Preparing for games

[punkorange]

According to my players, I'm a pretty good DM, however I never prepare and for the most part my sessions are on the fly. Not that that is neciserally a bad thing, as the ability to wing it is vital, but I feel that I need to work on prepping for a game. What tips do you have to offer for game prepping. I'm preparing to run the life's bazaar and shackled city using arcana evolved so I have a lot of conversions and preparing to do, but I sadly am unsure of the best way to go about it. So far I've got a three rign binder with some file seperators, and that's a start.

When you DM do you read the "read the grey text aloud" very often, or just work the room description into your continuas descriptions?

 

[LostSoul]

According to my players, I'm a pretty good DM, however I never prepare and for the most part my sessions are on the fly. ... I feel that I need to work on prepping for a game.

Why do you feel that you need to work on prepping for a game? I think if your players are happy with how it's going, your style is really working out for you. Or am I missing something?

 

[diaglo]

i prep about 4 hours for every 1 hour of face-to-face.

have a similar party as a test party and run them thru your scenarios. test out things and use tactics similar to what the party normally does.

of course, during actual play you will still have to wing things.

but at least you have some of the guess work done. some of the NPC names down. their personalities. the items they will use or have. the hooks you can add. and so on.

 

[Dr_Rictus]

Why do you feel that you need to work on prepping for a game? I think if your players are happy with how it's going, your style is really working out for you. Or am I missing something?

I think you're missing the fact that one can always improve. Even if punkorange's players are happy now, perhaps there are things he could prepare that would make them more happy.

I find that the key preparation for me is organizing all my creature statistics so the important information is ready at hand. Working out of the modules or out of the monster manual is too cumbersome for me, and drags down the excitement in combat. So I prepare summary sheets ahead of the run with stat blocks converted into a standard tabular form so I know exactly where to find everything. In particular, I organize immunities, SR, and DR so they're listed right near the monster's hit points, so I don't forget to take these things into account before assigning damage. That's just something that works for me.

As to boxed text, I use it, but I find it unsatisfying and feel that I should actually be doing more prep to brief myself on descriptions so I can do more of it extemporaneously. See http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dd/20050916a for a good discussion of boxed text issues, by the way.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Many years ago, I used to run games on the fly. I keep on meaning to give it a try again, just to see if I still can.

As far as preparing, my goal is to minimize the amount of page flipping I have to do, the number of times I have to stop the game to look something up. I always jot down what book and which page I need to look up. Monster HPs, DCs / Siege Checks, treasure, and any exceptions are always jotted down.

 

[punkorange]

Why do you feel that you need to work on prepping for a game? I think if your players are happy with how it's going, your style is really working out for you. Or am I missing something?

DR got it right, it's not about my players. My players are happy with my current DMing, the problem lies with me not being happy with it, I feel I could do better. I tend to be lazy about keeping things organized which leads to inconsistency in games, and I don't particularly like saying "Okay, you return to the shop, insert name here welcomes you back and ask how the travel went."

 

[Shadowslayer]

DR got it right, it's not about my players. My players are happy with my current DMing, the problem lies with me not being happy with it, I feel I could do better. I tend to be lazy about keeping things organized which leads to inconsistency in games, and I don't particularly like saying "Okay, you return to the shop, insert name here welcomes you back and ask how the travel went."

Well, bear in mind that's all you really need. Everything else is flavor.

So, I guess you need to know exactly what you want to improve. I always write out an encounter roster with stats and hit points etc, so its all in the same place. I like to keep my PC cheat sheet up to date. Other helpful things might be an NPC roster and a location roster (significant places in town etc) Both of these can have a simple point form summary and a page number. I find those last two quite handy. Don't need the whole stat block, just a summary and page number. ALWAYS a page number.

By the way, the location/NPC roster for me assumes a small or medium sized town. Doing this for a large project might get a bit unweildy. Beware that if you're doing a lot of conversions to something prepublished, it can sometimes take a lot more work than writing your own stuff.

Hope this helps.

 

[wedgeski]

DR got it right, it's not about my players. My players are happy with my current DMing, the problem lies with me not being happy with it, I feel I could do better. I tend to be lazy about keeping things organized which leads to inconsistency in games, and I don't particularly like saying "Okay, you return to the shop, insert name here welcomes you back and ask how the travel went."

I have several shops run by <NPCNAME> and his good friend <TODO>.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

DR got it right, it's not about my players. My players are happy with my current DMing, the problem lies with me not being happy with it, I feel I could do better. I tend to be lazy about keeping things organized which leads to inconsistency in games, and I don't particularly like saying "Okay, you return to the shop, insert name here welcomes you back and ask how the travel went."

I am familiar with this problem. I have tired to deal with it through a three ring binder. In it I have log sheets that I created. The session log sheet is a quick session summary and a listing of NPCs the party met and the towns and locations they visited. If the NPCs, towns and/or locations are, I feel, worth more detail, I have sections in the binder containing log sheets specific to those. On the session log sheet I will list the page number of the NPC/Town/location log sheet for quick reference. Each log sheet also cross references to the other logs. I also have an information/rumors sheet that lists what the party learned, from whom, where and the truth of the information.

I have had little chance to use it since my game group broke up as players moved away, so I don't know how well it will work as the game gets longer and the sections get larger, but the little bit I did use it went fairly well.

 

[Crothian]

When you DM do you read the "read the grey text aloud" very often, or just work the room description into your continuas descriptions?

Its okay to have the grey terxt describtions but don't read them word for word. Place itn some emotion into the voice and look at the players when you talk to them. Looking at the page and readign it word for word is not good showman ship.

Ad libbing is an important skill for the DM but so is being able to prepare a game in advance. With advanced planning a DM usually is able to place in a little more depth of characters, oif plots, and ideas. It also gives the DM the chance to come up with something and see if it works with everything else and then go back and change it before the session happens. When ad libbing you can't do that as easily.

It is a good for DM s to continually try new things nad improve their skills.