I keep preparing less and less...

[The Cats]

... and I don't think my players notice. Makes me feel silly for the hours I spent constructing each encounter when we started the campaign. They seem to have MORE fun when I just spend fifteen minutes beforehand picking a couple monsters, refreshing myself on NPC names and vaguely considering how I can retroactively turn some of the stuff that happened last session into foreshadowing.

My players like to talk to each other a lot. Gives me plenty of time to think of what the heck is gonna happen next.

I mean, there is a plot. It just tends to change shape a lot.

DnD is pretty fun you guys.

[Jormengand]

Not necessarily surprising - less preparation means more opportunity to react to what the players do rather than to what you have written down.

[Kane0]

It's a sign of experience and practice.

But where is the campaign journal?!?

[Mitth'raw'nuruo]

Some of this is experience. New DMs need more prep time, just like a new campaign would.

[Nifft]

Makes me feel silly for the hours I spent constructing each encounter when we started the campaign.

For me, the obsessive over-preparation of early sessions paid off in terms of both the confidence to wing it, and the system mastery to wing it without wrecking everything.

So maybe don't feel silly that you've gotten a good enough handle on the rules to improvise.

[DarkKnightJin]

Apparently, the only things you really need to have prepared is knowing what NPCs you have in your world, and how they would react to your PCs going about their PC-stuff.

Of course, having a rough outline for the 'main quest' wouldn't hurt either.

I figure preparing less is something that happens as you get more comfortable as the one telling the story, and you have a feel for what the PCs are capable of and how they tend to go about things.

[TrinculoLives]

...and vaguely considering how I can retroactively turn some of the stuff that happened last session into foreshadowing.
That's my bread and butter. Any little detail can be genius set-up if you're creative enough.

[MrStabby]

I find I do a lot of high level preparation then wing the rest.

Best dungeon I built took a lot of preparation. Randomly teleporting portals between areas were key. Working out the set of other portals each portal went to to ensure that to get to dangerous areas PCs would have to have gone through an area with either information or a tool to help them. Ended up with a big adjacency matrix of rooms.

This prep was needed, without it there would be dead characters all over the place. As it was, destination was determined by a roll of the die and so players survived through luck and skill rather than it appearing to be too much designed to be easy. That place took about six or seven sessions to do so it wasn't prep for one encounter alone.

Another great session had almost no preparation. The PCs explored some odd letters and found themselves in the middle of a conspiracy. One that I built up as they went along (continuity errors in world building turning into plot points).

Do as much as you need, I guess. This will vary by type of session

[Joe the Rat]

Prep early, don't prep often.

Once you've laid out your big pieces, and have the complex environment / causal chains plotted, you just need to have what you need for the next session.

Theatre of the Mind and Abstract Mapping can help quite a bit.


(continuity errors in world building turning into plot points).
That is my bread and butter. Anything that the party asks about, but doesn't have an obvious answer becomes a plot point down the road.

[Sigreid]

The time you spent overpreparing in the past is why you can wing it now.

[2D8HP]

.I keep preparing less and less...

... and I don't think my players notice. Makes me feel silly for the hours I spent constructing each encounter when we started the campaign. They seem to have MORE fun when I just spend fifteen minutes beforehand picking...
I found that to be true back in the mid 1980's as well, but when you get out of practice (for decades) it's not true anymore and you (well okay, me) need the heavy prep time until you (me) get back "into-the-groove", but after you do you (I) find that players prefer when the DM is "wingin' it".

[The Cats]

It's a sign of experience and practice.

But where is the campaign journal?!?

I dunno man, it's pretty much just a horribly mutilated Rise of the Runelords, that I didn't decide was going to be Rise of the Runelords until a few months in so it starts with a corrupted enchanted forest plot.

[Kane0]

Maintaining the illusion of originality is a valuable skill in itself. The better you are at it the harder it is for players to pick up on what content you ripped.

Like how all of my cool 'custom' monsters are really just conversions of the wackier stuff found in -
That was close.

[MarkVIIIMarc]

I am prepping plenty trying to make encounters level appropriate. I'm new at it though. Nice to hear it gets easier.

[MeeposFire]

I find that some systems do this easier than others. For instance while it may surprise some I found 4e very friendly to winging it. The encounter creation rules were well done and with the newer monsters it was enough of a challenge for most groups (really high powered groups needed more but that is always true). Also using inherent bonuses allowed me to not worry as much about treasure for the group which is also a help. On the other hand I found 3e to be much less friendly for that due to the not quite as strong encounter building rules (well really less accurate rules), monster/NPC building rules, and the necessity of magic items (there is no easy around it either as they are required for not just the PCs but also any NPCs you make if you want to make sure they are a threat). All of this and more make it harder to just wing it.

AD&D and older D&D have many aspects that make it easy to wing once you know the system except for making encounters specifically to make tough fights (older rules did not usually build it that way specifically) since the rules were very vague on how to do that.

5e is IMO slightly easier than that mostly due to the encounter guidelines. They are maybe slightly more vague/more play than the 4e encounter rules but it has all the other things that make your life potentially easier.

Of course what really makes life even easier is learning the system and putting in time at the start preparing well. Once you have the foundation set everything is easier later.

[Sjappo]

I spend lots of time in prep.

When running published modules a read the module cover to cover at least twice before season zero. I design aids for use during play. Maps, sounds, pictures, cutouts, handouts. I re-read pertinent parts of the module before each session to refresh my knowledge of important NPCs, plot points and encounters. If I have time I tweak combat encounters a bit.

When playing homebrew I design most of the plot before start. I design and add encounters where needed. I design each encounter in detail and I will design or alter monsters and NPCs to suit my need. Plus props etc as needed.

I can wing it, sure. But I find my games infinitely better and more enjoyable when I put in enough prep time. And my players too, I checked :)

[MrStabby]

I am prepping plenty trying to make encounters level appropriate. I'm new at it though. Nice to hear it gets easier.

Well CR is a bit... ahem... inaccurate sometimes - it really comes down more to party composition than level for some encounters. Unless you are aiming for a deadly encounter you can kind of wing it without trouble. The PCs can handle a lot and survival often comes down to how many resources you have left. If you have made things too easy or too hard you can balance by more encounters of harder encounters later.

If you drop off the too easy end of the scale - make it a plot point - WHY were those guards so easy? If you go well above deadly though there is a risk, so just be a bit cautious at the top end.

My recommendation is to get kind of right - give or take a factor of 2 to 3 on difficulty then focus on making the encounters fun and advance the plot.

[The Cats]

I've realized a big reason why it's become so easy to improvise combat encounters is that I gave the characters magic items that are too powerful for their level. I never really have to worry about making things too deadly (unless I do it on purpose) because they steamroll anything 'balanced' I throw at them (Surprisingly good tactics for relatively new players and me forgetting about damage type resistances also helps).

I'm enjoying it since I think the higher CR monsters are cooler anyways, but I definitely see it as a habit that I'll have to break real quick in a new campaign if I avoid going overboard on the custom magic items again.

[Beelzebubba]

I still prep things that remind me in the moment how a certain NPC will behave differently than I would, and use dice to resolve as much as possible.

So, I assign up old-school morale checks, odds of a caster using Counterspell based on various conditions, give them agendas and set tactics, scouting and scrying patterns, etcetera.

I do that to make the game fun and surprising for me also.

[mephnick]

I prep a buttload of tables for different regions in the world because I like making encounter tables, treasure tables, hidden location tables, etc.

In terms of prepping for a single session for a certain party? Pretty much never.