The Dungeon Master Workshop - Advice for new DM's - Prepping for a session

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” - Abraham Lincoln

In my time playing DnD and roleplaying games, I have met many dungeon masters and game masters, and while I haven't been able to play in all of their games and had the experience of their style, when two dungeon masters meet its like meeting a member from your secret society.

You discuss your world and your players, the ways they get themselves into trouble and the ways you avoided a TPK.
But only recently, while sharing stories with a friend of mine who is currently working on his first homebrew setting did the subject of prepping for my session come into the conversation.

I suppose its something that I personally never thought about, the preparation I do is just my way of doing things, I've never talked to a fellow dungeon master about my prep or the ways in which they themselves prep, we always seemed more interested in the stories the preparation brings rather than the prep itself, more interested in the tree rather than the sharpening of the axe.

So let's get to the question at hand.



How should I prep for my game?

I've heard many different estimations on how long you should prep for a session before you play that night. Some people say it you should prep an hour for every hour of game time played, some say you should prep for half the game time played. Everyone has their own estimation of how long you should prep. Personally to me, my prep times can vary anywhere from 5 hours to 10 minutes. This may seem like too big of a fluctuation of time but let me explain.

I run a weekly game for my players, sometimes we miss a few games a year, real life has to come into play, but for the most part every week we sit around the table, talk about our week, fill ourselves with sugar and work our way through our adventure.
I've been doing this now for over 2 years and quickly coming up to a third. The world I have created is now not just a filing cabinet in my head, it's its own Smithsonian Museum with all the underground networks connecting all the different exhibits that are housed there. I know what is in my world and I know what is happening. I'm not saying that everything is worked out, no museum can house all the worlds secrets, but I do know enough to know how the effects of one event can affect another.

Once, after a particularly eventful session, I told my players that I hadn't prepped at all for that night. While most of them looked at me surprised, one of them said to me " yer, but you know how everything works, so you can just wing it "

Essentially they were correct. A lot of my prep isn't done in the days leading up towards that week's session. I did my prep in the creation of my story and of my world. This to a large extent allows me to deal with the unexpected, Just this week I had two players who instead of doing something typical at the start of the day, like having a breakfast beer or going shopping for weapons, (because lets be honest if we lived in the world of DnD who wouldn't want to to do ) and instead decided ....we fancy finding a Patisserie. I was completely unprepared for this, but I knew that this was something that this pair of players wanted to do to add some comic relief to the game which had been lacking this just due to the serious events they had been encountering, so while my players are rolling investigation checks and talking to each other, I can go through the mind palace that all DM's have and quickly work out some hilarious NPC's and shop names that my player can interact with, all based on the knowledge that I prepped when creating the city they are in.


However, let's talk about the real brass tacks of preparation.

I class prep into two categories.

Long term, and Immediate.

Long-term prep is work that you can do anytime and in anyplace. I often find myself doing this kind of prep in my head while driving to work, while I'm at work, when I'm reading something, or barely watching something on TV. Basically whenever the mind is in a resting state that allows me to focus and expand on the ideas already in my head and keep them for later, when I can transfer them to the page. Like in last week's articles we said that planning some story arcs may never get to be seen, this is the same when it comes to long-term prep. I have had a yuan-ti temple dungeon planned and in my back pocket for several years now. It's fully planned with treasure, enemies, NPC's and big boss battle right at the end with an interesting battlefield. I had originally intended it to be used maybe 3 weeks at the most after I made it, but its still in my folder waiting to use, and if my players should go into a situation in which that dungeon and story is applicable, then I can pull that out and I'm ready to go.

Long-term prep I find useful not just because it allows us to have a safety nets of material that we have lying in wait, or because it gives us the chance to keep constantly refining the worlds we play in and created, but it allows us to be continuously be stretching and working the mental muscles of our mind. The more we create dungeons, social plots, and environmental encounters, the better we are going to become in creating them not just in the mental lab but also on the fly. Its simple science, the more you do something the better you will become, so even if you don't think your player will ever find that temple hidden under the ruins of your capital city, or that thieves guild central hub that is located in the attic of the arcane library (great idea for a dungeon totally stealing that) have a go at creating them just for the sake of creation , you will find that you ability to quickly pull out trap designs on the fly in game will become a lot better once youve started to tinker with them in your DM's Workshop.

Now for Immediate prep.

The night before my game, I sit on the sofa with a beer, a pencil, a pad of paper and a quiet house, and I write down in bullet points all the things that could happen to my players in the next session. This can vary from expected shopping I think they might try to do and what they could find at the shops, if there might be street urchin that could try and pickpocket the players or if an old enemy might rear their head an try and take down a player. All little things that could happen to my party to make it feel like a cohesive and real world that breaths and acts on its own accord.
Its also in these notes, that if I want to try and steer my players down a certain pathway, that I put a bullet point in my notes to help me remember the story link to drive them down the story beat I want them to explore.  (here's a copy of my notes from my last session on Tuesday evening)

This simple little technique is very easy to do and can be done anytime anywhere. I've done it on my phone while I'm at a bar on the Notes app on my phone, you could start it the minute after your session and continue to add to it all the way up to the minute before you start your next one. Its just there to be a reminder sheet for you to be able to explore any time you need it, and as a reference sheet for when your mind is hectically working in the game trying to remember 40 different things at once and trying to keep your players engaged.

Use it as a leaping pad to explore what could happen to your players when one of these events happen. Not all of them could happen in your game next time, but it just means that you have more possible scenarios planned for when the next game comes round.

If something comes up that you weren't expecting in your game that leads down a path that even in your long-term prep you weren't prepared for, don't worry. Don't panic. It's all going to be ok. You've been working the mental muscles now, I did a little experiment the other day to see how long it would take for me to create 3 parts of a dungeon. The dungeon itself is a high-security prison, that is also a military outpost with the capability to put 2000 men to field and still watch over some of the most dangerous men and women in the kingdom, what the guards don't know is that it is also the central hub of an international thieves, assassins, slavery, and blackmail guild/organization, which has its base, undernieth the main prison complex. I also designed a battleground for where the players could fight the leader of the organization. It took me less than 3 hours to draw everything and to have rough notes ready for it all. Before I started to train my mind to do this it would have taken me 2 days maybe even a week, but by working these mental weights we can become even more prepared and the work becomes less taxing and time-consuming.

A final note to finish off with, which may seem contrary to popular opinion, but don't prep too much for your session.

When we prep too much we try too hard to lead players down the story beats we want them to follow rather than allowing them to fall naturally into the story. We get frustrated and stressed when after 10 hours of prep on events we thought might happen, the players find a hook that you hadn't planned for at all.  Relax and enjoy the game. It's not meant to be stressful, its meant to be fun, id rather improve an entire session for my players than make them stick rigorously to a set A-B storyline. I wouldn't obviously, neither ways of doing it are perfect, the best way is to find a happy medium between the fun of improving and planning, and given time you will improve at both.

Thanks again guys for reading, I really hope this has been helpful, don't forget to check out all of the Dungeon Masters Workshop articles we have on the page and also to go and like the Cardboard Arcade Facebook page and subscribe to our youtube channel for all of our video content, and remember if you guys have anything you'd like me to cover in these articles please tell us about it and leave it in the comments section down below, we really want to hear!

Thanks again guys and until next week.

BYE!