I’d come up with an interesting scenario, an interesting NPC, and a nasty boss battle. The rest I’d have to improvise. So, for example, I’d start with a cursed library that is always burning. A secretive and cursed librarian that wants to acquire more books for the everburning collection. And finally, the boss could be a Salamander that hides in the archives below.

That gives me the three pillars – exploration, role-playing, and combat.

Alternately, I would turn to the random dungeon tables in the 1e DMG and roll things up as we went. Those used to come in quite handy.