D&D 5E Prepping your campaign

[Imaculata]

-How do you prep your campaigns?
-How much do you write before hand, and how much do you improvize?
-What is on your table during a session?
-And how long do your sessions generally last?

As you can see in the pictures, I prep quite a lot, and our sessions generally last up to 8 hours. But then again, we don't play every week. So when we do play, we get a lot done. I tend to overprepare. I create maps of important locations, and write out elaborate descriptions of locations and npc's. I may end up not having to use a lot of it, and I tend to memorize most of it by writing it out. I find comfort in having it also written down, in case my memory fails me, or the players revisit a location, and I want to get all the details right again. Because it can be kind of hard to remember all the details after the players go back to a location from many sessions ago.

I make a lot of use of the laptop, both for looking up rules and documents, but also for playing music and sound effects. We have the Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master Guide always on the table, along with a campaign specific book (in this case Stormwrack, for our pirate campaign). Any other books, such as a Monster Manual, are always within arm's reach, but we only grab it when we need it.

So, how do you prep?

 

[Li Shenron]

-How do you prep your campaigns?

Reading the material over and over, thinking too much about details and extra plot ideas, creating printouts (some go pinned on the DM's screen), picking Lego minifigs and bricks.

-How much do you write before hand, and how much do you improvize?

I prepare as much as I can, but then of course I have to improvise as soon as the PCs take the first unexpected decision.

-What is on your table during a session?

DM's side:
- custom DM's screen
- adventure print-outs (e.g. maps and monsters stats)
- notebook & pencil
- dice

Player's side:
- character sheets & pencil
- dice

Centre of the table:
- Lego minifigs and some bricks-made environment elements, distance-measuring Lego stick (no battlemat)

-And how long do your sessions generally last?

3-5 hours.

 

[TwoSix]

-How do you prep your campaigns?
-How much do you write before hand, and how much do you improvize?
-What is on your table during a session?
-And how long do your sessions generally last?

I'm much more of a "prep, lol" kind of DM. I tend to think of some interesting ideas for encounters in the car or in the shower, focusing on transition scenes and ties to the PCs. I jot down some names and concepts, and sometimes a rough flowchart of how some of the scenes might connect to each other. If I have an idea for an interesting fight, I might write some notes on the monsters involved or some interesting abilities the main baddie might have.

At the table, I have the big 3 books, my notebook, and maybe a campaign setting book if I'm using a published setting. Oh, and dice. One of my players has a ton of minis and game tiles, so we use those. I use my phone sometimes, to look up SRD questions or if I've emailed myself some ideas before the game.

Sessions tend to last about 4 hours or so.

 

[CydKnight]

I am not very creative and I am not very improvisational. Conversely, I am very task-oriented and a solid planner.

Generally, I do not create my own homebrew but beg, borrow, and steal all content that I put into the campaigns for my players. I simply adjust the content when and if it is necessary to fit into the campaign.

Preparation for me typically ranges between 1 and 2 hours or prep-time for every hour of game time. Some DMs may loathe spending this amount of time in preparation but I actually enjoy it as much as the game sessions. I also see it as necessary since I am not good at improvising. This allows me to prepare for multiple paths that could be taken by the PCs in a typical session. Knowing their strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies helps me with that.

Sometimes, but rarely, the characters will do something I did not foresee. When this happens I wing it as best I can but I think the amount of time spent planning has helped me with this as well. The clearer your picture of the campaign world and it's content, the easier it is for me to improvise even I'm not very good at it.

Items I keep at the campaign session table include relevant campaign material including outlines, descriptions, pre-generated encounter sheets, NPC/Monster Stat blocks, pre-generated magic item index cards, and whatever else I feel could be relevant to a given session. I also always have on hand the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, Monster Manual, Volo's Guide to Monsters, Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, customized DM Screen, dice with dice tower, PC stat-block tents, miniatures specific to the current session, pre-assembled dungeon tiles and/or erasable grid mat, two #2 pencils with erasers, music player with pre-selected campaign music, and a tumbler full of whatever beverage I choose to drink.

 

[iserith]

-How do you prep your campaigns?

As little as possible. Playing online means I do have to do some visual aids like maps, art, and tokens. That's where most of my prep is focused.

-How much do you write before hand, and how much do you improvize?

Presuming the campaign isn't a module or the like, I improvise almost all of it. But it's collaborative improvisation - the players add stuff, too, and I build on it.

-What is on your table during a session?

A laptop, a glass of ice, and a bottle of Jameson. Irish whiskey helps with improv.

-And how long do your sessions generally last?

4 hours, weekly.

 

[S'mon]

I'm more of the "I should have probably read that adventure before the players arrived..." kind of GM.

 

[Soul Stigma]

I use Realm Works, so the majority of my prep is on the laptop. I don't have a lot of printouts or anything. When combat occurs, PCs and monsters get ported from Realm Works to Hero Lab, where I track combat.

As for prep, I don't flesh out more than the PCs will reasonably encounter. So, map-wise, I keep things centered on the area where the PCs are adventuring and continue to work on other locations as I feel like it, lol.

I try to maintain "encounter sets" that I can drop in for their level, so that I can have a combat encounter ready to go if needed, and within Realm Works I have unassigned NPCs (just a name, gender, etc.) which then become more fleshed out during play should I call on one. At that point they move from my spare NPC container to whichever location container they now belong.

I can't recommend Lone Wolf Development's software packages strongly enough - it costs real money and there's a learning curve (with Realm Works), but once you get familiar with things it is amazing how easy campaign prep and management becomes.

 

[hawkeyefan]

-How do you prep your campaigns?

I kind of have two levels....the long term prep, and the short term prep. So pretty much Campaign Prep and Session prep.

I have a general idea of what the point of the campaign is, and where things are going, but this can change depending on PC actions and so on. So I keep it fluid. My campaign has a very elaborate backstory that involves a lot of D&D lore, and that's all set in stone, but what it all means for the campaign and what the PCs do is not. I want to keep it open so that they can do whatever they want.

Then, at the session level, I usually jot down a handful of bullet points. These are based on what happened in the last session, and where things are going, and what I think might happen this week. So I make this bullet list and then use that as a guideline. I prepare the likely villains that I'll need, and then use them as a guideline, too. I usually have a few villains that I can re-purpose....so if the PCs seem likely to be headed into a conflict with a thieves' guild, but then veer and decide to take on a mercenary company....I have a statblock that I can adjust on the fly from a guild member to a merc.

So I'd say the majority of my prep is for the long term stuff, as far as what's written down. In between sessions, I give a lot of thought to what I want to do the next session based on how things have gone, but I only jot down a few bullet points, never going beyond one page, and very seldom more than like 5 or 6 sentences in total.

-How much do you write before hand, and how much do you improvize?

I write a lot of notes for myself...the history of this organization, or the origin of this villain, and things like that. Anything that's in the past is what I want to kind of pin down to some extent so that I can accurately decide things on the fly in play. I find that if I know what an NPC has been through, and what his goals are, then I can very easily determine his reactions to the PCs and what they do.

I'd say that my campaign is pretty equal parts prep and improvisation.

-What is on your table during a session?

A large grid map that I can use to jot down info, or draw out situations, or that we can use for minis for complex or more tactically oriented encounters. I have a side table where I have a screen, the core books at hand, and a clipboard with my notes and a blank sheet for HP tracking and the like. We use index cards for initiative tracking, so I have those handy, too.

-And how long do your sessions generally last?

It varies a bit...we've recently moved from a biweekly game on Friday nights to a weekly game on Tuesday nights. The Friday sessions tended to be like 6 to 8 hour marathons, but Tuesdays are more like 4 hours.

 

[TheNoremac42]

How do you prep your campaigns?
Graph paper maps, .txt files for NPCs and plot points, excel spreadsheets for random encounters and/or map legends.

How much do you write before hand, and how much do you improvise?
Too much on both counts. I often write story points that don't get used and improvise things like encounters and loot that could've been figured out beforehand.

What is on your table during a session?
What table, lol? We sit on couches, keep our sheets on our laps, roll dice on the floor or nightstand (except it's not next to a bed, so I don't know what you'd call it), and I alternate having my laptop on my lap, next to me, or on a tv tray.

How long do your sessions generally last?
Depend if we have to work the next morning. Sometimes we can go from about 6pm-ish to 3 in the morning. We try to meet weekly, but sometimes people are busy or out of town.

 

[TallIan]

Good improve comes from good planning.

I usually run published adventures, as I don't really have the time to commit to creating my own stuff. My planning focuses on learning the over arching plot line. More specific details (locations and NPCs) I tend to keep as generic as possible and slot them in as required. My players will never know that the Wizard's Hat Inn was meant to be Haventon in the other valley.

This way it doesn't matter where the players go I can put interesting encounters in front of them and avoid having them feel railroaded when their choice of direction fizzles out due to lack of prepared material. It is very easy to move vital plot clues to a generic NPC that has just enough background to make him appear important, rather than bandit number 739 drops this letter that has no right to be anywhere near here.

I always have a list of names, adjectives and professions handy to make stuff up on the fly (mix and match is your friend). Bits of dungeon/tavern/manor and some level appropriate bad guys, from mooks all the way up to a BBEG. A DM I used to play with also had pictures to hand. Then your only improve is the why. You could even just chance the names of things. No one will know if you say goblins attack while you have a human bandit stat block behind your screen.