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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4977289" data-attributes="member: 4937">Keeping track of timed effects was always dicey.  I can remember alot of times in AD&D going, "When did you cast X again?  Is that still up?", and resolving the situation with a shrug and a, "I guess it goes down next round."So I'm really thinking I could be into effect/status cards to help keep track of buffs.I had a 1st edition 'character sheet' that extended out to about 50 pages.  It had a one page attribute/stat sheet listing various game related numbers, and a second devoted to known and memorized spells.  Then I had another page listing commonly carried possessions, and another for my owned spell books.  I had lists of holdings (buildings, ships, etc.) and the possessions and sums of cash stored there as well as maps for the more important ones.  I had lists of expert hirelings.  Lists of henchman and followers and their character sheets.  Then I had lists of notes, like known contacts/NPCs in various cities and so forth.  That's extreme, but it does I think show that if you are deeply interactive with the world, even if you were using a diceless rules light system, the amount of overhead can be extremely heavy.One of the reasons I've come to like class based systems more than skill based ones.Can't be done regardless of the system.  With that little prep time, any game is practically extemporaneous and is going to have really limited depth.  For an 8 hour session, that's like 48 minutes of note making.  For the quality of notes I'd generate in that time, I could run the game off the cuff with very little difference in quality because all you were really doing in 45 minutes is taking down your first unrefined thoughts with no real research and rather little brainstorming.  Real play to prep time should be closer to 1:1 IMO.  Any less than that, and you are cheating your players.  2:1 certainly wouldn't hurt, but I understand that no one (who is an adult) really has that much time unless they do it for a living.Prep is work.  There is no getting around that.  Stating up foes and such is the short part of good prep work in all but the most complex systems (I'm looking at you GURPS), and even then its easier to take short cuts with stats and do them on the fly than it is to take short cuts in your world building or story plotting or dungeon creation.  A good map takes alot of effort.  Inventing NPC's and working them up in your head to the point you can really bring them to life isn't trivial.  Don't kid yourself into thinking that you are going to be a great DM and not do alot of work.  Even with a published module, it's probably a 1:1 prep time to play time effort to familiarize yourself with the module, expand it and flesh it out beyond the bare skeleton imparted by the 16 or 32 pages of text, and deal with the ambiguities, textual errors, and potential pitfalls in plotting.I've done this before, but any DM that thinks that they can do that consistantly probably has never experienced the alternative play experience.  Moreover, a beginning DM simply can't pull this off because he has no stock of ideas and experiences to pull from.</blockquote>

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