Friday Chats are end-of-week posts intended to foster discussion on various RPG topics that bounce around in my noggin’.
This week, with my post on prepping for my game,cramming it with all the awesome Magitek I can think of and applying lessons from last week’s posts, I caught myself asking, yet again, “Dude, aren’t you just trying too hard here?” Chances are I’ll spend 4-6 hours of preparation for a 3-4 hour game. While I’ll likely be setting a solid foundation for the next 2-3 session… one is left to wonder: is it worth it?
If you were to ask that question to my players, most would roll their eyes so far up they would likely pop right out. My friend Yan, Myers-Briggs Mastermind that he is, rarely misses a chance to remind me how much less time he invests in his games that are, overall, pretty similar to mine in scope and play experience, although I suspect he daydreams about it a lot. Our other group GM, Franky, seems daunted by my dedication to put so much effort in the art of DMing. I sometime worried if he isn’t half-scared that I’ll call the GMing S.W.A.T on him during our monthly Star Wars game.
Nevertheless, when I say ‘trying too hard’, I means prepping so much game material that an unhealthy chunk of your free time is sucked out of your life. It also means cramming so many ideas in so few scenes that they become too tangled to play out as cool as they appear individually on paper.
Therefore, I think the question is not if I try too hard as a DM, I totally do, but why I keep doing it after having realized it? While I almost always overprep games, I often fail to pull off all the potential awesomeness I hope for once at the gaming table. The ideas end up being too complex, I’m more tired than expected or find myself reacting poorly to an unexpected turn of event.
Let’s not deny that prepping is fun. If it wasn’t, there would a lot less homebrewed or adapted published adventures. Heck, even running published ones straight need prep. I would however say that should prepping become more fun than actually gaming, chances are there’s a fundamental flaw in your gaming experience that should be explored and addressed before your campaign collapses. I would, however, be curious to see if some GMs would rather prep a game for a friend than run it).
The thing is, I realize as I write these lines that I mainly keep doing it because I’m wired like that and have not reached a point where the disadvantages of doing this outweigh the gains… but I must say that at times, It does. And when I reach that point, I need to look at my way of preparing adventures and give it a good healthy kick to see what falls off and I don’t really need.
For D&D 4e I realize that weren’t for the fact that I always keep the door open for publication and appreciate having everything (stats, outcomes, descriptions, etc) in one document, I could afford to drop things like templating and as- written mechanics and just page 42 (see Dungeon Master Guide) the hell out of it all.
So what about you? Do you try too hard and produce prepping works of art that you don’t necessary need? Do you feel that the work you do is unappreciated by your players (see my posts about giving and receiving feedback)? How do you deal with that?
And for those who don’t, I have another Friday Chat brewing for you…
Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. At times, i do believe my ideas despite not being mechanically or conceptually complex, might be too complex thematically to stick into a game. A lot of ideas for puzzles and plots come down to this – they work well in fiction, but it’s hard to do in a game. Also, sometimes I believe I’m not entirely out of a pre-4e mindset, and trying to put those ideas into play in 4e can have painful results. Sometimes I do genuinely overprep in the way you mention, and there’s just too much stuff going on. Being that I’m a really Plot OCD DM, I MUST finish everything neatly. I can’t leave it hanging, I can’t ignore it, or I will not be able to deal with myself later, so if I overprep, I will have to endure the tangle until it comes undone.
Mostly, however, I’ve learned to just plot one major “cool thing” every once in a while and try to center a chunk of game out of it. For example, have one evil NPC or gimmick that draws attention, and try to stretch it out over a series of encounters with more mundane or low-key things until it unwinds completely. This also fits my tastes better, as I’m not fond of “cram loads of quote-cool-endquote into one place and bask in awe.” I have more a taste for subtlety, and what other people would term “crazy awesome” would probably just strike me as unappealing.
I think the most interesting part of this is that you are keeping the door open for publication. You’re a writer, you have this blog as a launching point, why not post your prepared adventures on the web, for free to your community! It’s the sort of thing that will lead to writing and game designing gigs!
Another cool thing, is you can probably re-use a lot of the plans you had to rethink, in some way or another. That’s the nature of DMing, I’d say, that there’s tons of good stuff that hits the cutting floor. Just like in filmmaking, writing, even visual arts.
.-= Andy´s last blog ..The Journey System: The Main Idea =-.
I know that I spend far too much time prepping, but I look at world building and adventure designing as a hobby in and of itself. I have had people lambaste me for this a little bit, but it’s still fun as hell to design a new city.
I’m out of the DM rotation at the moment in my group but I’m already beginning to prep ideas and resources for my next go (which probably won’t be for about a year!).
It’s something that I really enjoy doing, and for the most part, if I’m not doing that, I’ll probably just be sat in front of the television.
There seems to be a “sociological discomfort” built into us about how we spend our free time. ‘Geeks’ tend to be particularly sensitive in how they feel they should be spending their time, I know I grew up getting a lot of grief for the things I enjoyed doing, which weren’t what the ‘popular’ kids enjoyed doing. What I’ve found is that the kinds of people who say things like “Huh, you’ve got way too much time on your hands man” are the kinds of people who watch 10 hours of TV a day and think nothing of it! There are few things more offensive that someone saying “You’ve got waaaay to much time on your hands” when they see your latest creation.
Of course, once adventure prepping starts to eat into things like spending time with your kids or actually getting your paid day job done etc, then maybe there’s an issue, but if it’s instead of catching the latest episode of $US_TEEN_DRAMA_#257 (or during that god awful $PROGRESS_MEETING), no foul?
[This blog-comment thing knows what I last wrote on my blog. How *awesome* is that?!]
.-= Mike Watts´s last blog ..3 hours 3 rolls and a whole lotta fun =-.
I’ve followed your posts for a long time now, and your propensity for over-prep seems to come up a lot. I think I have the same problem most nights–I’ve designed a very intricate encounter or adventure with a lot of complexity, but when it comes time to run it even I have trouble keeping track of everything I wanted to do or how to adapt the ideas to whatever crazy stuff the players come up with.
I’ve started prepping every piece of my game with this category system:
A) Integral to my central idea, story, encounter, or whatever. Usually this is an encounter hook, a great character, an important plot point, or some kind of map/area. I work on these until they’re absolutely finished and awesome–the majority of the time goes here. I plan on using this stuff, but if I don’t – it’s already finished, so I can save it for another session and didn’t waste my time on it.
B) Stuff I can’t seem to let go of, even though it’s impractical. Normally an overly complicated-trap, monster power, weird plot twist, or secondary character/story/area. It’s about a 50/50 chance I’ll use any of this, and none of it is good enough to stand alone; it all builds on stuff in category A. Because of that, I’ll spend a little bit of time designing the general ideas, and if the players actually get to it–a short break and I make the call on whether to add it in, and then quickly figure out the specifics based on how things have been going.
C) Things I just think would add something cool. This is stuff that is neat but has a very good chance of not being used. I’ll make some notes and sketches, but all of this is purely icing on Category A and B – and if I don’t use any of it, there’s nothing lost.
D) Some published or downloaded delves. If they do something completely unexpected that I have nothing cool to counter with, I keep an assorted pile of little standalone encounters with stories to turn the night into something of a side trek, while mixing in elements from our own campaign.
I love prepping, and if I had the time, I’d just do everything as Category A–but it’s impractical; find the base layer that all your important stuff stems from, work hard on that, and then add some lighter and less time-consuming things on top of it.
To be honest, I usually try to end the session by having the players commit to a decision of what they’re going to do–that way I spend 75% of my prep time making an awesome beginning to the next session while everyone is excited and awake, and then let the prep-work and quality slowly taper off as everyone gets more tired and as the players begin to do things you probably didn’t account for.
Another dirty little prep trick I use is to have a “Difficulty Page,” which is just one page filled with bullet points of how to make things easier or harder, even mid-encounter, depending on how the players are doing. They’ve learned to fear that page, waiting for them, face-down, to devour their hopes and dreams.
ANYWAYS, this turned out to be really long-winded, but my point is that I think we’re alike in our tendency to want to over-prep; partially because we want to ensure awesomeness from start to finish (which is almost impossible), and partially because we just really, really like prepping. I’m not saying this is the best system, far from it, I’m sure–but I’m not as good at improvisation as many other DMs, so this is how I provide a cool experience without letting it interfere TOO much with my daily life. It seems to work pretty well so far.
EDIT: I just realized my comment might be longer than the article I commented on. Apologies, I’d just been thinking about this a lot recently.
Oooh, I like that Difficulty Page idea, could come in handy for ways to end the encounter early if it’s dragging but still have it mean something, actually plan in the consequences.
.-= Mike Watts´s last blog ..3 hours 3 rolls and a whole lotta fun =-.
How I love waking up and seeing discussions already started.
@Wyatt: I have the same OCDish attitudes but toward making encounter more complex . I don’t think I’ll ever really grow out of it. 🙂
@Spaceman: The issue here is that while most of my adventures plans are nearly usable, they are still written for a market of one: me. I’d need lot more time to make them presentable. But I have plans, what I don’t publish, I will likely publish in one form or another.
As for free adventures, I think there are one or two hidden in this Blog somewhere. 🙂
@Andy: Totally. The idea now is that a scene I fail to use properly can see some of its elements recycled later. Monsters, traps and the environment of my Gears of Ruin campaign. will return from one adventure to the other for sure… I’m so grateful for the monster builder. Now if only they could do the trap builder and Fantastic Terrain one… 🙂
@Enchelion: Prep is fun… it totally is… I would not spend so many hours doing it if, if it wasn’t. I’m not that compulsive, it’s the payoff that’s often not up to par that makes me wonder sometimes.
@Mike: I’ve been blessed with the fact that I’m only surrounded by geeks now. So the only time I mingle that don’t quite get what I do is when I meet some of my inlaws (and, predictably enough, my father). So I don’t get challenged about how I spend my time. The biggest thing is I don’t watch TV. I write and prep and work on my geek stuff most nights of the week.
Oh yeah, that Comment-luv plugin is sweet.
@Corwin: Never apologize for leaving a lengthy comment. Friday Chats are exactly for that. I write an
half-length post and commenters are free to go at it.
Now, you are so right that I’ve been chronicling a love-hate relationship with prep that mirrors my current mood and expectation of my game of choice for a long time. I really, really like your structured approach. It mirrors mine a bit (category A ) but the rest and the difficulty page are great ideas that I could borrow to make focusing on what counts, adjusting on the fly and not grow frustrated that things don’t work out.
Thanks!
I try to limit my prep to one hour for a four hour session. Everything else I want to improvise. Overprep makes me unable to improvise, since I have so much stuff prepared.
.-= Alex Schroeder´s last blog ..Quality Dungeons =-.
@Alex: I’ve tried to play one whole adventure with low prep and while the apparent freedom it gave everyone was cool and lead to great stories, I kinda felt cheated of not having my set-piece complex encounters that define what I like most about GMing.
So I’m working toward having core scenes with set-pieces in them… and several scenes leading to and from those pieces that are more improvised. In order to mesh them together, I try to let the improv scene shape how the set-piece work…
But then, I’m back to square one aren’t I? Sigh… 🙂
@Chatty: I do remind you often because it’s part of the fundamental difference between our DMing style.
Which comes down to our different strength and the way we look at things. I’ve got a good memory and I’m good at improvising or creating solutions on the spot. It’s pretty useful in my line of work (software engineering) and I rely completely on this for DMing. Most of the time I’ll juggle with a half-formed idea during my game and will really settle on something at the very last second when the player need to know what’s happening.
On the other hand I have a hard time with structure and especially schedules. At school I would note stuff we had to do in my agenda only to forget them because I would never open that damn book for consultation. It happened quite frequently that I would study for an exam 5 minutes before it because I had completely forgotten that it was the next day. 😉
This means that following a plan is not my forte. Each time I prep a scene and would come back to my notes afterward I would find that I would have changed it again at the last second because I found that It fitted better some other way or would be cooler given player action. So I got rid of the prep almost completely, I only prep the things that would bring the game to an halt and this will vary depending on the system used. W
Which like you said does not means that I don’t think of it and I do daydream about it a lot it just is not put on paper most of the time… 😉
My major problem that I run into is having an idea, and not being 100% sure how to execute it. I’m still fairly new to being the DM (and no one I play with seems to have any interest in trying their hand at it). I found myself relieved that the intro to my campaign drug out a little longer than I had intended it to, so they didn’t quite reach my home-made monsters. I’m still not sure if I did a good job creating them, or building encounters with them that my PC’s won’t either slaughter or get themsleves smashed into a pulp.
.-= Marc´s last blog ..lawlDnD: Good game last night guys. My favorite part was you guys making your ship survive the crash landing. Promise to be more prepared next week. =-.
Overprep used to be a big deal for me once, but for the wrong reason. When I was a mere fledgling of a GM, I used to railroad a teensy bit. There was an “optimal” course of action and I prepared lavish descriptions of things along this perfect path, interesting monster encounters and such.
My players avoided the optimal route though, and thought me a valuable lesson, both about railroading and overprep; what I made simply wasn’t going to get used. I got my first mini-burnout back then, but I read on an imageboard that this was actually the norm; players do shit you don’t expect them to do. It’s apparently what the game is about. The stuff you prepare might or might not get used, it’s the way of life.
There was even a concrete post, where a DM mentioned he liked to put little references into his games, both plot-related ad simply for his own amusement. He said that players often failed to spot 10 out of 10. Weird thing was, he was not bitter about this, he had a great attitude towards the whole issue.
Now I’m on he other side of the spectrum, I slack. I’ve got a game idea I want to run for like, 3 months and didn’t do jack until a friend from an old group came over and beta-tested it. Now I have to get depressed about slacking and I’ll finally be able to reach middle ground 😀
@Marc: As you work your way along the DMing curve line, different things will make you feel concerned and want to overprep. In all editions of D&D, monster design isn’t what makes or breaks an encounter. It’s how they interact with the PCs and the environment.
Monsters are mostly just numbers and powers… 4e’s got a nifty formula for them that makes them a snap to create… but I agree that it is a challenge to learn how strong a power can be at a given level…
And another little secret… players don’t care. They don’t care about the powers (unless it screws them of their possibility to do anything).
So if you are a Newbie (and play low level), I’d say focus on monster that deal damage based on the DMG page 42 charts and don’t pile too many status effects like Dazed, Stun and restrained. But go wild with Ongoing, Forced movement, Grab and lots and lots of damage.
@Trabant: The trick in balancing plot points and player freedom is to use a closed matrix… when you and the players agree to play a plot-driven game but people want freedom, you can create a linear plot, flanked by parallel plots… but the further from the plots the party moves, the harder the ‘adventure’ pushes them back onto the adventure.
But yeah, finding balance is hard… and having players that ask for one thing (DM-driven plot) but then jump the rail at the first sign are not being honest with their commitment or with how they want to play the game.
Wow, nice to see lots of comments on this one. I probably explained my position pretty well with the first post describing all the prep Chatty DM does, but I wanted to throw out the counter-example to his enjoyment of prep: I think I actually don’t enjoy his kind of prepping for game as much. I have a fairly developed plot, but the numbers don’t really interest me, so a lot of my combat encounters are sort of thrown together per some mental formula I have worked out (something along the lines of “find a theme, pick out monsters, meet XP budget, lay out terrain that makes sense, make sure the terrain does something nifty that can be exploited by both monsters and players).
I had this crazy long conversation last night with one of my players. His character is feeling unloved by the rest of the group, and he told me he had 4 other characters rolled up for when he was inevitably killed by the Avenger simply for being himself. I was surprised, because I know from talking to the Avenger that she wouldn’t murder him without justifiably good cause (mere dislike not filling that bill). But I realized that I’d done what his character hadn’t–talked to her. I know his insight is the highest of the party, so I laid out for him pretty plainly her attitudes and why she acts the way she does. Laughingly, he told me he thought he’d be accepted solely on account of the party needed a healer, he heals things, voila, everyone is BFFs. Knowing the player well enough, I told him that he should try to focus more on roleplay, and challenged him to up his game in that arena. He accepted the challenge, and now I’m really looking forward to next game to see what he does with it.
And that’s my prep for next game, by the way. There’s a boss fight at the beginning of the session that I statted out weeks ago in the space of half an hour, and the rest of it has been what’s the most fun for me about DnD–talking to the players, finding out who they want to be and what they want to do, and writing their stories down for them to play out.
So I guess, Chatty, I do prep a lot for my games. I’m just prepping for different things than you are.
.-= Jenny Snyder´s last blog ..A word from our sponser… =-.
Yeah… I hear ya. Prepping is like doing the dishes… some love doing it as a mind soothing activity (me) and others hate doing it like the plague (my wife)
For me, it comes down to one very simple thing.,
Many DMs will prep a basic plot, fudge on the fly to give players the illusion that the game remains challenging and trust chaos to do the rest. I don’t know how players like games like that… and I should play more to find out, but my skin crawls at the idea.
I want the game I use to give me the tools to make my vision come to life without having to fudge anything. It was true in all versions of D&D so far, although some gave me a harder time than others..
My prep craziness is not so much pixelbitching the numbers… I’m not, I steal numbers wholesale all over the place, it’s the scale what I’m attempting that is so time intensive.
(PLAYER SPOILERS!!!! KEEP AWAY PLEASE)
So yes, I made rules to transform Warforged into mecha. I also made rules for rechargable thunder-damage missiles launchers, 100′ tall cranes with grab and drop effects, Automated Acid bath, Lightning Gun turrets and electrified cortina-wire fences.
I created Flying robo-minions with thunder-energy ranged weapons and 2-hit minion brutes that score high damaged vs Prone opponents.
I created a whole set of rules to use a Robo Rally board as a Battlemap for a 4e puzzle/combat encounter based on a factory floor. Complete with conveyor belt, pusher, crusher and randomly determined Pit traps.
I created Bio-constructs that were built to combat technology, built the fluff behind it and created Rocket powered mine carts to play in a chase Skill challenge…
All in one week. This is 3-4 encounter’s worth, featuring a huge set piece… the time I spent was doing ALL that in a not-too linear adventure.
Fuck Yes I’m trying too hard, no contest. But I liked doing it soooo much.
Wish me luck!
@ChattyDM :
I love to overprep myself – sometimes even more than playing through it (rarely lives up to my expectations).
I have a secret for you : I believe you to be a closet game designer.
.-= Eric Maziade´s last blog ..Good bye ChattyDM.net – hello Critical-Hits.com =-.
<> By Bahamut’s grace, good luck! <>. In all seriousness, do you ever encounter situations for which you cannot really prep? Tonight my players are going to defeat a spirit that has become unstuck in time in its pursuit of immortality, and as a reward the players are going to be allowed to return to any era they want to (ah, the joy and nightmare that is time travel). I have genuinely no idea what their answer will be (the boring part of me hopes they return to their current continuum so I can just run all the plot I’ve outlined like normal). That’s a big part of why I haven’t bothered to prep tonight–I want to know what direction they’re going in before I start outlining adventures.
Just as a side note, it’s a homebrew world, and they’re at a critical point in the history of the world right now, so yes, jumping back or forward in time is going to have a huge impact on the story and the world itself.
.-= Jenny Snyder´s last blog ..A word from our sponser… =-.
@Eric: I think that secret has been out of the bag for a long time… and my players are the greatest unsung playtesters. As for our expectations as GMs… well often have to deal with them internally. 🙂
@Jenny: When you are really really stuck, stop for 5 min (call a break) and ask ‘What would make the most sense? What would be the most fun? What would create the most trouble for the PCs and What would make the greatest story?” Answer each in one liners. Pick the answer(s) that feel most right and go with this. Then look at your ‘numbers’ planed in your main plot and refluff them…
Best of luck. Time travel is hard on GMs…
I guess we never learn.
.-= ChattyDM´s last blog ..Bad Alignment =-.
**grin** In the infamous words of our bard, “We’ll be fine.” At any rate, I set myself up like this on purpose, so as to stretch the boundaries of my skills as a DM. It may end in disaster, but nothing ventured nothing gained, as they say.
Shoot, I keep having questions for you. I really ought to just try to wrangle an interview instead of pestering you in comments. I’m just going to bookmark all this for later instead of crashing the comments 😛
.-= Jenny Snyder´s last blog ..A word from our sponser… =-.
My players are about to travel in time too. Whenever I lay out some crazy things the players can decide (which happens a fair amount) I make sure to pose that question at the END of a session. Not only does it take the pressure off you for planning purposes, it gives the players more time to think and plan.
@Jenny: Your Bard, not mine… 🙂 Last time I checked our bard was named ‘Molière’ That explains the overlapping neuroses in my GMing.
Always happy to do interviews… or answer questions by email… I should prod Dave a little harder to put my email address somewhere around here.
@The Game: Well, that would be the smart thing to do, but totally against my character. And to some extent, I feel like I know my players, and they don’t really ponder things between sessions, so I’m not sure it would accomplish that particular goal anyway.
I’m actually kind of excited. It’s not often that there’s a cliffhanger in my game that I didn’t plan and don’t know what’s going to happen next. And as much as it’s putting me on the spot, it’s putting my players on the spot, too. They’re not going to get hours to discuss exactly what they want to do and where to go. It’s going to be a limited time offer (no pun intended), and I’m interested to see how they work under pressure.
Sometimes DnD sounds only so much like a social experiment when I phrase it like that…
Can I ask about the context of your time travel right now? Where (or rather, when) are they going, and why?
.-= Jenny Snyder´s last blog ..A word from our sponser… =-.
@Chatty yes, by “our” I meant me and my players’. And it’s especially humorous since he was usually shouting that while hiding about forty feet away behind the nearest potted plant or around the farthest corner. It wasn’t exactly… bolstering.
Thanks for the encouragement. I may contact you later about it. I’m writing up interview questions right now and seeing if I really have questions that are worth asking in an interview format, so, like, we’ll see 🙂
.-= Jenny Snyder´s last blog ..A word from our sponser… =-.
Absolutely.
I’m new to GMing (literally 3 sessions into my first campaign) and at this stage, I don’t feel confident enough to wing large amounts of the game.
For one three-hour session, the next two nights are spent on the game journal (and whatever ideas/notes are created as a result). Then, in the three nights leading up to the next session, I am spending 2-3 hours a night on prep (creating material, revising current material, preparing combat reference cards for enemies, prepping maps and feelies where necessary).
When playing, I’m the player that creates 2-page character backgrounds. It seems natural that that would extend to GMing.
Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately), I have a predilection for creative hobbies. =p
At first I thought that over-planning was the way to go, I used to prepare my descriptions beforehand and script my NPCs dialogue…then I realised that a lot of this I skipped over when my players had better ideas and I went with them.
I start a game with an outline, I know where I want it to end up and there’s a few points to pass on the way as well as likely enemies and NPCs that the players will encounter…but other than VERY complicated scenes like big battles, I don’t plan as much as I used to.
The more I plan, the more I am likely to throw it out, gaming is such a fluid and spontaneous experience and I always like to see what I have produced interpreted in a new way. More fun for everyone.
.-= Katana Geldar´s last blog ..A new decade really begins for some more gaming =-.
Yes its a fine line between spontanity and planning.. You need some planning but you can never really tell what could happen in a dungeon especially when a player passes a note to you that he wants to do something totally unexpected… but then again thats when the best gaming happens.. love the blog its given me some great ideas
.-= pens parker´s last blog ..Parker Promotional Pens =-.
At least you actually get your prep done. I spend hours and hours prepping published adventures and still can’t do them more than every six weeks! It sucks to know you’re failing at DMing when your DMing style means you just can’t seem to do things differently.
@Noumenon: Care to elaborate on this further? I’m not sure I get your quandary, but I’m curious.
My problem is the same as yours: Why do I keep trying too hard after having realized it? But it’s worse: I don’t have your project management skill, so I don’t actually get sessions ready without huge gaps in between and a lot of stress. I need to work on this skill you mentioned in your Adventure Plan post:
All this time, I try to focus on prioritizing what will bring me to a playable adventure the fastest. Getting lost in the details is so easy so I try to be careful lest I start botching it come Thursday night.
I have made the adventure plans, I have circled the things I “must have” done by adventure night, I have conceptually committed to not sweating the details… and then I spend my time printing out little standups with pictures of the pregens on them. Or I get lost in the details of how much damage a “monster as terrain” should do (page 42? The traps section from DMG2? I ended up using the red dragon stat block from the MM, and it was perfect — gave me a frightful presence ability that was much better than just a tail sweep and gave the villain time to monologue — but it took time!)
I guess my problem is each little cool thing feels so good and perfect and worth it, I can’t make myself stop adding cool! Even when I tell myself to have a limit of one cool thing per encounter. Maybe I should try to make things seem less cool by envisioning how uncool it will be when the adventure never sees the light of day because I didn’t get it done.
@Noumenon: here’s an idea… Once you’ve done the outline get yourself a timer with a buzzer with a 30 minutes setting or less depending on number of item and prep time available.
Start from the first item and when the buzzer goes move to the next even if the first is not completed to your usual level of detail. Go on until you’ve done all item. If you still have time go back to the first and start a second round focusing on those you had not finished in the first one.
This should result in a complete story with varying level of detail according to the time you had. The buzzer will help rooting you in the reality of the finite time to prep and should allow you to at least have touch every item before going in the detail.
Yan, I wanted to say that I’ve been trying to implement this 15-minute timer thing ever since you suggested it. And while I’m still a horrendous procrastinator, I’ve definitely made some progress on things I’d been putting off for months. By having a 15-minute time limit, it’s easier to start, and since I have to leave myself a note telling where to pick up next time, it’s easier to jump back in and I don’t go over the same procrastinating process several times in a row (ie, pick up the monster manual, decide I need to look at the map before I pick the feats, forget about it, pick up the monster manual)…
So thanks for your attention and suggestion, it’s good to have a system to work with.
@Noumenon: I’m happy to know that it worked for you. You are more then welcome.
Hey Noumenon, I’m happy that Yan’s tip helped you! That’s made of win!
Yan is that very special brand of detail-oriented yet big-picture guy that always amazes me with the tips and tricks he finds to simplify his life (professionally and gaming wise). Because he hates having his mistakes pointed out, he spends significant designing his systems right at the very start. Once he’s done.. it looks so goddamn easy you’re sure he’s being careless!
His 2 hit minions, his ‘use pins and bluetac on minis to track damage’ , his 15 minute tips and his ‘one story, one core mechanic, a list of monsters = adventure’ are all marvels of his imagination.
I steal shamelessly from him because I am more inflexible than he is about rules… and he steals back from my better structure/organization practices and harebrained ideas. I’m happy to have this guy in my tribe. 🙂
Man is it my birthday or what?! 😉
Thanks man! I’m also happy to have you in my tribe.
I was told that I missed it by a few weeks. 🙂
Pax tomorrow!!!!!!
.-= ChattyDM´s last blog ..Night’s The Only Time Of Day =-.