D&D 5E What is your usual amount of prep?

[Sunseeker]

Well, as I've mentioned, my sessions are about 8-14 hours long so I usually spend 4-5 hours a week prepping. This is specific prepping, ie: coming up with exactly what players are most likely to encounter based on their location and available choices. Usually this consists of 2-3 hours of postulating various ideas and then an hour of inspired creativity to put it all together. General prepping to develop the world, the plots within it, major players and so on is much more sporadic and I couldn't give you a specific number.

 

[Lanliss]

My plan is for them to wind up in a goblin cave, and have a chance to save a prisoner. The prisoner turns out to be a peddler of Wondrous Wares from Way Away. If they save them he gives them free pick off his cart of Wonders. Think I will have them do an Insight (Arcana) check, to see how good their natural magic radar is. I do not plan for this to set a precedent, just a chance for both them and me to explore the Wondrous possibilities of Magic, by dipping a toe into the pool. Think they will get a choice of three items, which will be different depending on what they roll for their radar check. Maybe their radar is horrible and they grab a useless charm that was near something good, or maybe they hit it big and get a belt of Ogre strength. Should be fun to see.

On the up side, after reading on both these forums and the WotC forums, I feel more than ready to actually do something with my knowledge, and numerous tips I have picked up by lurking.

 

[HEEGZ]

I wouldn't give out free items like that. I'd give them some easy adventures to start off, and get to level 2, then 3. These early adventures can have magic items in the environment and in the possession of the bad guys. Just my two cents, but as a player I would not want my first magic gear to be given to me before I even got started.

[edit]
Well, I guess your cart of wonders is related to a prisoner being freed, but how does a captive retain access to his possessions? Immediately after they save the goblin, he needs to ask them to recover his wares, and that he will reward them from anything left, etc. Be prepared for the party to keep ALL of the wares and kill the goblin that they just saved when he objects...

 

[Lanliss]

I am playing with the idea of this being a benevolent deity, who for some reason has an interest in these particular adventurers completing their goals. Perhaps the true god of a particular domain who is being edged out by a cult, and plans to have the adventurers help with the problem. As you can see, I am probably thinking way too far ahead, as that is probably second or third arc material. As far as retaining the cart, I am thinking that there will be a special item to protect the cart from outside interference for a long period of time, unless a particular phrase is said to deactivate it. I do not think my players would be quite mean enough to rob some man they just saved, but I will prepare for it, just in case. Perhaps the punishment will be the loss of the future quest line, and the loss of possibly great rewards.

 

[delericho]

I try to get two hours of gaming out of each hour of prep. I'll put in more work for one-off adventures, and also at the start of a campaign, though.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Since I'm a bit of a duality on the matter, I figured I'd pop in and comment.

If I'm prepping anything at all, it can only mean one of two things: 1) that I am running from published adventure content, or 2) that this campaign is a "sequel" of a campaign that I've already run.

In the first case, I keep a ratio of 15 minutes prep to 4 hours play, and I do that by not changing anything significant in the adventure (so I just skip any adventure that wouldn't be fun without significant changes).

In the second case, I write a preface (maybe 1 hour, once for the entire campaign) that covers the general idea of the campaign and anything the players need to know in order to make a character or be ready to return to playing the original characters for another time, and an outline. The outline provides a very bare-bones skeleton of the events going on in the campaign, and usually takes about 2 hours to write while making sure I'm not putting anything in the outline which relies upon events before that point going a specific way (i.e. I do not write anything about an NPC's involvement in the campaign beyond the point that the party might be able to kill or incarcerate that NPC, so that I won't have to alter those details later once that part has played out).

Before each session, I'll look at the outline to see if there is anything in particular that will be going on during that session that would affect whatever the characters are doing at that point, but I spend no more than a minute or two on that - and I run each session by setting up the scene and reacting to what the players have their characters do (which is the way any non-sequel non-published campaign I run goes: I pitch a premise, the players make characters that fit to that premise, I set up a scene, and then they drive the story from then on until the story reaches a satisfactory conclusion - with me doing zero prep).

I think, in total and on average, that these sequel campaigns end up being about 5 or 10 minutes prep per session, though the bulk of that is all done before session 1.