5 Ways to Speed up Your Dungeon Master Prep
5 Ways to Speed up Your Dungeon Master Prep
Dungeon master prep done wrong can be a right time drainer. If you’re the sort of DM that has tons of notebooks for every one of the million campaigns you’ve been running over the last six months, then you are going about your prep so extremely wrong that yes, you deserve to not find that one special note about the nexus gate in the hidden fortress that leads to…. err…… to err…… Dammit!
Newsflash, Dammit is not a realm, and your note is lost in it. So the next time you’re 3 days into preparing a game session that will last 4hours, consult these tips for some much-needed guidance.
The campaign in a One Page Plan - You don’t need to flesh every single encounter out for a campaign that will likely last the best part of 2 years to complete. Dungeons & Dragons is all about building stories with your players, not railroading them down some ego-driven story where if they check here or there, they find nothing. Let your players do the talking, and their dice drive the outcomes. So all you need to begin a game from scratch is a one-page synopsis. Include the main plot, key locations, and what world you’re setting it in… which brings us to no2…
Stick to one world - Rather than having to flesh out Pantheons, the various temperatures in certain areas and the internal political structure, have one campaign world and base all of the adventures there. Making up new worlds is so time-consuming that unless you actually have nothing better to do, it can be a tedious task for even the nerdiest among us.
Limit options for Players and You - creating countless tables and options is laborious. This is why you need to just trust your instincts. Chances are, you are great at improv, and can make stuff up as you go along. All good storytellers can put on silly voices, but a great storyteller can add emotion and flaws to their NPC without the need of some machine-like table dictating what to say and when to say it. So go with your gut and believe in yourself.
Flesh out one session at a time - A session built-in one hour will last four. You have to keep telling yourself this. While also reminding yourself of how long your players take to make decisions. Don’t worry, you don’t need to cram in every detail. Players drive the story through their decisions, so hang back and let them make what they will of the story elements and plot points they find around them. Let your players do the work.
Take your time - never rush a game, prep can be a real pain in the whatsit. but if you dedicate good time to do it, don’t leave it off until the last minute, you will produce excellent content and fun games for your players to enjoy.