Adventure Prep: My Recent Time Management Shortcuts

Now that I made a point about the value of our player’s free time, I must confess that I don’t have that more free time than them. Ronin and Ve4grm have made good argument that the DM’s fun factor must also be taken into account and does not want to waste his/her own free time either.

But managing the time spent prepping a game has been a recent concern of mine when it finally dawned on me that I often spent 2 or 3 times more times prepping than actually playing the game (although it can be argued that prepping is part of playing the game). With the advent of writing one post a day on this here blog, prepping time is now at premium.

So I set out to look for time saving resources and I found a lot of them.

Here is what I settled for:

I take a break from preparing my game on my off week to let my brain recuperate. During that off week I brainstorm a lot about where the campaign could go, but I don’t write anything, yet. Toward the end of the off week, if we are close to starting a new adventure, I start browsing my published adventures stash (I have a lot!). I don’t usually write adventures unless an idea strikes me fancy or I can’t find anything that could fit in the campaign’s plot. I do hack existing ones to pieces and reengineer them to my tastes (a very recent habit of mine).

On the week of the game, I spend about 2 hours on Monday or Tuesday evening hacking the published adventure or sketching an adventure based on the 5 room dungeon. One of the reasons it now only takes me 2 hours (or less) is that I do not create monster stats anymore. With 5 monster books and quite a few source books with monster entries in them in my library, I decided that I won’t create Half-Fiend Drow Brabarian/Rogues mooks anymore. The later Monster Manuals (III and IV) feature a lot of pre-generated monsters with levels (i.e. nothing more than standard monsters fleshed out with class levels). While I initially thoughts these to be a waste of book space, I now am happy to have those handy.

So when a monster in a published adventure fails to catch my fancy, I switch it with another monster that has a similar role mechanics wise. You can also dig a ton of those from adventure modules and old Dungeon magazines.

I recall reading somewhere that Monte Cook recycled his critters from Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil more than once. This is brilliant because all the non standard monsters are fleshed out together at the end of the adventure. Granted, it’s D&D 3.0, but I no longer care about the difference. Anyway, I would be the only one to notice.

So now I actually spend more time creating cool encounters or making published ones cooler and less on calculating the impact of increasing a Umber Hulk by 12 Hit Dice after applying the Ghost template.

I do not draw adventure or battlemaps anymore, unless needed for a really cool idea I got. Instead, I use pre-drawn adventure maps from the net. As for battlemaps, as mentioned before, I use and reuse the same D&D mini battlemaps whenever I can.

I also started using the D&D Tiles referred to in that last link quite a lot more. I must say that ever since I organized them in a customizable bait and tackle box, using them on the fly has become a dream. So more prep-time saved because I don’t have to pre-draw battlemaps anymore (which often took 1 to 2 hours).

Finally, I generate bling almost exclusively randomly now with the Magic Item Compendium revised treasure table. It’s so much faster than before and almost always gives great piles of loot.

I’ve been doing this since I started the current ‘Seeds of Sehan’ campaign arc (about 2 months ago) and so far it’s been working like a charm.

What about your time saving tricks?