DUNGEON MASTERS: How do you do your session plans!?

[Grimstead]

Hey everybody. I'm a longtime 3.5e and Pathfinder DM, and I'm trying to up my game. I find that I spend way, way too much time prepping my sessions. 4-6 hours sometimes for a 3-4 hour game. These are 100% custom adventures in a homegrown world, but still. I've been trying to figure out why this is, and I think I have a clue: The only DM notes I've ever SEEN aside from my own are the official modules, which are pretty dang verbose. And I learned to DM by emulating those.

But a lot of DMs, I understand, get by with drastically less prep work. I've been searching for examples of other DMs session plans, and I've only found one scanned page so far.

What I want? Scan a couple pages of your past notes, or copy paste if theyre electronic, and post them, so we can all benefit from seeing how other people do it! The kinds of labels and shorthand and format you use might spark ideas for others... I know I could use the help.

[ceduct]

to plan an encounter by raw the 4-6 hrs seem about right for prep time

somedays you simply didn't have that time available and you wing it

then i simply take a minute to envison the players their environment
throw in a few mobs (punchbags) with an archetype fighter/caster etc

notes would look somewhat like this;

fighter 1, ac 25 att 18/13 dmg 2d6+20 grapple 20, hp 120
fighter 2, ac 28 att 17/12 dmg d8+7 + stun fort dc 18 hp 130

rogue 1 ac 18 att 16/16/14/14 8d6 (sneak) hide 20 ms 20 hp 80

thar 10 minutes :smallbiggrin:

[DigoDragon]

Here is an example of how I stat a dungeon room:

23. Ice guardian. This room (40x40x15) is so exceptionally cold that piles of snow pack the corners, icicles dot the ceiling, and the floor has a slick sheet of ice on it. The room’s center has a large stairwell leading up, but it’s behind a glass tube. As the PCs enter, a large blue clockwork dragon rises from the near snow bank to attack. In addition, two small clockwork dragons come in from hidden alcoves in the previous room to flank.

Ice floor: Double move penalty to walk on ice, +5 to DC on Tumble checks (for usual half move)

I generally keep things to one paragraph and phrase it so I can easily adapt it to read off for the PCs. If the room has a special condition, I'll make a quick note so I'm not fishing through books for the rules on it.

My monster stat blocks look like this:

Blue Clockwork Ice Dragon [N Large Magitek Construct] CR 8
HD 15, HP 142; AC 23 (-1 size, +14 Natural) T 9, FF 23
Init +4, Spd 40; Fort +12, Ref +9, Will +11
Construct traits, Darkvision 60’, Immune Cold, Vulnerable Fire
Atk +18/+13/+13 Bite-Claw-Claw (2d6+4/ 1d8+4/ 1d8+4)
Breath: Ice Bolt 5d6 Cold, 80’ line (Ref DC 20 for half), Once per 1d4+1 rounds
Grapple +23


Usually about 4 hours of prep a week is enough to turn out an adventure for the next session. I break up the time over lunch breaks at my job, or on evenings that the family all goes to bed early.

[Grimstead]

Excellent stuff so far, thanks. I's actually a little surprised to hear that I'm not alone in spending so long on prep! I feel a bit better about it, but I'm absolutely still looking for examples of how I can (and can't) take shortcuts. Anyone else?

[hoverfrog]

Plan? What plan?

I think it depends a lot on the players in all seriousness. I tend to prefer running games with open ended objectives, rescue the prisoners, find your way to the island of the slavers, etc and don't plan things to get the players there. Instead I build a castle that the prisoners are locked up in with guards, patrols, locked doors, commanders, etc or I build a ship and a shipping path that gets them part way there but leave the rest of the journey up to the players.

So I build encounters for the party. If they do something that I haven't planned and avoid the encounter then they avoid it. If they make the encounter bigger than it needs to be (like splitting the party) then they face it as it was written and if they die it's their own fault.

My job as DM is to put the encounters in place for them to tell an interesting story. How they do this is up to them. That means that I prepare for sessions by having encounters ready but I don't plan for them (if that makes sense). The only planning I'll do is if a recurring villain or other enemy is specifically targeting the party and then I will use the NPCs knowledge to the full.

Some of the advantages of this in my view are:

The party end up with equipment that they can't use. If they kill the giants and take their giant sized magic greatswords then they can sell them and interact with the town I've built, or at least the two or three shop keepers and the local lord anyway, rather than use them.
It feels more authentic. Why should an encounter be matched exactly to the party's level? If they go out at 1st level to hunt down the giant then they may well find it to their regret. Equally a party of 4th level characters may try to storm a castle defended by 1st level human warriors. They may cut a swathe through the defenders but they should.
As they advance they will seek out more difficult challenges rather than have the world grow more challenging.
As a DM you can reuse encounters, particularly useful if your party tends to zig when they should have zagged.


Purchased modules are built on the idea of having a story arc that has a definite beginning, middle and end and the party is in many ways directed from one encounter to another. Contrast this with the more open ended, sandbox style of homebrew games where the party exist in a fantasy world. What they do is up to them.

As a DM you create the background and the events that happen to the world they are in. That can be vague or really specific. In one of my current games the PCs are halflings living on a set of islands. Slavers and raiders have arrived. What do they do? That's up to them.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Grimstead
I's actually a little surprised to hear that I'm not alone in spending so long on prep!

You're definitely not alone in your prep time. It's hard to estimate for my campaign, since I divide my time between preparing for the next session and developing materials for story arcs further down the road. But it's definitely a lot of time.

I tend to focus much more on roleplaying and storyline, so before each session I write out the current motivations of various NPCs, where they're headed and what their intentions are, based on the information available to them at the time. They scheme and collude, and work out strategies based on what they know or guess about the PCs; sometimes their interactions will drive the story in new directions. I don't refer to these notes during the session, but writing them out beforehand helps establish the scenario and the swirl of motivations.

For this weekend's session I wrote some details for a local fisherman and his wife, who had just received a few gold coins--more than they would've seen all year--thanks to a PC's generous whim. (It ended up putting a severe strain on their marriage.) I try to keep in mind the effects of the PCs on the people they meet, because the consequences--good or ill--will eventually come back to them.

[Pilo]

My players are not explorers so I often can re-use prepared part of older dungeons or scenario into new ones.

When I prepare a place, I try to find a general theme:
Catacombs.
Millitary castle.
Flooded temple.
Tower which exists only during day time.
Place with multiple non detectable portals (fun when the player who draws the map says: "Are you sure? I already have a wall here!")

This usually take me 15-30 minutes.


Then I plan some encounters (8 generally), with one or two that can take place are in secret or bonus rooms. With an average 10 to 15 minutes each.
For most of them there is an easy way to win, a way to make it easier after the start and most of the time a brute force solution.

I use regular monsters stat block with life multiplier and raw bonus if i need to refluff (Lizard men can be used to any savage kind of monsters like some man-eater wolf-headed beast, goblins may become minor demons like the fallen one from Diablo by adding their Demon's traits and violent magic created monster of acid is a refluffed water elemental).

Then I draw the plans on the fly or use a map generator.

Finnally I add a pinch of story to it and sometime an element to improve the main plot and make them think.

For political plot it takes more time. I make the characters, give them some pieces of informations they would give to the PCs, and other they might tell if the PCs ask them about. I give them a personnality and a goal which will sometime become a sidequest to my PCs if they want the informations.

[Roncorps]

And for lazy DM (or when you don't have time), you can use something lke the Tome of Adventure Design (Sword and Sorcery + Pathfinder use) from Frog God Games or the Ultimate Toolbox from AEG (used in the time with 3.0).

Both use random tables for a lot of things (I prefer the Tome of Adventure Design for a all around design). From encounters to missions to targets to location to etc. Even Pickpocket list or Tavern name.

After that, you just need to add your own statblock for NPC/monster and you are ready ! You can always roll on the tables even INgame if the players go somewhere you didn't plan.

[Flickerdart]

What's a plan? When you're playing online, it's so easy to improvise everything.

[killem2]

I open a word document that has each numbered section of the module I use (or if it is a home made dungeon with numbered rooms.)

I use bullet points to go over what is in each of these rooms, where I can refer back to the original document. I also have in capital letters and highlighted yellow OPEN DOCUMENT 1. THE EVIL ROOM.

And in this document is all the npc/monsters I have them to fight.

Since I also have copies of all the character sheets, a very large table, and time, I will run through the dungeon strictly for combat purposes to get a good idea how fights will go down.

I take extra time on big big boss fights.

That's about it. I don't worry about trying to get a certain amount done in a given time period, I try to have it all ready to go.

[Shpadoinkle]

How I DM:

Step 1: Wing it.

Now, this isn't to say I do NO work between sessions. I come up with scenarios and "plot" (insofar as there is any) and figure out what the NPCs are doing at the same time, in general, and I write down ideas and some notes and stat up important and/or interesting NPCs they're likely to encounter (even if I don't intend for them to ever see any action- you never know,) but players are always doing stuff you can't predict, so you HAVE to improvise during the actual game.

Also, I don't sit down and deliberately come up with ideas, I just go about my day and write down stuff as it occurs to me, and later I see if it's workable. Yeah, I sometimes get caught empty-handed, but on the whole it works pretty well for me, and if you're not good at improvising, you'll get better pretty fast.

[Grimstead]

Wanted to acknowledge everyone who has posted. Thanks for the feedback. I would hope this thread has been or will be helpful to more DMs than just myself, and I'll continue to check back if anyone else wants to chime in.

As it stands, I'm looking closely at the methods and examples everyone has listed and trying to figure out where I can cut away from my usual thoroughness and let myself improvise, without feeling completely unprepared. Already got some ideas to try out next session though.

[Roncorps]

As it stands, I'm looking closely at the methods and examples everyone has listed and trying to figure out where I can cut away from my usual thoroughness and let myself improvise, without feeling completely unprepared. Already got some ideas to try out next session though.

I think it's a question of mixing way of doing it. Normally, I plan Hard points and Soft points. Hard points are the backbone of the story, where they see the BBEG or minions and learn the core story about the campaign or adventures. Between each of the hard points, there are soft points, like sub-quest. They can do them or not, depend of the players. I prefer to do them faster, with some improvisation. Like go look for X, escort Y guy, steal W thingy. Some of them contain little plot hole about the whole campaign/adventures.

This way, I use more time for the core with the hard points (that represent maybe 50% of the games) and the other 50% is less time consuming because it "patch" the game between the important stuff.

[Amidus Drexel]

How I DM:

Step 1: Wing it.

Now, this isn't to say I do NO work between sessions. I come up with scenarios and "plot" (insofar as there is any) and figure out what the NPCs are doing at the same time, in general, and I write down ideas and some notes and stat up important and/or interesting NPCs they're likely to encounter (even if I don't intend for them to ever see any action- you never know,) but players are always doing stuff you can't predict, so you HAVE to improvise during the actual game.

Also, I don't sit down and deliberately come up with ideas, I just go about my day and write down stuff as it occurs to me, and later I see if it's workable. Yeah, I sometimes get caught empty-handed, but on the whole it works pretty well for me, and if you're not good at improvising, you'll get better pretty fast.

+1 for this.

I find it's best to keep track of the important NPCs, and nudge players in that direction, rather than to have a coherent plot of sorts. Players have a tendency to do... unexpected things, so it's more important to have a good idea of how the villain would react to the PCs' actions rather than to give him a heavily detailed plan.

[roguemetal]

Game sessions need only be prepped with a refresher of the rules of your world and memory for the events that are happening in all places. Stat blocks and traps I have usually set up way in advance of plot taking place, so I don't need to worry about anything when the players become involved in encounters I wasn't ready for during a given session. Of course a large part of this is also improvisation, and sometimes I re-stat encounters or create traps on the spot just because it's more akin to my players current style of play than what they were doing when I originally built an encounter. The REAL things that I end up prepping before game time are the following.

1. Character acting. Voices, dialects, and speechpatterns of my important NPCs.

2. Treasure descriptions. Stats can be grabbed at random, but item descriptions are often integral to plot.

3. Re-mapping. What I call mapping is going over each NPC in the game, each organization, deciding what they are doing, how they've been affected by the PCs or just by time, and where people currently are in the game map. This can include moving items between NPCs, leveling them up, and adjusting them. Basically, ask yourself, what is everyone in your world doing right now?

Together, these take about ten-twenty minutes on a day when I'm not tired from work. Other DMs I have taught claim the last step takes much longer: upwards of two hours. For me preparing eight-ten character persona is much harder, since unlike them I've never done acting, but it all depends on what you're good at. Meanwhile, here's a sample of a "session plan" which I actually bothered typing up.

Vologma - Scouts are moving into Empire territory, assessment will take place at midnight. Lord Umber has selected Albreicht as replacement disciple. Neromeia will attempt to assault prior. Jack has stolen the Midnight rings, palace will be on high alert.
Fey Lands - Queen has become aware of Mer's predicament, will resurrect him under her control if he is killed. Spirit spreading operations advance to phase 3 (warping effects on material plane are now visible). Titania withdraws from here to handle players. Hazel unchanged.
Storm Titans - Moving south-east, unlikely encounter. Lord Winter is now in the Charmed lands.
Animus - Their decisions will be made in the next day. Continue as shadows, lion still hunts wolf.
Deep Market - Survivors of closure are out for blood. Giant lands are in gold frenzy, centaur are failing to keep order. Uprisings imminent.
Death - Remember Glenn's death sight and account for undead status.
Hunters - Withdrew after shadow dancer was killed, will no longer act independently. One member still on material plane watching for changes.
Charming - Dweller will intervene with execution. Church will crack down if party is violent. Plague in slums. Rumors of dragon in west-town. Introduce Ogal and Barring. TIS fight congregating in south.

+4 to acid trap.
Rats in sewer are now infected with Magefire.
Earthquake in 27 minutes counting.
PIB at sundown.
Vulcan has wind sword.
Mer compromised in three hours.
Jeff contracts with keeper of song, gains blood amulet.

Day-orb: White orb sitting atop a cane made of twisted branches, it refracts light like a crystal. On it's surface a detail of a skull with four eyes can be just barely made out.
Nightmare: Ebony miniature of a horse whose eyes are empty sockets. Feels hot to the touch.
Titania's sword: The sword is broad and laid in silver. It's scabbard has figures of angels hoisting a flag of nine leaves. A detail of a dragon weaves it's way up the hilt where it is impaled.
Witch ward: A small block of oak with eight sides plus the top and bottom.
Caravan: A closed top vehicle drawn by three mules. It's cover is mad of fabric and has four dinner plates that almost look like eyes painted on the back and front under the word 'travel' written in elvish. The driver looks friendly albeit old fashioned with a wide brimmed hat and all manner of jewelry hanging off his tanned arms.

[NichG]

If I'm being well-organized I have one file that has names and short descriptions of important NPCs or even just NPCs I had to introduce on the fly. Things like:


Rerim Falks. Young human male (~23). Black moustache, slicked-back hair, talks through his nose. Young master of the Falks merchant house - looking to prove himself. Involved in black market shenanigans but doesn't know it.


Before the campaign, or before a significant arc of the campaign, I sit down and type up a few paragraphs of vaguely what I think this arc is about. This isn't so I can refer to it later - this is because when you sit down and spell things out, logical errors become a lot more obvious. It could be something like this (reconstructed, not my actual notes):


Arc: We are not alone
Fantasy world discovers aliens manipulating their politics (why?). Driving world to war, backing one faction then the other. Why: harvesting a resource from those killed in the war (soul-trap weapons...). Resource is used as fuel in their empire? Maybe using souls of the dead is the only way to bring back the dead - Raise Dead/etc unknown in the world, but aliens have it. Bring in theme: traditional magic develops into magitech. Alien-backed empire has researchers trying to do it without alien help - possible PC allies or enemies.

PCs get involved: connections with a threatened kingdom lead the kingdom to try to use the PCs as scouts/assassins/whatever the party is good at. Naturally leads in. By end of arc, PCs should have a spaceship. Possibilities: fight mothership/drive off mothership/stow aboard and capture it/find crashed wreck from other visitors.

Stuff to use: governments keep the aliens secret even if uncovered? Alliance of nations against those from beyond - turn war into peace? PC's world has some special significance that the aliens don't understand (ancient seat of a fallen civilization, etc) that can be used in later arcs. Drop hints early.


I also maintain a few lists of 'weird things' to toss at the players occasionally. Lists of new fantasy materials and their properties (e.g. Spider Argent - silver spun into thread that deals damage to lycanthropes who attack the wearer with natural attacks), lists of any sort of cosmological energies of importance, etc. I also keep a list of 'gimmicks' for fights, which are basically single ideas that an enemy could be built around at need. Not actual builds, just things like "Enemy gets stronger when taking HP damage, but stat damage works as normal" or "Enemy can dodge into/out of some protective environment cheaply, PCs must ready actions or take to-hit penalty/other inconvenience".

[Acanous]

Depends on the party level, really. Low level I just stat up some enemies, toss objects onto the gridmap, and play out an ambush/enemy camp/abandoned warehouse/what have you.
After level 5 or so you have to put more planning into the terrain and enemy composition. Not gonna have NPC Warriors and Rogues as the main chaff anymore, there'll be a caster around somewhere. Casters take the most time.

I think the 12 deck, 144 gun merchant marine with a crew of 200 was the hardest encounter to plot out, because I needed to model the maps out so it'd be reasonable to play it 3-D.

After lv 10 or so you're going to need two maps. One for what the players see, one for what's actually there. The two maps can look entirely different.

Of course, a big challenge is finding things to use when the party goes off the rails. I find Rappan Athuk and Temple of Elemental Evil to be a great pair of resources for this. If they to go off and crawl a dungeon? Let 'em. They'll either have some fun or come back to the rails crying.

[genderlich]

I'm about halfway through my first extended campaign as a DM. In general, what works for me is if I know there's going to be a dungeon I'll stat up everything in it that needs to be, like specific monsters and traps. I'll write brief outlines for NPC interaction and descriptions. Other than that, I pretty much improvise. It's worked great so far, and I'm getting better every session. On the other hand, now I'm in a situation where I can't really plan anything because I have no idea what's going to happen next; it entirely depends on what the PCs do. So that'll be interesting.

[Invader]

A few things that really help me get organized and speed up certain processes;


Mythweavers
http://www.myth-weavers.com/forumhome.php

SRD Calculator
http://www.d20srd.org/extras/d20encountercalculator/

Monster Finder
http://monsterfinder.dndrunde.de/

Scribd You can find pretty much any book through this site, pretty much the best I've found without downloading anything.
http://www.scribd.com/

[roguemetal]

SRD Calculator
http://www.d20srd.org/extras/d20encountercalculator/

I've honestly never found the SRD Calculator to be effective. It doesn't have any way of considering the values of items in an encounter, any environmental conditions, or other means of scaling. I've looked at the coding for it, and the programmer even admits their formula is faulty. The environment stuff at the end is also tagged on, and not connected to the overall formula. There's also a major flaw with how encounters are calculated when multiple of a lower level are paired with more than one of a higher level as it rounds the encounter up to the next viable statistic, which is a range of 3 levels assuming players are above level 4. Basically, the whole thing is a trap, and it's better to learn how to calculate encounters by hand.

[TypoNinja]

I must confess to being a shameless wing-meister.

Almost everything comes straight out of a book or module. I'll have the barest of notes for important NPC's or convoluted interactions (NPC A works for NPC B, who is looking for the traitor who is NPC C, who happens to be sleeping with NPC A), or frequently refernced info (what is the damn break DC on that door anyway?). And important dialouge I've written.

Everything else is either in my head or in the book.

My world, pre packaged adventures, modified just enough to fit the setting.

[rot42]

I've honestly never found the SRD Calculator to be effective. It doesn't have any way of considering the values of items in an encounter, any environmental conditions, or other means of scaling. I've looked at the coding for it, and the programmer even admits their formula is faulty. The environment stuff at the end is also tagged on, and not connected to the overall formula. There's also a major flaw with how encounters are calculated when multiple of a lower level are paired with more than one of a higher level as it rounds the encounter up to the next viable statistic, which is a range of 3 levels assuming players are above level 4. Basically, the whole thing is a trap, and it's better to learn how to calculate encounters by hand.

Is this just for the Encounter Level and estimated Difficulty or is there a problem with the XP calculation as well? I find that actual difficulty varies so much by party composition (and running a game without accurate up to date PC character sheets is for the birds) that I wind up simming all my encounters to make sure that they are reasonable. Calculating XP, though, is exactly the sort of straightforward and tedious task that makes computers so useful.


For the OP (edit: though a bit discursive and not entirely on topic): I probably spend at least ten hours prepping for a fortnightly 4-5 hour game. A lot of that is just churning ideas around, though, and the game probably would not suffer at half that. Plot points and NPC motivations get roughed out at the gym or whenever I encounter something neat in whatever book I am reading or just whenever. A file for notes on my phone accumulates thoughts as they occur. For encounter design, I find that it helps to have a basic theme or goal in mind along the lines of "PC1 just got a cool new ability that should see some use", "that Bonetree looks like great fun", or "this will be my last chance for archers on the parapets to be scary before everyone starts flying".

I find it immensely helpful to keep an index of the game so far, including a brief summary of each planned and enacted encounter (each in a separate text file) and a quick summary of party XP and treasure. Recurring NPCs and organizations each get a few sentences in a master setting file, with more detail if required in the individual session notes. If I tried to write it all out in a form that someone else could use it would probably be as verbose as an adventure module, but I never bother.

The more you know about your setting the easier it will be to wing an encounter and the more you can get away with sparse detail. This will tell you what sort of person is likely to show up where. A list of mix'n'match unassigned names, personalities, and motivations can be added to whenever you have an idea and goes a long way towards making the world look more complete and detailed than it actually is.

[Azoth]

I gotta admit, I do alot of winging. I will write up major events that need to happen for the plot and a few possible route to get between them that I think players will take. Then stat up my major NPCS, and design my major cities.

From there I let the players decide the what, when, where, and how with their actions. I can almost always find a way for their decisions to lead them in the direction necessary for the story to continue. Whether I do it with NPC interractions, random encounters, rumors of something a PC wants being in the general area or the like.

Their fates are their own. If they bypass a town where a survivor of a raid from the BBEG army is being tended that could offer them information...well they don't get the info. They slaughter an entire temple of evil priests in the middle of a ritual...they deal with what pops out. They enter a dungeon without trying to resupply somewhere first...hope provisions last.

[Darth Stabber]

I am probably the most shameless winger of them all. I rarely even use stat blocks. After playing 3.5 for over a decade I know stat block to stuff I use frequently by memory, and most of the time I just roll dice to see how I feel about them as opposed to actually using stats. The players don't notice it unless I get inconsistent, and I have been honest with them before hand that I will sometimes roll dice just to see how I feel about them.

The key for my players is that they want an open world where they can do what they want, and then deal with the consequences. The only way I know to really accomplish that is to spend a lot of time up front on world building, and react to the players. However this is really only needed if you reverse the normal actor/reactor arrangement. In most campaigns that I have played in the dynamic has been that the NPCs act, and the PCs react to that. If this is reversed you can't prepare as well, especially if your players are new and/or "creative" (I have a mix of both). Also campaigns with primarily evil PCs lends itself to proactive PC. This method of DMing puts more of the onus on the players to create a good game, since they are driving the plot, they have much greater control of the narrative and the events contained therein. You as DM are still on the hook for a lot, but it does make the players feel more responsible for ensuring that the session is fun.

If you are running a more standard adventure, with more reactionary adventurers and proactive antagonists, planning tends to be easier and more worthwhile. You have a great deal of control over the plot, and can dictate events almost absolutely. But, to get cliche, with that power comes the responsibility of doing it well. The players will, perhaps rightly, put the blame and credit on you for all the details, because they had little control over them.