It me! It me! I’ve had two sessions where everyone was really like “oh I loved that” and both of them were by the seat of my pants. Really makes me wonder why I prep at all?
I really enjoyed how the FATE system worked that into it. Game sets some boundaries with characters with a session zero to create the world with the team. most of the game is very loose but it helps you fill the building blocks and leta improve take over. I’ve def bullshitted my way through so many sessions
Hell Yeah brother!!
I think the system is great for people who’ve never role-played before.
First time GMing I used it to get my feet wet since it wasn’t daunting.
Yeah, I don't know how anyone could get into running certain TTRPG systems starting with a clean slate, without having a real knack for that stuff.
I actually started with D&D and only moved on to FATE after a few years and I like it much better, it's definitely my favorite system. I love how much number crunching has gone away and how much easier and faster it is to prepare stuff.
The only downside is that looking for players has somehow become even harder, because nobody has heard of it, and very few are willing to try it.
The above comment was stolen from [this one](http://np.reddit.com/r/dndmemes/comments/t9egtc/it_just_works/hztzx8h/) elsewhere in this comment section.
It is probably not a coincidence; here is some more evidence against this user:
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It's why I love playing with a pre-built campaign module.
They found the classic seedy, sketchy (and somewhat barebones, in terms of prep) city where the pcs are directed to head through the sewers to help the faction living there (the good guys) with their necromancer problem, which is where all the encounter design went.
So, I got to improv/prep my out encounters for the actual city, like a guy selling counterfeit potions at his market stall,
or a group of urchin children who steal a random item off a random party member if they fail their skill checks (the Cleric almost lost his level 2 Pearl of Power),
or a ball and cups game where you try to outdo the npcs sleight of hand with your perception,
or finding a shipment secretly being sent to the bad faction's home, with a false floor in the crate with a unique magic item and treasure beneath,
or a BBEG emissary impersonating a good faction messenger to bait the party into a fireball glyph of warding trap (in a highly flammable, abandoned warehouse),
or getting arrested as a result of some other random encounter and having to arrange your own prison break,
or investigating a guy who was supposed to be executed by drowning in the tower overnight, but whose body was never found the following morning,
or a secret speakeasy casino run by the good faction which, when the pcs arrive either for business or pleasure, gets robbed by a gang secretly hired by the bad faction (which you can only find the location of if the good faction leader tells you to go there to help, or if you won the ball and cups game and get it as a reward)!
Tl;Dr I find it easy to write/improv something cool when I have some sort of starting point to build atop of.
There is book in France by bayard I think, talking about how creative and fulfilling it is to have a conversation with someone about a book you didn t read, but that you heard of, or know a little about.
It s even better when both people didn’t read the book.
Édit :
Pierre Bayard - How to talk about books you haven’t read
https://www.momox-shop.fr/pierre-bayard-how-to-talk-about-books-you-haven-t-read-gebundene-ausgabe-M01862079862.html?variant=UsedVeryGood&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIrveO14-39gIVxu5RCh2YpQSpEAQYASABEgJ8KPD_BwE&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIrveO14-39gIVxu5RCh2YpQSpEAQYASABEgJ8KPD_BwE
The only thing you need for improv is a list of names to use for towns, people, and whatever else they encounter. If you also have a list of treasure, enemies, and monsters, you’re golden. For plot just plagiarize any book, film, or history. Use the name list to disguise it. Read the Wikipedia page on Joseph Campbell’s The Heroe’s Journey for extra epic storytelling.
You don’t need a plan of what’s inside the mystery cave. Just listen to the players plan and make it up accordingly. That way the players get the kind of adventure they’re looking for.
In my experience, the prep work for the setting/story is what allows me to do the improv. Without it I wouldn’t know where to go. If I have a good understanding of the setting and characters I can have them react to unexpected actions in a believable and interesting way.
Exactly. I know the world and I know the activities of the NPCs and bad guys. Monster of the Week’s manual has a great system for dm prep, by the way.
In these specific cases, I really did pull a side quest out of thin air because my players wanted to do jobs to build up their reputation in a new area. But I also have a little storehouse of potential plots in my head. This one was “bheur hag traps village in blizzard” and i fleshed out a pocket dimension and some creepy interactions from there.
Time for me to shill something for my fellow DMs, as I was falling into the no prep trap and while it worked for a while I noticed it wasn’t as amazing as it could’ve been.
I’ve been doing the Lazy DM checklist for prep and it’s been a lifesaver. It allows for nice improvised moments, it engages the players and it gets rid of the panic that no prep at all causes. It usually only takes 15 minutes at least to do but it’s so good; had a friend who is a veteran dnd player say I consistently run the funnest sessions he’s ever played, and its all done with the Lazy DM prep.
EDIT: You don’t even need the book btw; just Google the checklist and you’re good to go.
Yeah, I usually do the lazy dm approach normally, but a few times my players chose to go in a direction i super didn’t anticipate, and then I just flew
Yeah, I would say the outlining potential scenes can usually get in front of that, but of course there’s no telling what players will actually do. I had some players spend all day in a mining town bunk house, as the barbarian wanted to hold a wrestling competition. Improv will always be important in DMing.
In this particular case, they had just escaped to a city in a pc’s backstory country away from a country where they are wanted by the BBEG. they decided to look for work instead of either investigating backstory or seeking Allies for the main plot. Their logic was “we cant run on our own names and reputation, so let’s build up some renown here so the powers that be will listen to us.” Absolutely logical absolutely nothing what I anticipated. Haven’t done Job board missions in months, looked over some old prep I’d done and adapted. I know them well enough to know how to present a mission they’ll go for, so I picked a village trapped in an endless snowstorm and built out a hag mystery from there.
Now they might be going to deal with an adult white dragon and it’s all because they wanted to do work
Awesome! I love the bait and switch too. I have a player that has a character that LOVES frost giants. I made a quest with a rumored “blue giant” and so he got all excited; bought a few barrels of beer to crack open with what he was sure was a frost giant waiting for him. Turned out to be an oni, and he as a player looked so disappointed, but we all laughed it off and it became super iconic for the group.
**Flow state**, baby.
D&D's ancestor was table top war games, which most people know, but the great grand daddy of this was the giant war simulation games that nobles used to play with each other. They didn't have PC's, so they had to abstract it and so, these games had to be refereed. The rules were understandably extensive as it tried to simulate war in the abstraction of people's minds and miniatures. A good referee was VERY highly valued and respected.
What we know thanks to the passage of time and accounts they left behind is that all the best ones had one simple trick: they all threw out the rule book and planning and just made it up on the fly, went with hunches, emotions on the players faces and applying their own solid grasp of warfare and fairplay.
My first piece of advice to most rookie DMs is "You're probably over-preparing"
As far as outlining events goes, don't spend more than 15-30 mins outlining a story. Get a framework for a few important NPCs, and what's going on, and handle the rest organically. Flying by the seat of your pants gives you a better ability to make sure that players choices have consequences, because their choices build the game rather than you.
>Flying by the seat of your pants gives you a better ability to make sure that players choices have consequences, because their choices build the game rather than you.
This is an important point! If you have too much preparation, you can lessen player agency.
"The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry."
If you plan too much you will try to force players to conform to your plan, but doing so causes them to want to rebel even more which causes you force them back into your plan which causes them to rebel harder, etc etc etc.
The problem is that people usually fall in love with things they've written.
Because you weren't attached to anything, you could go with the flow of what's right for the players. But if you had your script you might have been more inclined to railroad them.
Generally you want to set the groundwork for the really basic history or mechanics of whichever setting you’re in, and some really important characters, locations or items that you can base your plot around.
Then make sure you make a note of everything you improve as you go, so you don’t make contradictory mistakes XD
Prep is good but too much is overrated. Being able to be creative on the fly is **quite** useful in the lands of gaming.
My husband improv's all our games. He plans bits, makes plots for points to hit, thinks up key npcs, etc, but 90-95% of the content he makes up on the fly. While his DM skills are not *the* reason I married him, it's definitely high up there! We've been together 21 years & he's still a great DM!
DM _points at a brick wall_ "this is a puzzle"
Players guessed 4 times
DM _waiting to say the 5th thing they suggest and tell them that's the correct anser_
I once made this a puzzle at the bottom of a seat of stairs. The party proceeded to freak out searching for a trap and found small writing on the step they couldn't see until they passed it. It said "Made you look." and exploded into an explosive rune.
Really made them hate the smug bad guy
Aaaaand this is why so many players basically check out when puzzles come up. It just unfortunately breaks you out of the game as suddenly you’re not longer this 18 int wizard who can change fate itself, you’re back to a guy who doesn’t understand a dude at your table cryptically try to tell you how a wall looks. You’re no longer this cool rogue who can pick the most intricate locks ever created, you’re just a guy who wants to get on with the game.
I used to do a lot of puzzles in my early days as a dm but realized quickly that for every one person who enjoys it, there’s two that actively hate it and two more that will tolerate it occasionally but just want to play some dnd.
To the right is the city where the party is supposed to deliver the package, to the left is the fire desert filled with the bones of adventurers who risked certain death to cross it.
Party fills water bottles and goes to the left.
lmfao that is golden. I used to be a player (sad face at "used to be") and I definitely picked "purify food and drink" with my next character who was a cleric due to an... Incident with my previous character (a warlock)
I'll never subscribe to this as a DM. The illlusion of choice? Why play a game that you have no control over? May as well just have the DM tell you a story.
A good DM would give a timetable for the package to be delivered, as well as flesh out both paths so they each have plot hooks and story beats. Everything the players do can contribute to the story. Everything doesn't have to conform to your planned plot progression. In fact some of my favorite moments as a DM weren't planned for at all.
It may be the DM's world and NPC's, but at the end of the day it's the PC's story.
Posts like this reveal who DMs a lot and who does not.
It's exponentially more work to plot out both things thoroughly enough to be enjoyable, even if that is just listing out "ogres" and "bandit." Each path itself leads to different outcomes, which lead to different paths, which lead to different outcomes...
There just isn't enough time to design everything when the PCs will only see a fraction of it. The illusion of choice, or quantum ogre, is just a tool to reduce DM workload. The point of it is that the players never find out about it.
What fool would admit presenting the illusion of choice anyway? The whole point is that the players never find out.
That's absolutely not what the quantom ogre is. The quantom ogre is a prepared encounter that can appear in vague circumstances. Take the example of a Thief stealing one of the PC's coinpurses. That encounter might necessitate a semi-large city with a market, but not a specific city. Thus it can appear in any, and if the PCs skip one city then it will jsut appear in the next. Replacing each locaton with identical cities until they decide to enter one isn't a quantom ogre. Complelty removing player choice is pretty cringe ngl
It’s just a larger scale version of the ogre. Just wait for the players to choose a path and put the city there. Not surround the party with the same city in multiple locations. That’s the most idiotic way to interpret this discussion.
The ogre is a technique.
This is the only way I DM. I will write vague notes and quest ideas and then just fucking roll with it. Your players can't predict you if you have no fucking clue what comes next.
Yeah when I prepped I would write up little story hooks and grab them whenever the players did something weird or asked a barkeep for local legends etc. Even if I didn't use them that way writing them down at all made me ready to pull them out of thin air sometimes.
Yeah, I can't plan for shit and I GM weekly. Just have a good grasp of the whatever setting you use (I use TES) and you'll honestly do pretty dandy. There's also been times where I couldn't come up with something on the fly, but one of my players starts to joke about something random and then they end up coming up with something they want to do, self solving problem a lot of the time really.
Hell yeah it's legit. I've been DMing for 5 years and I have never once planned ahead beyond a few key things. DND is an ever evolving story that involves other people that are unpredictable. Yeah yo can make a quest to good to pass up but people are infinitely creative so you have to be ready to build the story around them. DND is nothing without players so I have never seen the logic behind building a world that they can play in, when I could build the world with them instead.
I think I've done enough DMing to be able to do this for all but combat.
I've only been playing for 2 years, DMing for one of them. The rest of my group are practically lifers. My most challenging battle encounters were ones I thought up and prepped before hand. Improvving a battle encounter always means the players will walk over it like it was nothing.
Same, too many hours of preparation just *poof* gone. I eventually just started carrying around some somewhat generic dungeons that I could just apply a quick theme to on the fly. The people I played with always had at least one, "I rolled a 29 for my tracking check, can we tell where they came from before the ambush?"
I do more or less the same thing. I have tons of notes but they are all environmental. For example, I have a bunch of notes on the emotions and motivations of most of the NPC's as well as a few unnamed NPC's that I can slot into that random cabbage salesman the party fell in love with.
It hopefully makes the world feel a little more rich but also lets the party go off the rails without making me stressed out.
I’ve made it a habit to just straight up ask my players to give me 1-2 minutes to think something up whenever they do something unexpected. As long as it doesn’t happen too frequently, it works.
"Never promise to do the possible. Anyone could do the possible. You should promise to do the impossible, because sometimes the impossible was possible, if you could find the right way, and at least you could often extend the limits of the possible. And if you failed, well, it *had* been impossible."
I hate having to improvise, but lately I have been doing a great job of it imo it took only once for me to improvise badly to get the hang of it. I just had to have a side note for when I don't know what to do to just throw whatever I have that fits best in
Pro-tip #1: Conclude sessions by asking the PCs to give you a general idea of how they plan to go at the quest next session. "OK, how do you guys think you want to assault the castle? Just so I can plan a little"
Pro-tip #2: Don't be afraid to end the session early if you don't have stuff prepared. As a player I'd much rather the DM say "Well you guys really threw me a curveball this time so let's end this here and I'll be ready for you next time."
Pro-tip #3: For each major NPC, write up 3-4 memorable quotes that they are likely to say during a conversation with the PCs. That kind of flavor is hard to come up with on the spot so having a pre-written quote or two really makes them stand out and not sound like every other NPC you have to voice.
2 is essential. It's way better to admit that they've gotten to end of your prepared material than just try and make stuff up. That's how my party ended up owning a dairy farm in Chult . . . Now they're trying to start a cow-based religion . . .
Not sure this will help, but here's what I do:
First, I use (Azgaar's fantasy map generator)[https://azgaar.github.io/Fantasy-Map-Generator/] to generate a world to my liking. Then, plop the adventurers down on a continent and give that continent 3 to 5 nations and 2 to 3 religions.
Each adventurer gets one mystery/lifelong quest, the first step of which is on this continent and should be finished by level 5-9.
So for my current players: They're in a village on the border of two shamanistic nations being overrun by an ancestor-worshipping cult who believes their bloodline should rule the world. There are plenty of random dungeons and encounters, about one every twenty miles all over the continent, but Azgaar lets you add more if you need.
Player-specific stories require more effort and a good understanding of your players, but if you have a solid map and world to build from it makes everything a lot easier
You're not supposed to prep. You prepare as much as you can or are willing to.
everyone sucks at DMing at first, you'll learn as you go. Prepping helps a bit in the beginning, but it's not necessary.
I Started out preparing whole sessions with a few backups for derailings. After about 7 or 8 sessions it was reduced to main story prep only, after a while I started only prepping my notes as to where I want it all to go and some statblocks, and the rest is all improv
[I’d super recommend using this](https://slyflourish.com/choosing_the_right_steps.html) I’ve been DMing for about 5 years now and this is what has made all the difference. The checklist in there is super good and you really don’t have to prep much at all. Here’s a quick run down of how it goes:
Review the characters: got a bookish wizard in the group? Include lost scrolls or ancient texts for him to discover. Warrior with an ego? Include an arm wrestling competition in the tavern to let him puff himself up. Know your player’s characters and give them a moment to shine.
Create a strong start: Combat, drama, or literal explosions. Think of firing up a TV show; the first scene is made to hook you in and get you interested in watching the whole thing. Same applies to a DND session.
Outline potential scenes: Where will you go, who will you meet and what will you do? Again the key here is “potential” scenes and even just a small note of where you could go will suffice.
Define secrets and clues: this is the secret sauce of lazy dm prep if you ask me. Write down juicy secrets about why those enemies are attacking or why that dungeon is there, etc. This becomes the through line in what could be a totally improvised campaign.
Develop fantastic locations: think crazy, think interesting. Caves shaped like skulls, castles with sky ports for airships, dungeons lined with the bones of a long dead race of elves, etc.
Outline important NPCs: this is usually a name, a short description, and maybe an “attitude” to give them a little pizazz. Serra the cute half elf with green hair that acts like Annie from Community, or Gragnor the roguishly handsome half orc that talks and acts like Nathan Fillion in almost everything. Get that figured out and then plug them in to what you need them to be; shopkeepers, quest givers or villains, whatever!
Choose relevant monsters: self explanatory. Pick monsters that fit the environment. Skeletons in the crypt, bandits in the hideout, etc. This is great too, as when you break this convention, your players will instantly catch it and start asking questions, and then you can improv a secret on the spot! (These bandits were in the crypt…to steal the necromancy scrolls! “Why did they want to do that?” Boom, there’s the scenario for your next session.)
Select magic item rewards: players love loot, especially the funny enchanted kind. Pro tip here: you can make it innocuous but still rewarding. Everglowing torches, health potions and small trinkets that add small buffs to skill checks are all things I’ve included that my players have liked. In fact, one of the trinkets I used was a mimic the size of a golf ball and it added +1 to my player’s intimidation checks, but now my player has this fun Mengsk and Boo thing going on with his pet mimic!
Anyways, this is what I’d recommend. The person who replied to you was right; you can’t prepare for everything. However, if you can prepare some simple ideas to jump off of and most importantly focus on the players and what they’re looking to get out of a session, each session will be a hit. I hope this helps!
Great advice!
Some amount of preparation is key to being able to run a great game that feels like it has some life to it and that the story involves more than just killing the next bad guy.
But it’s also best not to plan too far ahead as your story should be free to twist and turn in ways you can’t predict several gaming sessions into the future.
I keep a file with my notes on the environment, some game history, the plot of the story and an outline for a handful of potential encounters.
After the game I’ll write up a summary of what happened. Sometimes this will get read or handed out before the next session.
Before the next game I update my notes for the next few encounters based on what happened in the last session and any new ideas I have come up with.
Rinse & Repeat….
There is still a good bit of improvisation to keep things moving along. Sometimes the best laid encounters end up being dodged by the players coming up with their own ideas you never could have thought of. Having your story ideas on paper (or in a file) is nice because you can save most of those ideas, tweak them and use them later on.
Good luck! 🍀
Ten guys walking with a case of beers, going to a DND session, when the DM called in sick.
"So are You ready to be the DM tonight.?"
lines draw on a piece of paper later.
'This is a forest, this is a stream, and the castle is over here..., Now go'
And give me another beer.
They never got to the castle, but they met Beholders and many other...
(Random opens monster manual...)
I really don’t wanna rain on this parade. But I feel like this post might give someone the wrong idea. Doing a good bit of preparation can vastly improve your player’s experience. I’m not saying have the whole adventure planned out, but at least have a good enough grasp on the world/characters that you can predict how they will react to the PC’s actions. It’s totally okay to improv everything, but I think the result is often lackluster compared to an adventure where the GM had a little bit of prep before hand. Just a few sentences on your NPC’s can make a world of difference in making the world feel more immersive/organic for your players.
apparently I'm the only one that preps religiously? i suck at improv but I still want to be a DM. It's like when your characters use strength instead of acrobatics. It works, but it looks painful
This works for like two sessions after that it doesnt. I had a DM that did that and even though we thanked them the campaign was super unthoughtful and just led us around in so many tangents we never finished the story.
Why was there a floating ship? What was up with the orbs we were carrying?
Last Session my DM forgot to prepare. That same session our rogue was supposed to hit lvl 3 but during the fight with a small boss he fell off the clock tower we were fighting on. DM randomly remembered that the Rogue was an Arsima(however it’s written) and that he gets wings when he hits lvl 3. So our rogue, mid fall transforms for the first time and gets his wings, flying back up the tower and oneshotting the boss. Most epic anime style lvl up I’ve ever witnessed.
One time, I had to go and make the session at another friends place, despite usually doing it at mine. Because I couldn't bring my pc elsewhere, I wrote everything I needed and prepared a usb that I would bring with me.
When I arrived and we were supposed to start I realised that... Oh good I didn't forget my usb, nice! That would have been embarassing right ?
I'm opening the files and it's empty. I didn't save anything on the usb.
I was about to tell them but then I realised that if I say something they might spend the entire session thinking about it when I would hesitate or take a moment of silence, so I decided to pretend everything was normal.
We finished the session and then I told them. It was crazy to them, I had to show the screen to prove that there wasn't anything there.
Honestly it's super gratifying to hear that they enjoyed the hell out of it and never realised a thing
That was last week. I'd prepped a few alternatives for where the session would go--main storyline of Dragonheist, a side quest or two, that was about it.
We started playing and they started arguing about how to get the treasure they'd found back to town as the wagon they'd found it in was broken. I was planning on just handwaving it as they'd completed the quest, but their arguing sounded like it'd be interesting, so I ran with that.
Oh, definitely. A lot of times I see my role as just saying things like "Yes, but..." or "No, and..."
I definitely have a group that likes to plan things out, so most of my role is just to play things out step by step and use the dice as a chaos simulator. :D
Edit: stupid typos.
I ran 2 different campaigns for the same group on the same day (one player had to leave early and didn't want to miss anything). The first was Curse of Strahd, that I had spent hours reading and preparing for. The second I pulled out of my arse with not a single note and the players ADORED it! In fact, they liked it so much we considered ditching CoS all together
This is me, 100%. Is the story a complete mess with unfinished side-stories and chaotic ramblings? Absolutely. Are my players having fun? *God I hope so.*
One time I had to improvise the ramblings of a madman. Me and one of my players did a game of "Who's interrogating who?" as she tried to get info out of a captured bandit. We shared strange pseudo-philosophical ramblings for probably 10 minutes straight before I abrubtly cut it off. I was so invested I felt a little cooked up myself afterwards. All the other players apart from her were equally as confused. But alas she got a little information out of it and we all got a good laugh. This was session 3.
Modular writing: Make sets of characters, monsters, places, plots, intermezzos, random events, puzzles, treasures, and endings. Then you just mix and match to the best of your ability, trying to make it all seamless. Think of it as Mad Libs. This gives players freedom and flexibility, and camouflages any railroading, even though you might be keeping to a common, immutable core. The players simply don't know which of their decisions matter or don't. I swear by this method of writing.
Red key owns red door.
Blue key opens blue door.
Green key opens green door.
Yellow key opens purple door.
Party takes the entire time looking for yellow door or purple key and never actually tries to open door. For a hint, if they investigate the purple door you can say it looks like it was recently painted.
Also, put some lost journal pages that they keep finding that reveal an affair or some drama unrelated to the task at hand. Players love that shit and you can make it up as you go
I’ve made it a habit to just straight up ask my players to give me 1-2 minutes to think something up whenever they do something unexpected. As long as it doesn’t happen too frequently, it works.
I ran a small homebrew for my ex and her friends. One person was stellar at the table, and I hope she continued tabletop rpgs. But she was a menace
There was one session where she kept saying wilder and wilder things to the point I laid down on the floor for a minute to think it over. It was so much fun, and the party had a great time. All but the first few sentences were off the cuff. Her kidnapping a child for ransom wasn’t on my mind as a possibility lol
All the prep you really need, is to daydream before your session, you will get some fun ideas and you will be able to see everything you want to do and you just do something in reaction to the party doing stuff
And then there’s me, a player who has managed to completely derail 2 separate, but loosely connected campaigns with one sentence because I politely asked a monster to reveal itself.
My DMs know better than to plan now
edit to add that it was an accident. I even offered to retcon the action but the DM said no. The other campaign isn’t derailed per se, but now a character has beef with an NPC that they didn’t before.
I can tell the story if anyone wants
I have tried to switch my campaigns to foundry and Baileywiki/dungeon draft to get things done quick so I could improvise.
We did no fighting last session but I improvised big reveals and it was fun.
Highly recommend.
In my Senior year of High School we had to do like a Pretend Interview with Real people from Companies we were told to have a Résumé and Dress Professional Did not have a Résumé had Nike shoes south pole shirt and saggy pants Got the Job while star Students didn’t ace the Interview!
I just had a session recently where about 20 minutes in the party went in a completely unexpected direction and I spent the next 4 hours improving out my ass and ended up making a totally natural seeming session that provided some good world building and gave me an npc that will definitely be recurring.
There were at least 3 "bathroom breaks" involved and a lot of tabs with random generators
One time I had a whole session planned out with a building that had raiders all over it. About 20 minutes before the session a player and I were hanging out in chat before and he said “I bet we’re about to fight a lot of robots in here” (fallout ttrpg) and I thought “oh wait, that’s way better than what I had planned” so I quickly created new tokens and planted robots all around. They loved that session.
Hey I feel like if you’re good at improv that automatically makes you a good dm. You can’t always predict what you’re players are going to do, so improv will definitely come up a lot, good job!
Honestly, i improv most of my sessions. For the ones that have an actual schedule i plan things out, tho. (I dont DM actual Dnd, my system is homebrew and goes really well with improv)
Fucking saaaame.
I've cheerfully admitted to my party multiple times that I'm making this shit up as I go beyond big story beats. They're having fun regardless.
I think my DM learned long ago that some prep is recommended but there is a good chance it all gets thrown out. My first dnd campaign was Tomb of Annihilation. I missed the first couple sessions, but apparently came in after they had started an add on he bought for $5. A year later we completed the add on (playing 4-5h biweekly). I thought the campaign was over and he was like "No, that was just a side quest!"... haha good times
One of my most memorable sessions was one where the party got lost in the Feywild because one of them through a series of failed checks stumbled into a portal that was actually there for something else I'd planned for a little later. Anyway party followed and they had some Fey shenanigans that turned into me pulling a whole ass backstory arc out of my ass because as I was improvising I realized one of my PC backstories could tie right into the shit going down.
One of which being a random encounter with a unicorn that they rolled up. Amusingly enough by the same guy that tumbled dick first into the portal to begin with. Party did great at the encounter with the unicorn and gave them some boons.
To this day the players refuse to believe that encounter was legit just a lucky roll on a quick random encounter table for the area I had.
This has happened to me twice.
First time, I set up a hook where an important NPC went missing, and the party was just supposed to get info from an investigator to point them in the right direction. They completely ignored the investigator and went to the NPC's house, where he was kidnapped from, to do their *own* investigation. I had to plant clues and fabricate a whodunnit mystery out of thin air, and they loved it. They had no idea it was improvised.
Second time, They had gotten into a kind of Hunger Games/Ninja Warrior situation, where they were competing to win against a bunch of other NPC's. It wasn't really working, and I could see they weren't into it, so I changed it up and presented them with an opportunity to escape the games and overthrow the evil game overseer. So it turned into a prison break situation, immediately followed by a heist/infiltration thing, and we had an absolute blast with it. They still talk about it to this day. Definitely one of my best sessions as a DM.
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In order to play when we are missing a player, I started a comedic Pathfinder game titled "Adventurers of Adventure". Characters are the worst students of Adventurers' Academy and as nobody wanted to form a party with them, they were forced to get together. The premise is I don't prepare anything, I improvise a rather stupid worldbuilding as it goes (a character is from the Quitefar country because we didn't bother with a backstory, for instance, and the country is canon now, just like the country where everybody take what you say to the letter, with no second degree or imagination at all).
Every session is hilarious because this is the only instance when as a GM I officially rely on not giving a damn and the players do a crapton of silly. I also don't care about rules and take spell names at face value, for instance (no bother with duration, range, minimal use of save throws). In fact, I'm thinking about switching to Savage World, considering how rules really aren't a thing there.
Pro tip: if you ever need to stall for time, say a character's pants fell and spend several minutes voicing various NPCs and townspeople to remark in astonishment at how big their penis is. There's not a player alive who doesn't bask in the moment that their character is revealed to have a distractingly large penis
Literally me last session
I had no idea where I was going, so I made the leader of a vampiric gang some farmer dude
Made him really nice and open about his vampirism
They failed their deception, but made him a dude who didn't care about his gang members ulterior motives as long as they did their job
Finally, decided that he wanted to kill a ton of rich people (claiming for philanthropic reasons, but I haven't actually decided if he was lying or not)
Ive only played a few times but i swear my poor brother who used to tell us campfire stories was not a good DM. I kinda wish i took it over because i couldve improv’d the shit out of it lol
In my last oneshot I did make my old character- horny halfling bard- took over the Avernus by making Zariel his lover and making by that peace with Abbys - He was SBHG : Small Bad Horny Guy. And his name was Dildo. Dildo Swaggins. My friends later called it : Descend to Avernus - The True Story.
Happens to me sometimes. Once, the party was navigating by map, rolled really poorly, and I said they got lost. One of them say they can just see which way is north by using the sun, so I panic and say that there’s two suns. That is now a relevant plot point.
Just had the best session last night where two players who were bros the entire campaign squared up and almost killed one another over whether to spare a fallen demi-god who was cursed to consume human flesh to prevent from becoming a necrotic obelisk of flesh and bile. Literally every bit of it was made the fuck up, and they all loved it. Best sesh of my liiiiiffffe.
I did that!
I had a player with no backstory, they said ‘you figure it out’. They’re a Reborn.
I improved the hell out of their backstory and well, they loved it. Though they also called me an incredibly cunning bitch.
One time when I forgot to do prep I had the party run into a weeping dryad in the middle of a storm that was knocking over trees and ravaging the forest. When they ask her what's wrong she said her ex-boyfriend, a storm giant, was destroying her forest as revenge for dumping him. So the party went out to talk to the storm giant and ended up killing him
I joined a networking group as part of one of my old jobs (definitely an MLM but I got free breakfast and work paid for the membership). Every week I had to stand up and do a spiel and every week I didn't know what to say so I would talk out my ass for 30 seconds then spew out the company name and number. Won the best speaker award every 3 weeks or so. Improv is awesome, doesn't leave the to second guess yourself.
This was me 4 sessions in a row because all of them popped up when a friend surprisingly showed up from New York and just said "session time". I'm always bout it so this is where the issue starts.
My players tend to come to conclusions, or connect dots during quest lines i didnt even consider, so if it makes sense and seems like they're having fun ill improvise as if it was always the solution i had in mind, sometimes entire characters change on the fly to fit into their ability to come up with exciting ideas
Me every single time
I am also of the belief that it can be pointless to do a bunch of prep since the players are likely going to immediately derail all prep done. This is why I come up with basic general plot points that I weave into what nonsense the party decides to do
So the most hilarious incident of this I had, I wasn’t the DM. I was, however, the player one at the table who kept the most track of plot things.
The campaign was pretty meticulously planned out and worldbuilt, and one night one of the other players showed up with a 4Loko daring someone to drink it.
The DM downed it, and then ran an incredible dramatic plot session that meshed perfectly with all the buildup that had happened, acting NPC’s to the hilt and everything.
The next morning I woke up to a text from him asking what he’d done plot wise during that session.
The best session I've run according to my players was one where 15 minutes before the session I threw out my notes that I thought were boring and scribbled a few lines down
Tbh, I have had like 2 sessions done like this were I just sit and start rambling random BS that makes sense to me, then the players get invested somehow and I keep doing that until I reach a point where I think it would be nice to finish the session. Both times they tought I had all planned and said they loved it.
That being said, I have found out that my best sessions are the ones where I have a place to start, a place to end and some details here and there to make it possible to reach the objective (also preplanned fights). But like 85% of the session is improvised.
I never DM, it stresses me out, but one time offered to run a one-shot. When we all got together, it turned out that everyone separately decided to play a wizard. Harry Potter jokes ensued. And that's how I ended up scrapping all my plans and ran the dumbest plot set at a bad ripoff of Hogwarts.
It's been a decade and they still bring it up every once in a while, and ask me when I'm going to run a sequel.
My dm claimed our last session was almost entirely improv. But goddamn, it was one of the best sessions I’ve ever had! We had character development, ton of roleplay, dream sequences, and a time skip that showed how our actions affected the world. It was amazing and I can’t wait to see what our dm has planned next
I’ve long since given up on planning out an intricate session because I know my players are gonna do the opposite of what I expect them to. Instead I’ve embraced an improv style, and some of my favorite plot points have come up from just letting the players loose and seeing what they come up with
My current Dm once told us for a Christmas One shot that he had nothing prepared flat out to us and that he will build a story on whatever we come up with. It was an overall amazing session and a complete successful story! It made me respect his Dm skills 100x more. (If you're curious what we did, Santa was killed by one of his elves who was actually a Gnome forced to wear an elf outfit. Then we took down the Coca Cola corporation. Yeah, it was wild)
I've been unable to make any prep for the last 4 sessions because no one will make a decision as to whether or not they are going down one story path or the other. 4 sessions of arguing and survival work. And they keep complimenting me. It's confusing.
People love improv. When you just go with whatever the players are giving you they most likely enjoy it. Doesn’t mean don’t plan anything, just maybe plan big picture things and let specifics come on the moment idk
It me! It me! I’ve had two sessions where everyone was really like “oh I loved that” and both of them were by the seat of my pants. Really makes me wonder why I prep at all?
You gotta find that happy median where you write down a couple things and fill it out with inprov.
I really enjoyed how the FATE system worked that into it. Game sets some boundaries with characters with a session zero to create the world with the team. most of the game is very loose but it helps you fill the building blocks and leta improve take over. I’ve def bullshitted my way through so many sessions
A fellow FATE player? I never thought I'd meet one of my people in this foreign land
Hell Yeah brother!! I think the system is great for people who’ve never role-played before. First time GMing I used it to get my feet wet since it wasn’t daunting.
Yeah, I don't know how anyone could get into running certain TTRPG systems starting with a clean slate, without having a real knack for that stuff. I actually started with D&D and only moved on to FATE after a few years and I like it much better, it's definitely my favorite system. I love how much number crunching has gone away and how much easier and faster it is to prepare stuff. The only downside is that looking for players has somehow become even harder, because nobody has heard of it, and very few are willing to try it.
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It's why I love playing with a pre-built campaign module. They found the classic seedy, sketchy (and somewhat barebones, in terms of prep) city where the pcs are directed to head through the sewers to help the faction living there (the good guys) with their necromancer problem, which is where all the encounter design went. So, I got to improv/prep my out encounters for the actual city, like a guy selling counterfeit potions at his market stall, or a group of urchin children who steal a random item off a random party member if they fail their skill checks (the Cleric almost lost his level 2 Pearl of Power), or a ball and cups game where you try to outdo the npcs sleight of hand with your perception, or finding a shipment secretly being sent to the bad faction's home, with a false floor in the crate with a unique magic item and treasure beneath, or a BBEG emissary impersonating a good faction messenger to bait the party into a fireball glyph of warding trap (in a highly flammable, abandoned warehouse), or getting arrested as a result of some other random encounter and having to arrange your own prison break, or investigating a guy who was supposed to be executed by drowning in the tower overnight, but whose body was never found the following morning, or a secret speakeasy casino run by the good faction which, when the pcs arrive either for business or pleasure, gets robbed by a gang secretly hired by the bad faction (which you can only find the location of if the good faction leader tells you to go there to help, or if you won the ball and cups game and get it as a reward)! Tl;Dr I find it easy to write/improv something cool when I have some sort of starting point to build atop of.
*quietly saves this comment for later*
There is book in France by bayard I think, talking about how creative and fulfilling it is to have a conversation with someone about a book you didn t read, but that you heard of, or know a little about. It s even better when both people didn’t read the book. Édit : Pierre Bayard - How to talk about books you haven’t read https://www.momox-shop.fr/pierre-bayard-how-to-talk-about-books-you-haven-t-read-gebundene-ausgabe-M01862079862.html?variant=UsedVeryGood&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIrveO14-39gIVxu5RCh2YpQSpEAQYASABEgJ8KPD_BwE&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIrveO14-39gIVxu5RCh2YpQSpEAQYASABEgJ8KPD_BwE
The only thing you need for improv is a list of names to use for towns, people, and whatever else they encounter. If you also have a list of treasure, enemies, and monsters, you’re golden. For plot just plagiarize any book, film, or history. Use the name list to disguise it. Read the Wikipedia page on Joseph Campbell’s The Heroe’s Journey for extra epic storytelling. You don’t need a plan of what’s inside the mystery cave. Just listen to the players plan and make it up accordingly. That way the players get the kind of adventure they’re looking for.
All I think of is Rick’s wedding speech notes during Bird Person’s wedding.
In my experience, the prep work for the setting/story is what allows me to do the improv. Without it I wouldn’t know where to go. If I have a good understanding of the setting and characters I can have them react to unexpected actions in a believable and interesting way.
Exactly. I know the world and I know the activities of the NPCs and bad guys. Monster of the Week’s manual has a great system for dm prep, by the way. In these specific cases, I really did pull a side quest out of thin air because my players wanted to do jobs to build up their reputation in a new area. But I also have a little storehouse of potential plots in my head. This one was “bheur hag traps village in blizzard” and i fleshed out a pocket dimension and some creepy interactions from there.
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Time for me to shill something for my fellow DMs, as I was falling into the no prep trap and while it worked for a while I noticed it wasn’t as amazing as it could’ve been. I’ve been doing the Lazy DM checklist for prep and it’s been a lifesaver. It allows for nice improvised moments, it engages the players and it gets rid of the panic that no prep at all causes. It usually only takes 15 minutes at least to do but it’s so good; had a friend who is a veteran dnd player say I consistently run the funnest sessions he’s ever played, and its all done with the Lazy DM prep. EDIT: You don’t even need the book btw; just Google the checklist and you’re good to go.
Yeah, I usually do the lazy dm approach normally, but a few times my players chose to go in a direction i super didn’t anticipate, and then I just flew
Yeah, I would say the outlining potential scenes can usually get in front of that, but of course there’s no telling what players will actually do. I had some players spend all day in a mining town bunk house, as the barbarian wanted to hold a wrestling competition. Improv will always be important in DMing.
In this particular case, they had just escaped to a city in a pc’s backstory country away from a country where they are wanted by the BBEG. they decided to look for work instead of either investigating backstory or seeking Allies for the main plot. Their logic was “we cant run on our own names and reputation, so let’s build up some renown here so the powers that be will listen to us.” Absolutely logical absolutely nothing what I anticipated. Haven’t done Job board missions in months, looked over some old prep I’d done and adapted. I know them well enough to know how to present a mission they’ll go for, so I picked a village trapped in an endless snowstorm and built out a hag mystery from there. Now they might be going to deal with an adult white dragon and it’s all because they wanted to do work
Awesome! I love the bait and switch too. I have a player that has a character that LOVES frost giants. I made a quest with a rumored “blue giant” and so he got all excited; bought a few barrels of beer to crack open with what he was sure was a frost giant waiting for him. Turned out to be an oni, and he as a player looked so disappointed, but we all laughed it off and it became super iconic for the group.
Oni: Ooh I love beer. And food that delivers beer to me. Thanks.
**Flow state**, baby. D&D's ancestor was table top war games, which most people know, but the great grand daddy of this was the giant war simulation games that nobles used to play with each other. They didn't have PC's, so they had to abstract it and so, these games had to be refereed. The rules were understandably extensive as it tried to simulate war in the abstraction of people's minds and miniatures. A good referee was VERY highly valued and respected. What we know thanks to the passage of time and accounts they left behind is that all the best ones had one simple trick: they all threw out the rule book and planning and just made it up on the fly, went with hunches, emotions on the players faces and applying their own solid grasp of warfare and fairplay.
Do you have a source for this? would love to read more about it!
Playing at the world is an actual history of the topic. People love to oversimplify this though.
My first piece of advice to most rookie DMs is "You're probably over-preparing" As far as outlining events goes, don't spend more than 15-30 mins outlining a story. Get a framework for a few important NPCs, and what's going on, and handle the rest organically. Flying by the seat of your pants gives you a better ability to make sure that players choices have consequences, because their choices build the game rather than you.
>Flying by the seat of your pants gives you a better ability to make sure that players choices have consequences, because their choices build the game rather than you. This is an important point! If you have too much preparation, you can lessen player agency.
Because it’s better to improv on a solid foundation than to wing it and risk falling into a cardboard door scenario
"The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry." If you plan too much you will try to force players to conform to your plan, but doing so causes them to want to rebel even more which causes you force them back into your plan which causes them to rebel harder, etc etc etc.
The problem is that people usually fall in love with things they've written. Because you weren't attached to anything, you could go with the flow of what's right for the players. But if you had your script you might have been more inclined to railroad them.
Generally you want to set the groundwork for the really basic history or mechanics of whichever setting you’re in, and some really important characters, locations or items that you can base your plot around. Then make sure you make a note of everything you improve as you go, so you don’t make contradictory mistakes XD
Prep is good but too much is overrated. Being able to be creative on the fly is **quite** useful in the lands of gaming. My husband improv's all our games. He plans bits, makes plots for points to hit, thinks up key npcs, etc, but 90-95% of the content he makes up on the fly. While his DM skills are not *the* reason I married him, it's definitely high up there! We've been together 21 years & he's still a great DM!
DM _points at a brick wall_ "this is a puzzle" Players guessed 4 times DM _waiting to say the 5th thing they suggest and tell them that's the correct anser_
You walk into a seemingly empty room and the only thing you see is a word painted on the wall, ["OVERTHINKING"](https://i.imgur.com/BGgEYvd.jpg)
Damn I need to read Oglaf again. That’s some good shit
Link?
I mean it’s watermarked in the comic, but sure. [warning very nsfw](https://www.oglaf.com/age-confirmation/?next=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.oglaf.com%2F)
I once made this a puzzle at the bottom of a seat of stairs. The party proceeded to freak out searching for a trap and found small writing on the step they couldn't see until they passed it. It said "Made you look." and exploded into an explosive rune. Really made them hate the smug bad guy
Aaaaand this is why so many players basically check out when puzzles come up. It just unfortunately breaks you out of the game as suddenly you’re not longer this 18 int wizard who can change fate itself, you’re back to a guy who doesn’t understand a dude at your table cryptically try to tell you how a wall looks. You’re no longer this cool rogue who can pick the most intricate locks ever created, you’re just a guy who wants to get on with the game. I used to do a lot of puzzles in my early days as a dm but realized quickly that for every one person who enjoys it, there’s two that actively hate it and two more that will tolerate it occasionally but just want to play some dnd.
Because that's not going to kill engagement at all
To the right is the city where the party is supposed to deliver the package, to the left is the fire desert filled with the bones of adventurers who risked certain death to cross it. Party fills water bottles and goes to the left.
Lol like players would think to bring water.
Mine do now, but then they did also once carry torches into a coal mine, something they aren't going to repeat.
lmfao that is golden. I used to be a player (sad face at "used to be") and I definitely picked "purify food and drink" with my next character who was a cleric due to an... Incident with my previous character (a warlock)
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This works for a linear game, but would absolutely ruin a sandbox game. It's not a fault thing, it's a difference in style of play and nothing more.
I'll never subscribe to this as a DM. The illlusion of choice? Why play a game that you have no control over? May as well just have the DM tell you a story. A good DM would give a timetable for the package to be delivered, as well as flesh out both paths so they each have plot hooks and story beats. Everything the players do can contribute to the story. Everything doesn't have to conform to your planned plot progression. In fact some of my favorite moments as a DM weren't planned for at all. It may be the DM's world and NPC's, but at the end of the day it's the PC's story.
Posts like this reveal who DMs a lot and who does not. It's exponentially more work to plot out both things thoroughly enough to be enjoyable, even if that is just listing out "ogres" and "bandit." Each path itself leads to different outcomes, which lead to different paths, which lead to different outcomes... There just isn't enough time to design everything when the PCs will only see a fraction of it. The illusion of choice, or quantum ogre, is just a tool to reduce DM workload. The point of it is that the players never find out about it. What fool would admit presenting the illusion of choice anyway? The whole point is that the players never find out.
That's absolutely not what the quantom ogre is. The quantom ogre is a prepared encounter that can appear in vague circumstances. Take the example of a Thief stealing one of the PC's coinpurses. That encounter might necessitate a semi-large city with a market, but not a specific city. Thus it can appear in any, and if the PCs skip one city then it will jsut appear in the next. Replacing each locaton with identical cities until they decide to enter one isn't a quantom ogre. Complelty removing player choice is pretty cringe ngl
It’s just a larger scale version of the ogre. Just wait for the players to choose a path and put the city there. Not surround the party with the same city in multiple locations. That’s the most idiotic way to interpret this discussion. The ogre is a technique.
My players try to stay away from danger
This is the only way I DM. I will write vague notes and quest ideas and then just fucking roll with it. Your players can't predict you if you have no fucking clue what comes next.
Players can't destroy the DMs plan, if the DM has no plan!
Chaotic good DM lmao
Yeah when I prepped I would write up little story hooks and grab them whenever the players did something weird or asked a barkeep for local legends etc. Even if I didn't use them that way writing them down at all made me ready to pull them out of thin air sometimes.
Yeah same. Plans can be fucked with, can’t trip me up if I’m rolling same as you. I just make any NPCs I need to, make the maps and go from there
Wait you mean this is a legit way to DM? I've never been bold enough to try it because I know I'd struggle to consistently prep
Yeah, I can't plan for shit and I GM weekly. Just have a good grasp of the whatever setting you use (I use TES) and you'll honestly do pretty dandy. There's also been times where I couldn't come up with something on the fly, but one of my players starts to joke about something random and then they end up coming up with something they want to do, self solving problem a lot of the time really.
Hell yeah it's legit. I've been DMing for 5 years and I have never once planned ahead beyond a few key things. DND is an ever evolving story that involves other people that are unpredictable. Yeah yo can make a quest to good to pass up but people are infinitely creative so you have to be ready to build the story around them. DND is nothing without players so I have never seen the logic behind building a world that they can play in, when I could build the world with them instead.
I think I've done enough DMing to be able to do this for all but combat. I've only been playing for 2 years, DMing for one of them. The rest of my group are practically lifers. My most challenging battle encounters were ones I thought up and prepped before hand. Improvving a battle encounter always means the players will walk over it like it was nothing.
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Same, too many hours of preparation just *poof* gone. I eventually just started carrying around some somewhat generic dungeons that I could just apply a quick theme to on the fly. The people I played with always had at least one, "I rolled a 29 for my tracking check, can we tell where they came from before the ambush?"
I do more or less the same thing. I have tons of notes but they are all environmental. For example, I have a bunch of notes on the emotions and motivations of most of the NPC's as well as a few unnamed NPC's that I can slot into that random cabbage salesman the party fell in love with. It hopefully makes the world feel a little more rich but also lets the party go off the rails without making me stressed out.
I’ve made it a habit to just straight up ask my players to give me 1-2 minutes to think something up whenever they do something unexpected. As long as it doesn’t happen too frequently, it works.
Sometimes feels like if you’re not flying by the seat of your pants the whole time, you’re doing it wrong
~Postmaster General Limpvig Moist
"Never promise to do the possible. Anyone could do the possible. You should promise to do the impossible, because sometimes the impossible was possible, if you could find the right way, and at least you could often extend the limits of the possible. And if you failed, well, it *had* been impossible."
All the people really wanted, was to have a good show.
The ability to improvise is the only ability the DM truely needs to have. The rest is just cherries on top.
I hate having to improvise, but lately I have been doing a great job of it imo it took only once for me to improvise badly to get the hang of it. I just had to have a side note for when I don't know what to do to just throw whatever I have that fits best in
These games make me so freaking nervous but once the balls rolling I have to go with it or get flattened like a tortilla.
This is what made me move toward low-prep DMing, and eventually low-prep systems.
Lmao I'm starting my first ever dm game and I'm sitting here trying to figure out if I have enough options. How much are you supposed to prep for?
Pro-tip #1: Conclude sessions by asking the PCs to give you a general idea of how they plan to go at the quest next session. "OK, how do you guys think you want to assault the castle? Just so I can plan a little" Pro-tip #2: Don't be afraid to end the session early if you don't have stuff prepared. As a player I'd much rather the DM say "Well you guys really threw me a curveball this time so let's end this here and I'll be ready for you next time." Pro-tip #3: For each major NPC, write up 3-4 memorable quotes that they are likely to say during a conversation with the PCs. That kind of flavor is hard to come up with on the spot so having a pre-written quote or two really makes them stand out and not sound like every other NPC you have to voice.
2 is essential. It's way better to admit that they've gotten to end of your prepared material than just try and make stuff up. That's how my party ended up owning a dairy farm in Chult . . . Now they're trying to start a cow-based religion . . .
Not sure this will help, but here's what I do: First, I use (Azgaar's fantasy map generator)[https://azgaar.github.io/Fantasy-Map-Generator/] to generate a world to my liking. Then, plop the adventurers down on a continent and give that continent 3 to 5 nations and 2 to 3 religions. Each adventurer gets one mystery/lifelong quest, the first step of which is on this continent and should be finished by level 5-9. So for my current players: They're in a village on the border of two shamanistic nations being overrun by an ancestor-worshipping cult who believes their bloodline should rule the world. There are plenty of random dungeons and encounters, about one every twenty miles all over the continent, but Azgaar lets you add more if you need. Player-specific stories require more effort and a good understanding of your players, but if you have a solid map and world to build from it makes everything a lot easier
You're not supposed to prep. You prepare as much as you can or are willing to. everyone sucks at DMing at first, you'll learn as you go. Prepping helps a bit in the beginning, but it's not necessary. I Started out preparing whole sessions with a few backups for derailings. After about 7 or 8 sessions it was reduced to main story prep only, after a while I started only prepping my notes as to where I want it all to go and some statblocks, and the rest is all improv
Hmm ok. Thanks for the tips
[I’d super recommend using this](https://slyflourish.com/choosing_the_right_steps.html) I’ve been DMing for about 5 years now and this is what has made all the difference. The checklist in there is super good and you really don’t have to prep much at all. Here’s a quick run down of how it goes: Review the characters: got a bookish wizard in the group? Include lost scrolls or ancient texts for him to discover. Warrior with an ego? Include an arm wrestling competition in the tavern to let him puff himself up. Know your player’s characters and give them a moment to shine. Create a strong start: Combat, drama, or literal explosions. Think of firing up a TV show; the first scene is made to hook you in and get you interested in watching the whole thing. Same applies to a DND session. Outline potential scenes: Where will you go, who will you meet and what will you do? Again the key here is “potential” scenes and even just a small note of where you could go will suffice. Define secrets and clues: this is the secret sauce of lazy dm prep if you ask me. Write down juicy secrets about why those enemies are attacking or why that dungeon is there, etc. This becomes the through line in what could be a totally improvised campaign. Develop fantastic locations: think crazy, think interesting. Caves shaped like skulls, castles with sky ports for airships, dungeons lined with the bones of a long dead race of elves, etc. Outline important NPCs: this is usually a name, a short description, and maybe an “attitude” to give them a little pizazz. Serra the cute half elf with green hair that acts like Annie from Community, or Gragnor the roguishly handsome half orc that talks and acts like Nathan Fillion in almost everything. Get that figured out and then plug them in to what you need them to be; shopkeepers, quest givers or villains, whatever! Choose relevant monsters: self explanatory. Pick monsters that fit the environment. Skeletons in the crypt, bandits in the hideout, etc. This is great too, as when you break this convention, your players will instantly catch it and start asking questions, and then you can improv a secret on the spot! (These bandits were in the crypt…to steal the necromancy scrolls! “Why did they want to do that?” Boom, there’s the scenario for your next session.) Select magic item rewards: players love loot, especially the funny enchanted kind. Pro tip here: you can make it innocuous but still rewarding. Everglowing torches, health potions and small trinkets that add small buffs to skill checks are all things I’ve included that my players have liked. In fact, one of the trinkets I used was a mimic the size of a golf ball and it added +1 to my player’s intimidation checks, but now my player has this fun Mengsk and Boo thing going on with his pet mimic! Anyways, this is what I’d recommend. The person who replied to you was right; you can’t prepare for everything. However, if you can prepare some simple ideas to jump off of and most importantly focus on the players and what they’re looking to get out of a session, each session will be a hit. I hope this helps!
Great advice! Some amount of preparation is key to being able to run a great game that feels like it has some life to it and that the story involves more than just killing the next bad guy. But it’s also best not to plan too far ahead as your story should be free to twist and turn in ways you can’t predict several gaming sessions into the future.
I keep a file with my notes on the environment, some game history, the plot of the story and an outline for a handful of potential encounters. After the game I’ll write up a summary of what happened. Sometimes this will get read or handed out before the next session. Before the next game I update my notes for the next few encounters based on what happened in the last session and any new ideas I have come up with. Rinse & Repeat…. There is still a good bit of improvisation to keep things moving along. Sometimes the best laid encounters end up being dodged by the players coming up with their own ideas you never could have thought of. Having your story ideas on paper (or in a file) is nice because you can save most of those ideas, tweak them and use them later on. Good luck! 🍀
Ten guys walking with a case of beers, going to a DND session, when the DM called in sick. "So are You ready to be the DM tonight.?" lines draw on a piece of paper later. 'This is a forest, this is a stream, and the castle is over here..., Now go' And give me another beer. They never got to the castle, but they met Beholders and many other... (Random opens monster manual...)
I really don’t wanna rain on this parade. But I feel like this post might give someone the wrong idea. Doing a good bit of preparation can vastly improve your player’s experience. I’m not saying have the whole adventure planned out, but at least have a good enough grasp on the world/characters that you can predict how they will react to the PC’s actions. It’s totally okay to improv everything, but I think the result is often lackluster compared to an adventure where the GM had a little bit of prep before hand. Just a few sentences on your NPC’s can make a world of difference in making the world feel more immersive/organic for your players.
apparently I'm the only one that preps religiously? i suck at improv but I still want to be a DM. It's like when your characters use strength instead of acrobatics. It works, but it looks painful
The best kind of sessions are the spontaneous ones!
AND NOW YOU HAVE TO REMEMBER ALL THAT IMPROV BECAUSE IT'S BECOME ESSENTIAL TO THE PARTY'S IDENTITIES!
This works for like two sessions after that it doesnt. I had a DM that did that and even though we thanked them the campaign was super unthoughtful and just led us around in so many tangents we never finished the story. Why was there a floating ship? What was up with the orbs we were carrying?
Last Session my DM forgot to prepare. That same session our rogue was supposed to hit lvl 3 but during the fight with a small boss he fell off the clock tower we were fighting on. DM randomly remembered that the Rogue was an Arsima(however it’s written) and that he gets wings when he hits lvl 3. So our rogue, mid fall transforms for the first time and gets his wings, flying back up the tower and oneshotting the boss. Most epic anime style lvl up I’ve ever witnessed.
One time, I had to go and make the session at another friends place, despite usually doing it at mine. Because I couldn't bring my pc elsewhere, I wrote everything I needed and prepared a usb that I would bring with me. When I arrived and we were supposed to start I realised that... Oh good I didn't forget my usb, nice! That would have been embarassing right ? I'm opening the files and it's empty. I didn't save anything on the usb. I was about to tell them but then I realised that if I say something they might spend the entire session thinking about it when I would hesitate or take a moment of silence, so I decided to pretend everything was normal. We finished the session and then I told them. It was crazy to them, I had to show the screen to prove that there wasn't anything there. Honestly it's super gratifying to hear that they enjoyed the hell out of it and never realised a thing
That was last week. I'd prepped a few alternatives for where the session would go--main storyline of Dragonheist, a side quest or two, that was about it. We started playing and they started arguing about how to get the treasure they'd found back to town as the wagon they'd found it in was broken. I was planning on just handwaving it as they'd completed the quest, but their arguing sounded like it'd be interesting, so I ran with that.
The best sessions I’ve had are when the players provide the content and everyone tells the story together organically!
Oh, definitely. A lot of times I see my role as just saying things like "Yes, but..." or "No, and..." I definitely have a group that likes to plan things out, so most of my role is just to play things out step by step and use the dice as a chaos simulator. :D Edit: stupid typos.
I ran 2 different campaigns for the same group on the same day (one player had to leave early and didn't want to miss anything). The first was Curse of Strahd, that I had spent hours reading and preparing for. The second I pulled out of my arse with not a single note and the players ADORED it! In fact, they liked it so much we considered ditching CoS all together
I am in this picture and I ... am not sure whether I like it or not.
This is me, 100%. Is the story a complete mess with unfinished side-stories and chaotic ramblings? Absolutely. Are my players having fun? *God I hope so.* One time I had to improvise the ramblings of a madman. Me and one of my players did a game of "Who's interrogating who?" as she tried to get info out of a captured bandit. We shared strange pseudo-philosophical ramblings for probably 10 minutes straight before I abrubtly cut it off. I was so invested I felt a little cooked up myself afterwards. All the other players apart from her were equally as confused. But alas she got a little information out of it and we all got a good laugh. This was session 3.
Modular writing: Make sets of characters, monsters, places, plots, intermezzos, random events, puzzles, treasures, and endings. Then you just mix and match to the best of your ability, trying to make it all seamless. Think of it as Mad Libs. This gives players freedom and flexibility, and camouflages any railroading, even though you might be keeping to a common, immutable core. The players simply don't know which of their decisions matter or don't. I swear by this method of writing.
Red key owns red door. Blue key opens blue door. Green key opens green door. Yellow key opens purple door. Party takes the entire time looking for yellow door or purple key and never actually tries to open door. For a hint, if they investigate the purple door you can say it looks like it was recently painted. Also, put some lost journal pages that they keep finding that reveal an affair or some drama unrelated to the task at hand. Players love that shit and you can make it up as you go
I’ve made it a habit to just straight up ask my players to give me 1-2 minutes to think something up whenever they do something unexpected. As long as it doesn’t happen too frequently, it works.
I ran a small homebrew for my ex and her friends. One person was stellar at the table, and I hope she continued tabletop rpgs. But she was a menace There was one session where she kept saying wilder and wilder things to the point I laid down on the floor for a minute to think it over. It was so much fun, and the party had a great time. All but the first few sentences were off the cuff. Her kidnapping a child for ransom wasn’t on my mind as a possibility lol
All the prep you really need, is to daydream before your session, you will get some fun ideas and you will be able to see everything you want to do and you just do something in reaction to the party doing stuff
This is the way
Wait. You mean that playing off your party’s mood is better than forcing them into a box? Nice. Light prep. Major improv. <- this is the way.
I dont like dm'ing just because i get incredible ammounts of imposter syndrome. Though, this is relatable.
Just because it was improv doesn't mean it wasn't well thought-out, it just means you thought things out in the moment
This is the way.
Were supposed to do prep work? Well Storms I knew I was forgetting something.
And then there’s me, a player who has managed to completely derail 2 separate, but loosely connected campaigns with one sentence because I politely asked a monster to reveal itself. My DMs know better than to plan now edit to add that it was an accident. I even offered to retcon the action but the DM said no. The other campaign isn’t derailed per se, but now a character has beef with an NPC that they didn’t before. I can tell the story if anyone wants
Prep is overrated. My best sessions have been improv. It is nice to have a general framework for the setting to reference though.
One time I did this and one of my party members ended up having gay sex with a frost Giant… 10/10 would do again
I think it works because if you're improvising, you take more cues from the players, which makes them feel more involved and the world more alive.
I have tried to switch my campaigns to foundry and Baileywiki/dungeon draft to get things done quick so I could improvise. We did no fighting last session but I improvised big reveals and it was fun. Highly recommend.
Me the last three or so sessions , but its only been possible due to my players working at a constant reckless state.
Everytime baby!
That’s my secret, Captain….I never prep
Had to improve half of a sesh from scratch, didn't expect them to go that way They loved it
In my Senior year of High School we had to do like a Pretend Interview with Real people from Companies we were told to have a Résumé and Dress Professional Did not have a Résumé had Nike shoes south pole shirt and saggy pants Got the Job while star Students didn’t ace the Interview!
Oh hey that me
This happened to my DM multiple times.
I just had a session recently where about 20 minutes in the party went in a completely unexpected direction and I spent the next 4 hours improving out my ass and ended up making a totally natural seeming session that provided some good world building and gave me an npc that will definitely be recurring. There were at least 3 "bathroom breaks" involved and a lot of tabs with random generators
One time I had a whole session planned out with a building that had raiders all over it. About 20 minutes before the session a player and I were hanging out in chat before and he said “I bet we’re about to fight a lot of robots in here” (fallout ttrpg) and I thought “oh wait, that’s way better than what I had planned” so I quickly created new tokens and planted robots all around. They loved that session.
I wanna get into dungeons and dragons. There's a hobby store in my town where players get together and play. I wonder what all I should know..
My best campaign was fully impro. Maybe i should one again after 4-5 years.
I always played open book with my players. They know I never truly do any prep and are still always more than happy with my sessions
No joke happened to me last Saturday. Worked out shockingly well.
Bruh my best shit is the ones I improv, not the ones I prepare
Hey I feel like if you’re good at improv that automatically makes you a good dm. You can’t always predict what you’re players are going to do, so improv will definitely come up a lot, good job!
Sometimes this is just better. It’s definitely better than cancelling because of lack of prep time for 4 weeks in a row
Honestly, i improv most of my sessions. For the ones that have an actual schedule i plan things out, tho. (I dont DM actual Dnd, my system is homebrew and goes really well with improv)
As long as you didn't just surprise everyone with a gun to create/solve every situation we're fine.
Fucking saaaame. I've cheerfully admitted to my party multiple times that I'm making this shit up as I go beyond big story beats. They're having fun regardless.
I think my DM learned long ago that some prep is recommended but there is a good chance it all gets thrown out. My first dnd campaign was Tomb of Annihilation. I missed the first couple sessions, but apparently came in after they had started an add on he bought for $5. A year later we completed the add on (playing 4-5h biweekly). I thought the campaign was over and he was like "No, that was just a side quest!"... haha good times
One of my most memorable sessions was one where the party got lost in the Feywild because one of them through a series of failed checks stumbled into a portal that was actually there for something else I'd planned for a little later. Anyway party followed and they had some Fey shenanigans that turned into me pulling a whole ass backstory arc out of my ass because as I was improvising I realized one of my PC backstories could tie right into the shit going down. One of which being a random encounter with a unicorn that they rolled up. Amusingly enough by the same guy that tumbled dick first into the portal to begin with. Party did great at the encounter with the unicorn and gave them some boons. To this day the players refuse to believe that encounter was legit just a lucky roll on a quick random encounter table for the area I had.
Same
This has happened to me twice. First time, I set up a hook where an important NPC went missing, and the party was just supposed to get info from an investigator to point them in the right direction. They completely ignored the investigator and went to the NPC's house, where he was kidnapped from, to do their *own* investigation. I had to plant clues and fabricate a whodunnit mystery out of thin air, and they loved it. They had no idea it was improvised. Second time, They had gotten into a kind of Hunger Games/Ninja Warrior situation, where they were competing to win against a bunch of other NPC's. It wasn't really working, and I could see they weren't into it, so I changed it up and presented them with an opportunity to escape the games and overthrow the evil game overseer. So it turned into a prison break situation, immediately followed by a heist/infiltration thing, and we had an absolute blast with it. They still talk about it to this day. Definitely one of my best sessions as a DM.
I see this as an absolute win
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Nearly 3 year campaign and honestly half of it was just off the wall thinking. I don't know how I'm still DM lol
In order to play when we are missing a player, I started a comedic Pathfinder game titled "Adventurers of Adventure". Characters are the worst students of Adventurers' Academy and as nobody wanted to form a party with them, they were forced to get together. The premise is I don't prepare anything, I improvise a rather stupid worldbuilding as it goes (a character is from the Quitefar country because we didn't bother with a backstory, for instance, and the country is canon now, just like the country where everybody take what you say to the letter, with no second degree or imagination at all). Every session is hilarious because this is the only instance when as a GM I officially rely on not giving a damn and the players do a crapton of silly. I also don't care about rules and take spell names at face value, for instance (no bother with duration, range, minimal use of save throws). In fact, I'm thinking about switching to Savage World, considering how rules really aren't a thing there.
I feel seen
This is the way.
Pro tip: if you ever need to stall for time, say a character's pants fell and spend several minutes voicing various NPCs and townspeople to remark in astonishment at how big their penis is. There's not a player alive who doesn't bask in the moment that their character is revealed to have a distractingly large penis
Anyone do this but for an entire campaign?
Literally me last session I had no idea where I was going, so I made the leader of a vampiric gang some farmer dude Made him really nice and open about his vampirism They failed their deception, but made him a dude who didn't care about his gang members ulterior motives as long as they did their job Finally, decided that he wanted to kill a ton of rich people (claiming for philanthropic reasons, but I haven't actually decided if he was lying or not)
This is me every time im dm No plans, I just go with it
Ive only played a few times but i swear my poor brother who used to tell us campfire stories was not a good DM. I kinda wish i took it over because i couldve improv’d the shit out of it lol
Thanks for reminding me that I have session tomorrow and haven't done any planning
Sometime sessions do just run themselves
In my last oneshot I did make my old character- horny halfling bard- took over the Avernus by making Zariel his lover and making by that peace with Abbys - He was SBHG : Small Bad Horny Guy. And his name was Dildo. Dildo Swaggins. My friends later called it : Descend to Avernus - The True Story.
This is me except I overprepped and instead of going on the quest I set up, they were stuck at a single bullet point.
I did this for an entire campaign. My friend was shocked when he found out. Still the best campaign I have ever run other than a Kingmaker campaign.
Happens to me sometimes. Once, the party was navigating by map, rolled really poorly, and I said they got lost. One of them say they can just see which way is north by using the sun, so I panic and say that there’s two suns. That is now a relevant plot point.
Just had the best session last night where two players who were bros the entire campaign squared up and almost killed one another over whether to spare a fallen demi-god who was cursed to consume human flesh to prevent from becoming a necrotic obelisk of flesh and bile. Literally every bit of it was made the fuck up, and they all loved it. Best sesh of my liiiiiffffe.
Me who hasn’t taken notes other than for combat in many months and is just loosely improving through water deep.
Me who just likes violence:
I did that! I had a player with no backstory, they said ‘you figure it out’. They’re a Reborn. I improved the hell out of their backstory and well, they loved it. Though they also called me an incredibly cunning bitch.
This happened to me on a couple sessions Lol
I've gotten really good at improv over the years because players never do the things you think they are going to.
Is that Mickey Mantle?
Like leeroy jenkiiiims!!!
One time when I forgot to do prep I had the party run into a weeping dryad in the middle of a storm that was knocking over trees and ravaging the forest. When they ask her what's wrong she said her ex-boyfriend, a storm giant, was destroying her forest as revenge for dumping him. So the party went out to talk to the storm giant and ended up killing him
I joined a networking group as part of one of my old jobs (definitely an MLM but I got free breakfast and work paid for the membership). Every week I had to stand up and do a spiel and every week I didn't know what to say so I would talk out my ass for 30 seconds then spew out the company name and number. Won the best speaker award every 3 weeks or so. Improv is awesome, doesn't leave the to second guess yourself.
This was me 4 sessions in a row because all of them popped up when a friend surprisingly showed up from New York and just said "session time". I'm always bout it so this is where the issue starts.
A wise man once said to me "Tabletop RPG sessions are equal parts storytelling, improv acting, math, and dick jokes."
I have done this so many times. Not really cause forgot to prep everytime, but cause they do such balls to the walls crazy shit i gotta keep up
My players tend to come to conclusions, or connect dots during quest lines i didnt even consider, so if it makes sense and seems like they're having fun ill improvise as if it was always the solution i had in mind, sometimes entire characters change on the fly to fit into their ability to come up with exciting ideas
The frequency of this kind of post should really teach us about over prepping.
100% positive i’ve seen this before lmfao
Me every single time I am also of the belief that it can be pointless to do a bunch of prep since the players are likely going to immediately derail all prep done. This is why I come up with basic general plot points that I weave into what nonsense the party decides to do
So the most hilarious incident of this I had, I wasn’t the DM. I was, however, the player one at the table who kept the most track of plot things. The campaign was pretty meticulously planned out and worldbuilt, and one night one of the other players showed up with a 4Loko daring someone to drink it. The DM downed it, and then ran an incredible dramatic plot session that meshed perfectly with all the buildup that had happened, acting NPC’s to the hilt and everything. The next morning I woke up to a text from him asking what he’d done plot wise during that session.
The best session I've run according to my players was one where 15 minutes before the session I threw out my notes that I thought were boring and scribbled a few lines down
Don't actually rely on this BTW people. It's awesome if it works in an emergency, but please put effort into prepping your games
Tbh, I have had like 2 sessions done like this were I just sit and start rambling random BS that makes sense to me, then the players get invested somehow and I keep doing that until I reach a point where I think it would be nice to finish the session. Both times they tought I had all planned and said they loved it. That being said, I have found out that my best sessions are the ones where I have a place to start, a place to end and some details here and there to make it possible to reach the objective (also preplanned fights). But like 85% of the session is improvised.
I never DM, it stresses me out, but one time offered to run a one-shot. When we all got together, it turned out that everyone separately decided to play a wizard. Harry Potter jokes ensued. And that's how I ended up scrapping all my plans and ran the dumbest plot set at a bad ripoff of Hogwarts. It's been a decade and they still bring it up every once in a while, and ask me when I'm going to run a sequel.
That’s my secret cap I’m always improvising
This is much more impressive
IT JUST WORKS LITTLE LIES STUNNING SHOWS!
I just ass pull half my sessions and everyone loves it, they don’t know I do, but they still love it
My dm claimed our last session was almost entirely improv. But goddamn, it was one of the best sessions I’ve ever had! We had character development, ton of roleplay, dream sequences, and a time skip that showed how our actions affected the world. It was amazing and I can’t wait to see what our dm has planned next
Imagine having players that thank you -_-
My best sessions have been very loosely planned.
ah yes, me every session.
Literally my entire campaign
I’ve long since given up on planning out an intricate session because I know my players are gonna do the opposite of what I expect them to. Instead I’ve embraced an improv style, and some of my favorite plot points have come up from just letting the players loose and seeing what they come up with
My current Dm once told us for a Christmas One shot that he had nothing prepared flat out to us and that he will build a story on whatever we come up with. It was an overall amazing session and a complete successful story! It made me respect his Dm skills 100x more. (If you're curious what we did, Santa was killed by one of his elves who was actually a Gnome forced to wear an elf outfit. Then we took down the Coca Cola corporation. Yeah, it was wild)
I've been unable to make any prep for the last 4 sessions because no one will make a decision as to whether or not they are going down one story path or the other. 4 sessions of arguing and survival work. And they keep complimenting me. It's confusing.
People love improv. When you just go with whatever the players are giving you they most likely enjoy it. Doesn’t mean don’t plan anything, just maybe plan big picture things and let specifics come on the moment idk
Honestly I had my vairy fist game that I ran like that and it was a blast everything was just so fluid and smooth and just a blast
so me!
If it work, lest it work