Am I trying to do too much as DM?

[tchntm43]

My group plays once every 4 weekends. In order to prepare for the first adventure we had, I did a LOT of work. Pretty much every lunch break at my job was spent designing NPCs or creating maps of the country, the local region, the starting village, and 2 adventuring locations, and much of my time working was spent with a MS Word tab open in the background working on the adventure itself.

I thought it would get better, but in prep for the next session, I need maps of 2 more villages, a map of a full-size city, and the mine where the main adventure takes place. I have about 25 new NPCs spanning all this area to flesh out. Yesterday I spent about 4 hours after work before bed just trying to set up a better hex grid to use for villages and city centers (I wanted about 3 miles to cover the width of the sheet of paper).

We're not playing this upcoming weekend, but we're scheduled to play the weekend after. I don't know how I'm going to get this all done. I have about half the NPCs done, but none of the maps yet. I'm mostly worried about how much time it's going to take to create the city.

[Pelle]

Sounds like you are doing much more than is needed at the table. That's ok if you enjoy it, though. If not, prepp to improvise, you don't need all the details in advance.

[DarkKnightJin]

The best tip that I can give: check out the videos that are on Youtube to help new DMs.
Trying to work out everything to the last detail will overwork you and it won't be fun for you.

If you know the general "feel" of the area the party will be spending the session in, and have a list of names and accents/quirks prepped to use for NPCs they encounter, act the NPC out with improv.
And make a note of what combination you used for that NPC, so you don't accidentally use it again in the same town/area.

As for encounters and other fun things you've prepared, but the party doesn't 'use'.. Keep it in stock for another time.

[kivzirrum]

"Too much" is relative--depends on your comfort level. That said, you certainly do more than the game demands of the DM, and more than I do--and I spend a lot of time prepping. But just so that I have enough knowledge of the world I've created that it helps with improvising.

Personally, I think improvising is the most fun part of being a DM. Reacting to the nutty things my players do that I never could have predicted, and all.

[Unoriginal]

Well, if it works for you, it works for you, but yeah, it's an extremely high amount of work you're putting into it.


I mean, if I create a whole city, I'd take around one hour max, and only if it was the focus of several sessions. And half an hour for doing the map and NPCs

[Metamorph]

THAT is pretty much indeed! I think it is not bad to have a fully flashed out world, but most of the content could end up unused.

I would suggest that you focus on the core elements, dont try to cover everything (we dont want a burned-out dm, don't we?).

So it could indeed be a bit too much (imo), but every dm and group is different so I guess this depends more on your thoughts about this.

[Sexyshoeless]

I do have to say - do you anticipate hitting 2 villages AND a city in their entirety in one session? Especially if they are going to do a dungeon crawl in the mine?

I would focus your efforts on the pieces that actually need some crunch AND that you actually anticipate needing to use. TBH, maps of cities are nice but they don't do a whole lot for the game itself unless your players are going all sandbox on this. Often easier and more effective to just have the players ask to go to a kind of establishment (blacksmith, market, etc) and you just narrate the place.

It sounds like you are easily putting in 2-3x the amount of time prepping that you would be playing. IMO you should sit down and figure out if there are more efficient ways for you to prep - places where you could improv a bit perhaps, or where you don't NEED a map, just 3-4 locations and 1-2 NPCs per village and then mebbe double that for a city.

If your players can MOW through a whole city in one session, then I would argue they are not being given reason/motivation to explore/interact w/ your locations/NPCs in greater depth. Focus on the why of what you are doing and if the players will actually interact with it.

[Unoriginal]

If your players can MOW through a whole city in one session, then I would argue they are not being given reason/motivation to explore/interact w/ your locations/NPCs in greater depth. Focus on the why of what you are doing and if the players will actually interact with it.

This is true. Doing that much work only to have the PCs ignore the city and the NPCs will just hurt, in the long term.

[tieren]

What books do you own or have access to?

You can lift maps from other sources to use s generic cities or villages. Curse of Strahd has some ok village maps, Storm King's Thunder has 2 cities I think.

Just google "village maps" and see if there is something out there you can use rather than always creating from scratch.

[Armored Walrus]

My group plays once every 4 weekends. In order to prepare for the first adventure we had, I did a LOT of work. Pretty much every lunch break at my job was spent designing NPCs or creating maps of the country, the local region, the starting village, and 2 adventuring locations, and much of my time working was spent with a MS Word tab open in the background working on the adventure itself.

One good way to figure out how much prep makes sense is to go back and look at all this prep you did for the first session. How much of that did anyone but you end up seeing? Maps are a huge example. Now, if you just like drawing maps as a hobby, that's one thing, but for a D&D session, they're totally unnecessary. I've run about a dozen sessions in the capital city in my campaign so far, and no map exists. I just know that the palace is at the top of the hill, overlooking the city. The tavern they like to hang out at has a bartender, a serving wench, and a merfolk ribbon dancer, and is located in the merchants' district. Most of the PCs live in the Wheeze, or in Fog Bottom, and the 'Neath is home to a nest of wererats and kobolds. They don't tend to interact with more than four or five NPCs per session, so I only make up a couple, and then have some names and random personality traits/descriptions available in case they run into any more - then I take notes after the session about who they talked with so if they go back there they find the same person. donjon.bin.sh has a good random NPC generator for stuff like that.

IMO, unless you are making a map as a player handout, don't bother making one.

[ErHo]

There are lists of pre gen NPCs and on the fly generators for NPCs Maps, Towns(with shops including inventory) all over the internet, like DonJon.


Most of what you make will never be used by players, just save it and use it for the next town or campaign.

If you prep everything, you will have a railroad expected for them when they will likely focus on something you didnt anticipate. Gather pre generated stuff and pull it out when/if needed

[Crushgrip]

If you're enjoying doing it, then your not doing too much! I also like to plan out as much as possible, with the understanding that some really memorable stuff can come from "shooting from the hip" when the players go a totally different route then you had planned for. Mapping out a whole city is a lot of work and 25 NPC's is a ton. I tend to use a couple NPC "templates" (fighter/wizard/rogue) of an appropriate CR that I slap a name onto if needed. Another thing that may help is coming up with encounters/scenarios that you know the players will enjoy and then "guiding them" into the encounters. Now, the whole "guiding them" is dependent on how well you know your players. For example, I know my players will meta-game a bit (don't we all?) so I will intentionally add some NPC encounters that are just mundane to keep my players on their toes. While on a long caravan haul in my campaign, I had planned a side-storyline encounter with a very charismatic Drow and his two companions, a half-orc fighter and Deep Gnome Mystic but I didn't want my players to do the whole "DM described these guys in detail as they joined the caravan, therefore we (as players) must pay special attention to them" meta'ish gaming. So I threw a couple of NPC's that joined the caravan before my main encounter with some background that I just made up on the fly. The party was never going to meet these NPC's again so a fully fleshed out backstory for the NPC's was not necessary. The fun part for me was watching them be super cautious and suspect with the first group that joined the caravan and "embarrassing" the PC's when they are sneaking around at night and following a poor innocent NPC as he heads off to take a leak. A lot of fun RP to be had! By the time I had the "main" encounter join the caravan, my players were just playing normal (if you will) and the encounter went off smoothly without them doing any meta'ish gaming.

Another thing to use to speed up mapping is use online maps/images that other have created. Like others have said, I almost never pull out a full map of a city unless the whole session will encompass said city. I just describe as much as possible and have 3 - 4 possible encounters planned just in case - a bar - an inn - a merchant - something random that I think would be fun...chase a thief?

Hope this helps and keep on planning!

[Waterdeep Merch]

Players can really appreciate a fully realized setting, even if it's too much for them to really interact with. There can never be too much work, just a point where you decide there has been enough. Keep at it until you're satisfied. Or run out of time, either/or.

But keep in mind that it has to serve a purpose. Not simply because the players are going to be there either. If what you design has no interactivity, no interesting ways to play in it, then you've spent your time designing very nice curtains for a barren room.

[willdaBEAST]

My group plays once every 4 weekends.

I'm currently DMing a weekly game and a monthly game. I've found the monthly game is far less role-play focused and lore is not a big part of it. That could be differences in the players, since my weekly game is role-play and world building intensive, but I also think the frequency plays a part in it too. It's hard for players to be as immersed and committed to in game relationships/power dynamics, etc, when the games are once a month. I've found myself designing essentially one shots for the monthly game and a story/character driven sandbox campaign for the weekly game.

I think it's natural to over-prepare when you start a campaign, one benefit is you often create way too much content and can start to get a few sessions ahead of players, which makes future prep easier. I'd recommend finding a time commitment to preparation that's sustainable, otherwise you're going to burn out when real life conflicts start to get in the way.

[GlenSmash!]

I try to think as few steps ahead of my party as I can. Just one or two steps really.

I'd rather come up with a few plot hooks in a village, and improvise on how the PCs learn of them then put copious amounts of detail into an NPC the players might choose to have minimal or even no contact with at all.

My goal is generally to be as efficient with my prep time as possible. In short I'm as lazy as possible.

[Sigreid]

You do more than I ever do. I have an idea based on my party's known and suspected desires and wing it. Make note of what had been revealed and set it in stone so to speak from there. The world is largely built in play.

I admit freely I'm not the great DM but the party has fun and seems to appreciate that they get to largely make their own plans to try to work in the world.

[tchntm43]

I do have to say - do you anticipate hitting 2 villages AND a city in their entirety in one session? Especially if they are going to do a dungeon crawl in the mine?

The first village and the city are basically just pass-through locations. The second village is adjoined to the mine where the objective of the adventure is (the mine has been shut down due to kobolds showing up who are being paid by a noble in the city so that the owner of the mine is forced to sell it due to lost revenues). But I'm having an NPC at the beginning recommend that they spend a chunk of their earnings from the first adventure on horses at the first new village, and they might want to interact with townspeople so I wanted to be prepared for that. And they have a day or two to sight-see in the city before they are supposed to be at the 2nd village to fulfill the contract. There isn't much distance between the villages and the city (the villages are basically suburbs of the city). Both the city and the first village have a couple "nuggets" to be gleaned from NPCs relating to character backstories, as well.

I guess I'm mostly just doing all this because I don't handle it well when I don't have an answer for something unexpected the group wants to do. I'm the kind of person who plans out RL conversations ahead of time but I can create a rich and vibrant world with interesting characters, if given the time in advance to think about it all carefully.

[RazorChain]

I haven't even mapped out the home city of the PC's let alone a single village. I have a very rough map that divides the main city into districts and shows major locations.

The players are absolutely content to know that the Happy Mermaid is located in the lower Dock district.

NPCs have no stats until needed and usually just have 3 stats: Personal Power, Influence and Resources.

[Keravath]

If you enjoy making up the details of your world then there is nothing wrong with it. However, from the tone of your post, it sounds like you feel it is a bit much and in my opinion and experience it is.

In general, you want to have a framework for your world. What plot lines might be unfolding and which ones could end up intersecting with the character activities.

In general, if you feel comfortable enough, you don't need a map of a village the PCs may never even explore. However, you need to have an idea of what can be found in the village. Is there a blacksmith? General store? Farrier? What is the rough population? Is there anything going on in town that the players could encounter or become involved with.

If the players stop at the inn, decide to go to the tavern or explore the town. Draw these locations and maps on the fly unless there are specific features that are needed to tie into your storyline ideas for the location. (e.g. is there a clocktower? Is the belfry haunted?). It is fairly easy to create a generic village with a few streets and a number of buildings. Even a generic city is pretty easy. However, if your characters might spend some time there, you might want to sketch out the layout and where the different sections of the city are and perhaps one or two important and/or relevant buildings.

[Lonely Tylenol]

The first adventure I wrote for my players was 27 pages long, and exhaustively covered every contingency for every action that I could conceive of the players committing in the span of that first adventure. It covered two sessions of play.

Now, I write my adventures as a series of flash cards which I suspect might become encounters, with one-sentence descriptions of the encountered entity’s motivation, and wing it from there—though potentially recurring characters get at least a half-page writeup (assisted by my NPC template) by default.

I wouldn’t say either method is wrong; it just depends on how much preparation you feel you need, how much your party demands or needs, and how much you want to commit. A game can be equally enjoyable whether it takes ten minutes or ten hours to prepare, depending on the adaptability of the players and DM.

[The Aboleth]

I always deliberately under-prepare, because I never know what my players will do. For example: Last session the players were told that Drow attacks have drastically risen, leading to tightened security around towns and a need for caravans to hire armed escorts for protection when traveling the roads. During tonight's session, I expected they would spend time gathering more info about the Drow attacks and then go fight said Drow.

Instead, they spent 75% of the session making illicit deals with local Thieves Guild members. Such is the nature of the game--and honestly, the improvisation is my favorite part of being a DM, so I was cool with what happened tonight.

That being said, if you HAVE prepared a ton of stuff, don't be afraid to re-use it or rework it to fit the specific circumstances that pop up (recycle NPC names, tweak the locations of items, re-work that sunken ruin into a noble's sprawling estate, etc). The players won't usually be privy to any changes or tweaks you make, so don't be afraid to re-work things if needed.

[Darth Ultron]

A prepare a LOT, but then I like to prepare a LOT. But that being said: I also use a LOT of shortcuts.

MAPS: Nearly every D&D book, and RPG book for that matter, for the past couple decades has maps in them. Use them. It should not be so hard to find roughly 100 village maps. Also there are plenty of game type maps available one line. Try the Wizards Archive.

Now, you can just use the map ''as is", like it's the map to Dagger Rock Village from Dungeon #2...and you just changed the name. Or you can just ''transcribe" the map right into your own map/graphics/whatever software or even just re draw it on paper.

NPCs Well, first off you don't need any crunch mechanics if they won't be directly fighting the PCs. Even if you want a NPC to have an ability...just give them the ability: They can do X. You don't need to stat out a whole NPC just so they can ''do" something.

Next, like above, you can find plenty of books and websites with pre-made NPCs.

Then you want to start a database. Copy/type out lots of NPC stat blocks. Make them generic like ''warrior" or "wizard". You can just use the block as it, of course. But you also want to take the stat block and tweak it a bit...add something or take something away. And make more specific ones like ''guard" or ''thug", and the more specific ''orc thug". Even if you only make one a day...after four weeks you will have a lot of them. Then, when you need the stats....they are right there.

Do the same thing with personalities and descriptions. Again, copy or make like a dozen or so of them. Then separate them. And again you want a bunch of generic ones, general ones and then specific ones. Also a good trick here is to make templates with blanks. So it will say ''their favorite food is _______" , for example. You will still need to do a history and tie the NPC into the game, but 2/3 of the work will already be done.

For adventures, you do want to keep them focused on ''one spot" as much as possible. The characters don't need to be globe hopping. You generally want to keep it one area per game session.

You might want to make the adventure locations more complex. A lot of things can ''take up game time" depending on your group. For example a simple locked and trapped chest of treasure can take a long time for the characters to open. So can getting past a skill location, or a puzzle or a mystery.

[Demonslayer666]

Yes, it feels a lot like you are over preparing. And if you have to ask, the answer is probably yes.

You don't need maps of town unless the party is planning to stay there and/or adventure there for a long time.

Learn to wing it.

Have a couple of random encounters ready in case they go off track.

[MilkmanDanimal]

Look up an e-book on Amazon called The Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master by Michael Shea; it's basically an instructional guide on how to do less. I don't think it's perfect, but it's a good series of reminders that you don't need to over-prepare, which is something I need as I have historically done too much. The main problem with your level of preparation is that your players will very likely go off the rails and get their own ideas, and you're either going to have to railroad them down your chosen path, or flounder. The book gives some good ideas on things, and it's really helped me scale back what I do.

Your players are going to have their own ideas and go their own way, regardless of what you plan for them. In the end, every DM has to improvise a lot of what they do, so you should just plan on that and stop preparing so much.

[Wildarm]

World building is great but it's mostly an exercise in building something in your head. The ideas matter, the numbers, not so much. As you become more experienced you'll become better at winging it.

After a while you can make up a civilized areas pretty much on the fly. If there is a particular location I plan on using as an adventure hook I'll write some block text to describe it and draw up a quick map. Make some quick notes on what is in each room including any standard monsters and why they are there. Having the "why" of things is important and helps you improvise when players do something unexpected. Knowing the drive of the monsters/NPCs helps you adjust quickly to new situations.

Tips:

- For important non-combat NPCs, a short paragraph on each one should be more than enough. Use the stats blocks out of the MM.
- Don't be afraid to have critical NPCs auto succeed or auto fail at things if it progresses the story. Helps keep the story on track sometimes.
- Have a few nice encounters built based on the current CR level of the party based on the location they are in. If things go off the rails it's really nice to have a well designed encounter or two handy. If it doesn't get used, you can beef it up another point or two simply by adding 2-3 more minions. Enemy numbers really matter for CR level.
- Fail forward. Even if the players complete goof things up, roll with it. Party fails to defeat (or even find) the BBEG before his evil plot is complete? Describe the fallout from that and a possible adventure hook on how to fix their mistakes. You can re-use a lot of your campaign material this way with some minor modifications.

[Bloodcloud]

Unimportant/filler NPC should use a generic npc statblock from the MM. With maybe some kind of special ability if they should be somewhat noteworthy. Fully custom statblock is for endboss/miniboss.

NPC without a direct story purpose, I'd use an easy stereotype/archetype. Don,t overthink it. Your player are sooo unlikely to go into the deep backstory and stuff, a description that fit in one line should be enough.

What you might want to plan more thoroughly would be factions. Then you can attach those one line npc to a faction to deepen them instantly.

Example: Gruffy bartender with an eyepatch. The player start interacting with him more, you attach him to the anti-royal rebel. He is now gruffy bartender with an eye-patch who lost his family because of the king and is seeking revenge. A whole chapter of the resistance operates from his tavern. He now will recruit the party into the cause and become a quest-giver instead of the intended old man in next village.

Cause no matter how much preparation you do, players will do the darnest things. And it's probably better for your story to have room to evolve with them, without wasting too much prep.

[Wildarm]

NPC without a direct story purpose, I'd use an easy stereotype/archetype. Don,t overthink it. Your player are sooo unlikely to go into the deep backstory and stuff, a description that fit in one line should be enough.

Cause no matter how much preparation you do, players will do the darnest things. And it's probably better for your story to have room to evolve with them, without wasting too much prep.

+1 to that. If the players latch onto a generic NPC for some reason, feel free to start making up stuff on the fly and noting it down. In some of my campaigns, the best NPCs have been ones that started as vanilla NPCs and grew organically from player interaction.

[jiriku]

For town maps, a freehand sketch on a blank sheet of white paper is sufficient. Don't use grids. Sketching a town should take 5 minutes if you already know what features the town includes.

If you are not planning to use an NPC in combat, a three-sentence description of the NPCs with no stats is sufficient. Spend no more than 5 minutes on this brief description. If you need a skill bonus for an unstatted NPC, just choose an appropriate value between +0 and +5 and go with it. If players ever attack an unstatted NPC who is a non-combatant, just say "OK, you run him through with your sword. He's dead." There is no need to get deeply involved in game mechanics for most NPCs.

Spend half an hour on the map of the mine where the adventure takes place. Dimensions are more important there, and providing visual cues to the players about the area is more helpful.

Spend up to one hour writing an outline for yourself about the events associated with the adventure and important details that you'll need to track to run it properly.


Your total time for the three town maps, the 25 NPCs, the mine map, and the adventure outline should be 3-4 hours. Going forward, trying to bring the players back to this area again and again for future adventures; they'll appreciate the familiarity that comes from visiting the place again, and you'll be able to reuse the maps and NPCs, reducing your time investment for future game sessions.

Also, I STRONGLY RECOMMEND you take a few minutes to read the Angry GM's guide to practical cartography (https://theangrygm.com/practical-cartography/). It will completely change how you approach mapping.