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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LordEntrails" data-source="post: 8931407" data-attributes="member: 6804070">I second the "Don't" prep so hard. Don't make detailed solutions. Don't prep more than the next session except for general concepts. Make outlines of the power forces in your world. Give them a non-detailed list of resources (lots of cultists, some politicians... or Unlimited kobolds with some ogre muscle... or numerous merchants with caravans, hired muscle... or numerous cheap taverns and a few warehouses...) and what the motivations of the group are. Probably add a leaders name and description (Bob, a mysterious ogre).Have a set of generic encounters and locations. Such as a merchant caravan with guards, a group of devils, a strike force of horrors. And then locations, a forest road, a tavern with a hidden basement, a desert keep, etc. Then mix and match those as needed, and add more than one group of NPCs when needed to make the encounter appropriately hard.Doing all that will give you a set of tools to create a hundred different challenges on the spur of the moment. So when the players go off the rails you have something to throw at them. "Oh, you find a map of the nearby forest with a x marked deep in the forest." Now you can throw a random caravan they can cross while on their way (if they go) and then a hunting lodge infested with devils.As for the initial challenge you plan for the next session, as has been said, you don't have to work out exact solutions. General ideas of what might be possible is all that's needed. So they could probably use teleport, or perhaps they could summon the solution, or they might be able to planar shift into the closed room, or...Oh, and don't worrying about balancing the encounters. They party will either figure it out, or run away and come back later. For instance, my party was about level 14 and I used the map from Riverguard Keep (PotA) and put something like 40 devils (chain devils and others) and a couple of BBEG's and placed them about the place (where the watches were setup, were the misc were lurking, etc) and placed some guards and wards and symbol traps and then let the party figure it out. All the encounter guidelines said is should have been a 3 or 4 times deadly encounter. But the party figured it out, and had a blast.</blockquote>

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