Planning sessions

[Evenglare]

Hello all, im running a pathfinder game now. I've been playing/DMing rpgs for about 11 years now. My question to you is... How do you plan your sessions? And im not necessarily looking at this for pathfinder, i run a multitude of games such as L5R, 4th, HERO, GURPS , D6, etc..

A more specific inquiry would be , has anyone come across any sort of sheets that are formatted for a consistent look. I've been looking to see how other adventures are written, and most of them vary in how they are written . Or how the adventure is presented. Myself , i basically take a sheet of paper, and write down how I would like the story to go, and then note relevant skill DCs and monsters/pages.

There really isn't any rhyme or reason to it, and i was wondering if anyone has a more consistent format they use that is easy to understand.

TLDR: Does anyone have a session/encounter planning sheet?

 

[Hand of Evil]

Best I can offer: http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...-dming-advice-links-fixed-july-20-2008-a.html

 

[Sammael]

Personally, when I have the time, I prepare a new document for each session. The document contains:

1. A brief recap of the previous session (1-2 paragraphs)
2. Major NPCs that are likely to be encountered (directly or indirectly) during the session, with summarized motivations and descriptions (1-2 lines each)
3. Locations that the party is likely to visit (1 paragraph each)
4. Major events (if any) that are going to occur regardless of what the party is doing (description varies)
5. A list of hooks for each PLAYER (depending on the type of player, i.e. method actor, role-player, butt-kicker, specialist... see Robin's Laws of Game Mastering)
6. Any hooks/events related to previous campaign events (specifically consequences of PCs actions)
7. Stat blocks for creatures/NPCs likely to be encountered in combat

 

[the Jester]

Generally speaking, I do my best to anticipate what the group will do and prepare for that.

The specifics really depend- if the party is likely to go to a combat-heavy mode, I'll prep combat stats for their likely adversaries. If they are likely to go to a heavily social environment for a session, I'll prep npc motivations, personalities, etc. I don't use a specific form or format for my prep; I try to make it appropriate to the prep in question, if that makes sense.

I don't plan stories out, really; I more or less let the pcs direct the flow of the game. For instance, my group just finished up a modified version of King of the Trollhaunt Warrens, and now they have about a half-dozen different plot hooks dangling to choose from. These include: Coordinates to a teleport circle in the Underdark, not far from a Drow city; pursuing their adversary Quah-Nomag to the Mountain of Ultimate Winter; returning to their territories and continuing to explore a megadungeon that they know of; returning to their territories to build up infrastructure/guard against (another) famine; (if their secondary pcs deliver the info) teleport coordinates with the name "Acererak" written below them; going to Bile Mountain to try to find an immoth with information they might need; trying to find the Count d'Aara, their nominal feudal lord, who they have never seen; or really, just about anything else.

 

[Verdande]

I "plan" for the upcoming session in the vaguest possible way:

1) I figure out what's already happened and take a few notes, mostly to remind myself of the more important things that have happened.
2) Put some thought into where it's possible that they'll go, and maybe doodle up a quick flowchart of a dungon (that is, if I don't create one about two minutes beforehand while they're making arrangements to go to said dungeon)
3) Think of some random names and features of people that they might meet, because I'm really quite awful at thinking up names on the fly
4) Pre-roll, en masse, the random treasure of said dungeon, if they're going to a dungeon, and then let them find what I've rolled more or less in order when they stumble on a treasure cache.
5) Everything else ("story", plot hooks, etc) is done on the fly at the table, as we collectively decide what's going to happen in the session.

All it takes is about five minutes of prep time, and the important stuff is still up to the players: where they're going, what they're doing, who they're meeting, etc.

I'm of the school of thought that says that "story" isn't something you plan, it's something that happens during play. This has the dual benefits of meaning that player input is the driving force behind the story and that I don't have to prep for hardly anything that doesn't involve random rolls (which can take some time), which is a lifesaver.

 

[Agamon]

DarkDungeons at RPG.net put the way I prep a game into words better than I've ever been able to: The Lazy Man's Guide to GMing

Granted, that's prepping a campaign, but how a session is prepped is in there, too (basically, there's not much to it, otherwise it wouldn't be called Lazy GMing).