Jeff Carlsen
Adventurer
I just finished my second highly successful session using a new method of game prep, and I figured I would share, in case you found it useful.
The gist: Instead of planning out complex scenes and encounters, I use my prep time to gather simple lists of ideas that I can mix together to create scenes and encounters during play. So far, my hand written session notes require just the front and back of a sheet of college rule.
I was inspired by Mike Mearls's recent article, Randomness: the Clever DM's Helper. Those short little 1d6 charts are kind of brilliant. Six items turns out to be a useful amount of variety for a list of ideas. Few enough to remain on point, but plenty to require some creative ideas to fill out the last couple. So, I pretty much used them for everything. A list of monsters I want to use, a list of interesting locations or scenes, a list of one sentence interludes, and a list of possible rewards. This takes surprisingly little time. After that, I create any NPCs, Custom Monsters, or items I might need.
Here's an example, pulled from today's notes:
Background: The PCs are trapped in the Plane of Shadow, and are exploring the undead controlled city of Evernight in search of a portal back home. Note that this is session prep. I've already done a quick one-page outline of the adventure as a whole (good for several sessions), and a fair amount of reading of setting material.
GOALS
* Make the players think that one false move will get them killed.
* Be willing to kill someone.
QUESTS
* Find a portal out of the shadowfell
- Ask around about the Thayan Enclave
- Investigate rumors of weak spots between the planes
- Find a helpful stranger
ENCOUNTERS
d6 Monster CR
1 Zombies 1/4
2 Ghouls 1
3 Ghasts 2
4 Dark Ones 4 Use Spy NPC as basis
5 Vampire Spawn 5
6 Vampire 13
LOCATIONS / SCENES
1. Corpse Market
2. Lamantha's Mortuary (temporary safe place to stay)
3. Someone is captured for a "Funeral" (buried alive for ghouls to eat later)
4. Temple of Filth (Undead place of worship)
5. Meet a friendly guide (who serves a beast who wants to consume the PCs emotions)
6. Meet up with the manhunters (cannibal hunters from last week in the burning forest)
INTERLUDES
1. A pack of ghouls demand a humanoid show his medallion of citizenship.
2. Castle Nowhere reappears
3. A slave auction (possibly for a captured friendly NPC) - "Rare Elf meat"
4. One of the NPCs disappears in the night
5. Dark One pickpockets a PC
6. Someone spills a cart full of body parts.
REWARDS
1. 70 gp each
2. 140 gp each
3. 150 gp each
4. 140 gp each
5. 200 sp, 40 gp each
6. (hoard) 7 carved bone statuettes (25gp each)
NON-PLAYER CHARACTERS
Lamantha
Necromancer, craftsman, and healer for the undead
------------------------------------------------
Trait: Quiet
Ideal: Privacy, work ethic
Bond: She is loyal to her customers
Flaw: She knows about teh pool of daylight in the Temple of Filth
------------------------------------------------
* Paces when thinking
* She dresses in clean, neutral clothes of fine make
Lamantha runs a mortuary. She is skilled at making useful items out of corpses, and regularly helps heal or stitch up the undead. She sometimes prepares living bodies for "funerals".
Liara
Bard, works with the Phantasmal Slayer
------------------------------------------------
Trait: Honest (hard to reconcile with her willingness to deceive in order to serve people to the slayer.
Ideal: Whimsy; people
Bond: Loyal to the Phantasmal slayer, and her friend Pamor
Flaw: Foolhardy bravery; feeds people to the slayer.
------------------------------------------------
* Pink Hair, very long and braided back
* Enunciates overly clearly
Liara is a bard who travels the planes. She is dependent on the phantasmal slayer for a means of travel.
As you can see, I always start with Goals and Quests. I find it important to determine up front what I want to accomplish as a DM, and what the Players are going to try to accomplish.
Then I pick out monsters. I'm not really building encounters, though ideas might come to mind. Still, the chart is useful for quickly creating one when I need it.
Locations and scenes are directly related to the PC Quests. They represent opportunities for rest, information, or simply events that I want to have happen. I don't have to use them all.
Interludes are more about adding texture and nuance to the world. They might play into my DM goals, or just give a specific PC something interesting to do.
Rewards are pre-rolled rewards. I tend to create five single encounter rewards, and one hoard. I might stick a magic item or two in there somewhere. Then I can use random chance or a flight of inspiration as to when they may appear, if at all.
---
You might notice that ideas may start vague early in my notes, but become more solid later. For example, I have an encounter of (meeting a helpful stranger). I didn't know who that stranger was at the time, only that they will eventually try to feed them to a emotion eating monster I haven't created yet. Then I took a walk to get coffee and brainstorm. When I returned, I created Liara, the planeswalking bard.
I imagined her meeting the PCs at any of a number of locations. But, as an example of how this method works, here's what really happened: The PCs were attempting to dig up a cohort who had been buried alive in one of the Ghouls ritualistic "funerals". I felt like something needed to spot them, so I rolled an encounter, and four ghouls wandered into the graveyard.
The PCs hid in the open grave, so I had the ghouls start digging up someone who had been buried nearby. They were there for some food. After this body had been unburied, the PCs lept out and drove off the ghouls. The cleric checked the dug up body to see if it was also buried alive. I determined that this was a great opportunity to introduce Liara.
And so everything came together. The PCs drove the action, and I managed to get a very dangerous NPC into their mix without anyone being the wiser. Of course, now she's going to be conflicted about murdering the people who saved her life. There's potential in that.
Anyway, I hope you find this useful.
The gist: Instead of planning out complex scenes and encounters, I use my prep time to gather simple lists of ideas that I can mix together to create scenes and encounters during play. So far, my hand written session notes require just the front and back of a sheet of college rule.
I was inspired by Mike Mearls's recent article, Randomness: the Clever DM's Helper. Those short little 1d6 charts are kind of brilliant. Six items turns out to be a useful amount of variety for a list of ideas. Few enough to remain on point, but plenty to require some creative ideas to fill out the last couple. So, I pretty much used them for everything. A list of monsters I want to use, a list of interesting locations or scenes, a list of one sentence interludes, and a list of possible rewards. This takes surprisingly little time. After that, I create any NPCs, Custom Monsters, or items I might need.
Here's an example, pulled from today's notes:
Background: The PCs are trapped in the Plane of Shadow, and are exploring the undead controlled city of Evernight in search of a portal back home. Note that this is session prep. I've already done a quick one-page outline of the adventure as a whole (good for several sessions), and a fair amount of reading of setting material.
GOALS
* Make the players think that one false move will get them killed.
* Be willing to kill someone.
QUESTS
* Find a portal out of the shadowfell
- Ask around about the Thayan Enclave
- Investigate rumors of weak spots between the planes
- Find a helpful stranger
ENCOUNTERS
d6 Monster CR
1 Zombies 1/4
2 Ghouls 1
3 Ghasts 2
4 Dark Ones 4 Use Spy NPC as basis
5 Vampire Spawn 5
6 Vampire 13
LOCATIONS / SCENES
1. Corpse Market
2. Lamantha's Mortuary (temporary safe place to stay)
3. Someone is captured for a "Funeral" (buried alive for ghouls to eat later)
4. Temple of Filth (Undead place of worship)
5. Meet a friendly guide (who serves a beast who wants to consume the PCs emotions)
6. Meet up with the manhunters (cannibal hunters from last week in the burning forest)
INTERLUDES
1. A pack of ghouls demand a humanoid show his medallion of citizenship.
2. Castle Nowhere reappears
3. A slave auction (possibly for a captured friendly NPC) - "Rare Elf meat"
4. One of the NPCs disappears in the night
5. Dark One pickpockets a PC
6. Someone spills a cart full of body parts.
REWARDS
1. 70 gp each
2. 140 gp each
3. 150 gp each
4. 140 gp each
5. 200 sp, 40 gp each
6. (hoard) 7 carved bone statuettes (25gp each)
NON-PLAYER CHARACTERS
Lamantha
Necromancer, craftsman, and healer for the undead
------------------------------------------------
Trait: Quiet
Ideal: Privacy, work ethic
Bond: She is loyal to her customers
Flaw: She knows about teh pool of daylight in the Temple of Filth
------------------------------------------------
* Paces when thinking
* She dresses in clean, neutral clothes of fine make
Lamantha runs a mortuary. She is skilled at making useful items out of corpses, and regularly helps heal or stitch up the undead. She sometimes prepares living bodies for "funerals".
Liara
Bard, works with the Phantasmal Slayer
------------------------------------------------
Trait: Honest (hard to reconcile with her willingness to deceive in order to serve people to the slayer.
Ideal: Whimsy; people
Bond: Loyal to the Phantasmal slayer, and her friend Pamor
Flaw: Foolhardy bravery; feeds people to the slayer.
------------------------------------------------
* Pink Hair, very long and braided back
* Enunciates overly clearly
Liara is a bard who travels the planes. She is dependent on the phantasmal slayer for a means of travel.
As you can see, I always start with Goals and Quests. I find it important to determine up front what I want to accomplish as a DM, and what the Players are going to try to accomplish.
Then I pick out monsters. I'm not really building encounters, though ideas might come to mind. Still, the chart is useful for quickly creating one when I need it.
Locations and scenes are directly related to the PC Quests. They represent opportunities for rest, information, or simply events that I want to have happen. I don't have to use them all.
Interludes are more about adding texture and nuance to the world. They might play into my DM goals, or just give a specific PC something interesting to do.
Rewards are pre-rolled rewards. I tend to create five single encounter rewards, and one hoard. I might stick a magic item or two in there somewhere. Then I can use random chance or a flight of inspiration as to when they may appear, if at all.
---
You might notice that ideas may start vague early in my notes, but become more solid later. For example, I have an encounter of (meeting a helpful stranger). I didn't know who that stranger was at the time, only that they will eventually try to feed them to a emotion eating monster I haven't created yet. Then I took a walk to get coffee and brainstorm. When I returned, I created Liara, the planeswalking bard.
I imagined her meeting the PCs at any of a number of locations. But, as an example of how this method works, here's what really happened: The PCs were attempting to dig up a cohort who had been buried alive in one of the Ghouls ritualistic "funerals". I felt like something needed to spot them, so I rolled an encounter, and four ghouls wandered into the graveyard.
The PCs hid in the open grave, so I had the ghouls start digging up someone who had been buried nearby. They were there for some food. After this body had been unburied, the PCs lept out and drove off the ghouls. The cleric checked the dug up body to see if it was also buried alive. I determined that this was a great opportunity to introduce Liara.
And so everything came together. The PCs drove the action, and I managed to get a very dangerous NPC into their mix without anyone being the wiser. Of course, now she's going to be conflicted about murdering the people who saved her life. There's potential in that.
Anyway, I hope you find this useful.
when I have to create a new NPC on the fly, I strike the name, write a one or two word mnemonic and importantly the very next day fill in the details in my notes while the info is still fresh. 
