prep time

[Torpin]

hey other DMs. So how much time do you spend in between sessions prepping?

[Quertus]

As much as is needed (I hope).

Back in 2e, I almost never bothered prepping stats, because I had most of the stat blocks memorized, and, if it suddenly mattered whether a particular town guard could hit a pigeon at 100 paces, it was really easy to come up with all those stats on the fly without slowing down the game.

In 3e, I tend to need to look up all the monsters, look up all their abilities, cross-reference the condition summary chart / grappling rules / whatever else the creature uses, and make notes at every step along the way.

[BowStreetRunner]

As much as is needed (I hope).

Back in 2e, I almost never bothered prepping stats, because I had most of the stat blocks memorized, and, if it suddenly mattered whether a particular town guard could hit a pigeon at 100 paces, it was really easy to come up with all those stats on the fly without slowing down the game.

In 3e, I tend to need to look up all the monsters, look up all their abilities, cross-reference the condition summary chart / grappling rules / whatever else the creature uses, and make notes at every step along the way.And here I thought it was just me! :smallamused: I always found prepping for a 2ed game way easier too.

In my experience, you can have widely different prep times depending upon your DM style. For instance, using a published Module (pre-3ed) or Adventure (3ed +) will obviously require less prep time than creating your own campaign from scratch.

I always like to use modular elements in my games - sort of plug-and-play elements that I can introduce on the fly without needing a ton of work. These include things like pre-generated settlements that work something like a Mad Lib in that there are parts that I choose or roll for randomly so that every settlement is ultimately unique. I have pre-generated NPCs, groups of NPCs, monsters, random encounters, and so forth all drawn up this way which increases my initial prep time at the start of the campaign, but significantly reduces it along the way.

That having been said, I have had little time for game-mastering since having kids, managing a monthly game but avoiding trying to pull off anything weekly or more frequent. It's still a big time commitment.

[Torpin]

im actually looking for the number of hours
for instance in general, between town design, npc design, dungeon design, figuring out what monsters are around in general, it takes me between 1.5-2.5 hours of prep per expected hour of play, depending on how many times i redesign because im not happy with the results

[doctor doughnut]

About an Hour.

Though I will also do 'prep' during the game.

For the most part, I like to keep my games very focused. The players WILL be doing X. And X will be a very limited thing with a small focus.

So in short, there is only a little to prepare.

[Zaq]

For-freakin’-ever, which is why I don’t GM anymore.

Seriously though, when I used to GM 3.5, it’d be a bare minimum of 2-4 hours of prep time if I had things under control. But that’s not because I was so good at prepping and put together a super-intricate world with a really carefully designed plot and tons of believable characters or anything. It’s because I have a hard time focusing on that kind of thing and because it’s hard to put together encounters that don’t all feel the same but that still provide appropriate challenges for the party. I feel like it’s probably possible for someone else to put together sessions of similar quality in less time or of superior quality in similar time, but that’s still where I ended up.

I much prefer GMing 4e, not that I can GM anything at all now that I’m back in school. When I do GM, though, I also spend a few hours prepping 4e encounters, but for very different reasons. Mostly because I feel a compulsive need to tweak all of the numbers to reach a better baseline—and because I looove designing unnecessarily intricate environmental challenges in 4e. I like my 4e environments to be like the crazier stages in Smash Bros: the stage won’t kill you if you have no enemies, but you absolutely cannot afford to ignore it if there’s opponents around. For some reason I feel like it’s harder to pull off a similar level of environmental wackiness in 3.5. Maybe that’s perception, or maybe there’s something to it.

It’s really challenging to find the right amount of prep. Overprepping and underprepping can both be quite unfun. I wish it were easier to adjust things on the fly, but that’s hard in a rules-heavy system like 3.5. And yet, the rules-heaviness is a big part of the system’s charm for me, so we’re stuck with a bunch of messy and conflicting human emotions. So it goes!

[Doctor Awkward]

hey other DMs. So how much time do you spend in between sessions prepping?

In general when running 3.5 I spend about two hours of time preparing for every one hour of game time, though this varies wildly with how much RP I expect to happen in a given session versus how much combat I expect to happen.

I am also a huge fan of customizing monsters and NPC class builds and tailoring encounters specifically for the party composition.

[Mike Miller]

Probably 2 hours per hour of game time. I do like the prep phase though. I customize lots of NPCs. I also try to think of what the players will do that I wouldn't so as to make the improvisations smoother. Of course, you can only prep so much...

[Falontani]

In general when running 3.5 I spend about two hours of time preparing for every one hour of game time, though this varies wildly with how much RP I expect to happen in a given session versus how much combat I expect to happen.

I am also a huge fan of customizing monsters and NPC class builds and tailoring encounters specifically for the party composition.

This. It helps to have rotating campaigns in the group so I have several weeks of prep and then several weeks of campaign

[KillianHawkeye]

Not nearly enough. :smallsigh: