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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8248211" data-attributes="member: 42582">Thinking through this, in order of prep (as best I can rank it from most to least) for the last 5 ongoing (ie not one-shot) games I've started:* 4e Dark Sun - we did PC build, I described a bit of the backstory established in the book, and then one of the PCs wrote a "kicker" for his PC that had him killing a foe in the arena just as the cries went up in the crowd that the tyrant (ie the sorcerer-king of Tyr) had been killed. So no prep literally authored by me, but I'd read the book and introduced some key elements to my players. We used a city map of Tyr to frame where the PCs subsequently went and what they did. * Cortex+ Heroic LotR/MERP - I did the PC build (an elf, a ranger, a dwarf, Gandalf) and brought along my copies of LotR and The Complete Guide to Middle Earth. The players chose their PCs and then we discussed what had brought each of them to Rivendell and why they had to head out into the wild. * Classic Traveller - the players rolled up their PCs, and I rolled a starting world, and we all made up some backstory around that, and then I rolled a random patron and used a few other worlds that I'd rolled up in advance as a basis to invent her mission and present it to the players (via their PCs interactions with her). * Burning Wheel - the had mostly rolled up their PCs in advance but we settled on Beliefs and then I started them in Hardby in the World of Greyhawk. I chose Hardby because it is ruled by a magic-using Gynarch and two of the PCs had connections to potentially sinister sorcerers; and also Hardby is in a good location in the middle of the map with a nearby place (Celene) for the elf PC to come from, with the Bright Desert and Cairn Hills nearby for ancient tombs, a port leading to possible maritime adventure, etc. * Cortex+ Heroic Vikings - I did the PC gen (a berserker, a swordmaster, a troll-ish type PC, a shapeshifter, a shaman/oracle-type) having deliberately made them adaptable either to Viking or Japanese fantasy. I turned up with the PCs and we took a vote and Vikings won (because some of us had already played a multi-year Japanese-themed RM campaign). We then discussed why the PCs had to leave the village on a quest together. And started from there.For that last one, the prep was literally nothing more than these PCs are in a fantasy Viking world having to go on a quest. That's not nothing, as Vikings brings quite a bit with it - cold winters, rugged hills as you trudge to the north, trolls and giants, the Ragnarok, etc - but there was no map or world history or anything like that. The first session established a giants' steading in the hills (inspired by my memories of G1) and a dungeon. For later sessions I did do a bit more prep - of NPCs/creatures and coming up with Scene Distinctions for a village being attacked by Ragnarok-inspired reavers and for a high place in the mountains.EDIT: Left out * Prince Valiant - prep there consisted in me having read the rulebook and saying "Let's try this out". The players built their knights. I flipped through the Episode Book (which I hadn't read yet) and seeing one by Kenneth Hite that looked interesting, and finding a more "procedural" one too (a tournament) and a similarly "procedural" challenge from a knight in the rulebook.</blockquote>

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