The 15 Minute Dungeon Master?

[Spinachcat]

If I had some sort of system of tables or cards I could run through in 15 mins and come out with a great 'what are you going to do about it??' situation, well, that would make me a happy-camper DM for sure.

I fully agree. If the random events don't mean something important to the players and their characters, then the stories built from these events have no power. The implicit heroics of the question "what are YOU going to do about it" are tremendously important to get the player buy-in to fully engage in the adventure.

As for fixed vs. unfixed path, I will offer both options because not every group enjoys the whole plot laid out at once. If Luke knew he had to rescue a princess from a space station, his first action might have been to go to Mos Eisley instead of to Old Ben Kenobi. Definitely weaving cliches together is much more likely to produce a fresh result than stringing them A-B-C.

I am not as interested in bringing in player opinions into the 15 minute DM process - mostly because group discussions are rarely quick and cohesive - but instead I want to offer tools for the DM to tailor potential random events to stuff they know their player's enjoy and stuff that ties into their characters.

In my experience, player opinions are best gathered during chargen for the campaign to let the DM know what most interests the players and where they would like to see their characters develop and then follow up discussions in between game sessions to make sure everyone's needs are being met. The better the DM knows his players and knows their characters, the more he will be able to personalize the "what are YOU gonna do" aspect.

Random baby stolen is okay. The baby just christened by the cleric who was only born because the fighter saved the pregnant mother in the last adventure is a way better baby!

BTW, I noticed you made no response to my previous two suggestions for what to read, please trust me that if you skip over them you will be missing out big time.

I am familiar with SotC and I am definitely reading the TRAP ideas, however I tend to stay away from indie concepts because I do not enjoy narrativist gaming and I am very tired of the Forge-fueled hatred for traditional gamers. My stance is everyone is entitled to play anything they like in any way they like, but I will not tolerate my enjoyment of the RPG hobby being described as "brain damage" just because it does not fit the Forge's imperative of how to "properly" spend my leisure time.

On the indie/trad battleline, I am firmly on the trad side and I'm very happy with my choice. However, good advice is good advice and I will give that SotC chapter another read.

 

[Harr]

I think you have very solid and good ideas for what you want your book to be.

As for fixed vs. unfixed path, I will offer both options because not every group enjoys the whole plot laid out at once.

If you can make a system to offer up ideas that can be either 'strung-together' or 'scrambled' equally well, you will hit the bullseye, definitely. I agree that the all-at-once bit could be something relatively unique to my group.

I am not as interested in bringing in player opinions into the 15 minute DM process - mostly because group discussions are rarely quick and cohesive - but instead I want to offer tools for the DM to tailor potential random events to stuff they know their player's enjoy and stuff that ties into their characters.

I don't seek to use player opinions in the prep process... only in actual play. I don't really consider myself as using any 'indie' concepts in my game, either. Looking back, this is the supposed "system" I've ended up falling into:

- Spend a lot of time in my head coming up with a suitably complex starting situation (just in my daydreaming-time throughout the day, at work, in the shower, etc. I don't count this as actual prep time). I don't actually write any of it down, just hold it in my head.

- Spend 15-30 minutes coming up with 4-8 cool-feeling encounters or challenges following the TRAP factors, relating in general to the situation. I write these down, 1 encounter per page in a noteboook.

That would be prep. Game would be more or less:

- Start out by describing my complex starting situation. No roleplaying here, just me describing stuff as it is, everything that's happened to get things to the state they are in now. Players ask whatever they like or they think their characters have a right to know. In general it resembles more of a questions and answers session. This is just the intro, takes about 10 minutes.

- Once we have the 'situation' laid out and understood, I just ask, 'so considering all this, what do you wanna do?' switch to roleplaying mode, and let them run loose. I improvise EVERYTHING, maps, locations, descriptions, NPCs, that isn't an actual XP-dispensing 'encounter'.

- Then every once in a while, when I gague the timing to be right, I'll simply and invisibly 'toss in' one of my prepared encounters, adjusting the fluff to whatever the situation in the game happens to be at the moment. If one of my encounters is say a trap, and the players decided to walk off into the forest, my trap gets its fluff transformed into vines and poison thorns, while if they delved into a dungeon, maybe it becomes ropes and steel spikes. And so on.

- I try to save the biggest encounter for last, when I know game time's running out.

That's it.. and I do realize it may be very far from what a lot of people consider D&D to be like, still all my players and I consider ourselves to be 100% traditional, dice-rolling, power-tripping, kill-monsters-take-their-stuff-and-sell-it D&D gamers. What I do I do because it works, for us... for me it's either I prep it FAST or I might as well not prep anything at all.

I am familiar with SotC and I am definitely reading the TRAP ideas, however I tend to stay away from indie concepts because I do not enjoy narrativist gaming and I am very tired of the Forge-fueled hatred for traditional gamers. My stance is everyone is entitled to play anything they like in any way they like, but I will not tolerate my enjoyment of the RPG hobby being described as "brain damage" just because it does not fit the Forge's imperative of how to "properly" spend my leisure time.

On the indie/trad battleline, I am firmly on the trad side and I'm very happy with my choice. However, good advice is good advice and I will give that SotC chapter another read.

Without 'getting into it' as that would derail everything, I simply agree 100% with every word you wrote here

Anyway, hope some of that helps a bit more, from someone who's been forced into the 15-minute prep-slot by necessity more than anything else.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

So, we go from 15 minute adventuring day to 15 minute Dungeon Master in one Edition?!

 

[PrecociousApprentice]

I sure hope so. That is the Holy Grail in my opinion.

 

[That One Guy]

I think the word you were looking for is 'gear'...

That's it! Thank you!

Table 4: Problem
1 - mysterious funny smell

All I could think of was a scent that made people laugh.

 

[Fayd12]

I don't seek to use player opinions in the prep process... only in actual play. I don't really consider myself as using any 'indie' concepts in my game, either. Looking back, this is the supposed "system" I've ended up falling into:

- Spend a lot of time in my head coming up with a suitably complex starting situation (just in my daydreaming-time throughout the day, at work, in the shower, etc. I don't count this as actual prep time). I don't actually write any of it down, just hold it in my head.

- Spend 15-30 minutes coming up with 4-8 cool-feeling encounters or challenges following the TRAP factors, relating in general to the situation. I write these down, 1 encounter per page in a noteboook.

That would be prep. Game would be more or less:

- Start out by describing my complex starting situation. No roleplaying here, just me describing stuff as it is, everything that's happened to get things to the state they are in now. Players ask whatever they like or they think their characters have a right to know. In general it resembles more of a questions and answers session. This is just the intro, takes about 10 minutes.

- Once we have the 'situation' laid out and understood, I just ask, 'so considering all this, what do you wanna do?' switch to roleplaying mode, and let them run loose. I improvise EVERYTHING, maps, locations, descriptions, NPCs, that isn't an actual XP-dispensing 'encounter'.

- Then every once in a while, when I gague the timing to be right, I'll simply and invisibly 'toss in' one of my prepared encounters, adjusting the fluff to whatever the situation in the game happens to be at the moment. If one of my encounters is say a trap, and the players decided to walk off into the forest, my trap gets its fluff transformed into vines and poison thorns, while if they delved into a dungeon, maybe it becomes ropes and steel spikes. And so on.

- I try to save the biggest encounter for last, when I know game time's running out.

That's it.. and I do realize it may be very far from what a lot of people consider D&D to be like, still all my players and I consider ourselves to be 100% traditional, dice-rolling, power-tripping, kill-monsters-take-their-stuff-and-sell-it D&D gamers. What I do I do because it works, for us... for me it's either I prep it FAST or I might as well not prep anything at all.



Without 'getting into it' as that would derail everything, I simply agree 100% with every word you wrote here

Anyway, hope some of that helps a bit more, from someone who's been forced into the 15-minute prep-slot by necessity more than anything else.

Harr pretty much exactly describes what I do here. One of my pre-planned encounters is usually a climax that ties into the overall campaign. I have an idea of what the overall campaign climax will be from the very start, but the how/why changes as the PCs progress through the different sub-stages. This allows me to tell a story at the same time I'm running a sandbox.

Meaningful NPCs and NPC organizations are improtant for me. Making up how everything inter-relates is easier to do on the fly during the session since the PCs can see connections I didn't think of. If the connections they see sound cool to me then POOF, that magically becomes how I had always planned it to work. If I don't like the connections they draw it allows me to play on their pre-conceptions by having it end up being completely different.

 

[Colmarr]

3. Knights of your favorite flower have fallen from grace and need to have their reputation restored.

Knights of the Poppy?

Flippancy aside, I think there's something to be said for engaging the DM personally in adventure design.

 

[Saeviomagy]

That's not a curse that's SOP.

Well, the idea was to do it in the same way that cursed swords force you to use them in any combat.

Come to a small ditch? Suddenly there's a rope bridge there! Long chasm? Rope bridge! River that's already got a sturdy stone bridge? Rope bridge now!

Makes owning a mount pretty hellish.