On Planning

I am terrible about prepping a game. If it’s a published adventure, I tend to read at most an hour beforehand. Generally, as everyone’s settling into the table I read ahead, too. Now, when I first get the adventure, I do a cursory thumb-through to see what’s going on, but after that, it could be months later before I turn to those pages.

I’m even worse at prepping for completely winging it. Last session of Star Wars, I knew the players were going to find Bala Tiik, a known bounty hunter who one of the players owed a debt to, but I had no idea where he was. On my way out the door to one of the player’s house, I pulled Lords of Nal Hutta off the shelf and walked out the door, assuming I’d find where to send them to in their search. They ended up on Nar Shaddaa, and I grabbed some locations from the book. It worked fine, but you know what would have worked better? Any kind of prep whatsoever.

I run two weekly games, D&D and Star Wars, and right now, neither one is a published adventure, so I’m off the rails. What’s a guy to do to prep for games with so little time?

1. Take some time. I know, I know. Don’t have time? Make some! Easier said than done, right? However, this IS possible. Take a week off every once in a while and use the time you WOULD be playing to plan the next month’s worth of sessions. I was lucky enough to have players from both of my games cancel for a few weeks for their own vacations, so that gives me TWO missing sessions a piece to do prep.
2. Use Prepared Stuff. Lots of great books out there will give info to you to run with. A few of the FFG Star Wars books are chock full of hooks, ready for you to run entire sessions off a single paragraph. In the D&D Monster Manual, you can flip to any page and build an adventure off of the information about various monsters. If all else fails, run a prepublished adventure, where it’s all prepared for you. Check the next number for how to use these with little prep.
3. Published Adventures Need Freedom. Read as much as you’re able to, then let everything go. You only read up on the first half of the chapter of this adventure? Use what you read up on, and then wing it. There’s a dragon now! You now have this part of the dungeon branch off into something brand new you just came up with based on what the players say.
4. Monster Stats are Fake. Don’t trust them! In my head, most monsters have an AC of, say, 13, and 10 HP. They get a +2 to all their rolls. This of course can be adjusted up and down on a whim. And then, on the fly, give them some sort of special ability. “Nope, no opportunity attacks here, they have that ability to ignore them! Over here? This guy has flame breath.” Or, ignore the HP entirely. Some monsters, at your discretion have 1 HP, others can take two big hits before they go down. Really wing it and don’t care about stat-blocks. Also, if you give some big monster a ton of HP, just let the players kill the thing when they look like they’re getting bored. But if a player seems to be preparing to throw some big spell, or is about to perform some amazing attack, let that be the killing blow.
5. Read The Lazy Dungeon Master. Mike Shea’s The Lazy Dungeon Master is an incredible resource, building off of his mantra: “Prepare only what most benefits your game.” It’s full of really invaluable information, and if you don’t have time to read all that (like me), you can get the audiobook! You can find out more information here and you can get a preview here.

Those are my tips for now. I’d love to hear your own tips! Lemme know in the comments below!