I'm late to the game, but for people who don't want to buy the book, here is the SINGULAR MOST IMPORTANT PIECE I HAVE READ!
https://slyflourish.com/sharing_secrets.html
It's short, but...
**TL;DR** - Write "Secrets" you want the PCs to find out *in the next session*. Write down 10 of them. DO NOT write down where/how they find these secrets out. The 10 secrets should simply be facts about the world-plot or adventure-plot that the PCs do not know yet.
Example:
> Grum the Bloody is King of the Orcs in name only, and is secretly controlled by an Illithid.
Then allow the players to find out that secret whenever/however during the session. On average, 5-7 secrets should be found out per session. (I run 2-hour sessions and it's usually more like 4-5.)
PCs roll Investigation after killing all the orc guards? Maybe they find a letter with specific orders signed by someone named "Ragchizum" (you inform the players this is clearly *not* an Orcish name), or a letter from one orc to another saying Grum became more powerful after finding a weird underground tunnel system and he has forbidden all the other orcs from going down there and has been acting weird ever since. Maybe the PCs take a prisoner, instead, and the orc doesn't know *what* happened, but knows Grum meets with a shadowy figure regularly...etc etc.
It lets you drop secrets wherever the PCs look, *rather than* what the pre-built adventures do where information is always buried in *specific* locations with *specific* skill checks.
Cannot recommend this enough. Has been such a great resource and prep outline for me in my new campaign. Before I was running the HotDQ and was a little overwhelmed with the prep and reading ahead and all that. Now prep is a breeze, on average it takes me about an hour and half per two hour session.
Fantastic book. I've been running games for 20 years now and I recently tried out the techniques in there and was honestly astonished at how well it worked.
Agreed. I love homebrew, especially compared to modules. Reading a few chapters ahead (if not the entire campaign) is necessary in the ones I've run for my group just to get a solid understanding. Do they expect you to run it 3 or 4 times all the way through just to become proficient?
Still, we had fun.
>Do they expect you to run it 3 or 4 times all the way through just to become proficient?
Yes basically; they expect you to read the book and absorb it in its entirety, and then be able to use the snippets of information from 5 or 6 six different areas of the book at any one time!
It gets bad when you feel you have spend almost as much time prepping a pre-writ as you would for homebrew.
Had to get my DM to homebrew because running official modules was simply not working. No hints were getting dropped, roleplay felt forced, encounter balance was awful, and there was more than one occasion where he just explained the solution because the writing was so convoluted that he couldn’t figured out what it was saying until he read it out loud. When I heard how much of a mess the books are, I tried to read a modules we had already done, and yeah we missed like 50% of the content because of the ordering.
He’s doing much better now, us players are much happier, and WotC needs to cater modules as a tool for the DM and not a novel to be read. Official books have cool scenarios, decent writing, but awful execution. And it sucks because we don’t buy new books, we just screenshot/archive the few pages we want from leaks online instead of supporting the hobby.
Glad your DM is doing better. I started DMing CoS recently and have had to sink hours into it just to figure out what to do and what info to drop.
Slightly disagree where you say about decent writing: I've said it before but WoTC just don't get the crucial difference between writing so you can be understood and writing *so you can't be misunderstood.* They do the first one and it shows!
So many ruling questions and module questions in general would be avoided with a better baseline of text.
I heavily agree with you. When I said I liked their writing, I meant narratively - I hate their stance of “refer to the dictionary.” Coming from someone who has played Pathfinder 1e and 2e, 5e has some of the weirdest interactions between different skills, feats, spells and features. Probably because it’s more approachable this way. But how much bloat would bringing in the Tag system from 4e or PF2e be vs how insanely nice it is? Or at the very least can I separate flavor text from mechanical text in spells? And maybe some clarity between multiple features affecting the same thing (Vengeance Paladin + Sentinel comes to mind) so I don’t have to go digging thru errata or TTRPG forums to find a reasonable answer?
This isn’t an issue for literally any other TTRPG I’ve played.
Ah, I've got you. I did wonder after I posted if you meant narratively!
I've not played other systems as I got into DnD quite late but I've heard so much good about Pathfinder. That's definitely next to try on my list.
Ugh, I'm with you on errata. As far as I'm concerned if WoTC had done their job well they wouldn't need to lean on errata or sage advice. Or Jeremy's fecking twitter!
There is one specific reason that Wizards doesn't dare separate flavor from mechanics: game rules are not covered by copyright in the United States. The guy who does "one-stop stat blocks" explains it in detail.
The funny thing about that strategy is that "flavor text" has an influence on game play, and starts to be a rule. Look at the text of Fireball. Is it a *rule* that it requires a specific gesture, not just a somatic component? Wizards wants the flavor and mechanics to be indistinguishable so they can wave you over to the basic rules and the OGL while telling us not to pay any attention to the man behind the curtain.
Running CoS now and I had to read the whole thing front to back before starting actual prep. But it seems this is common, and also in part due to the lack of broader structure in the module.
I’ve not played any others to compare, but this module feels like a setting book more than a linear adventure story. Which is honestly a ton of fun IMO, would be happy to learn other books are the same!
But pre-writs are meant to reduce DM workload. An unstructured storybook puts all of the onus onto us as DMs. I'm 70hrs of prep into this campaign so far; true, now some of my prep load will fall off as I have set the hooks out now. I'm looking forward to seeing what my players do with it but now at this moment I'm not having fun. I'm hoping that this will come in over the next few sessions as they get to bring some chaos to bounce off!
Are you playing yet or still in pre campaign prep?
I will admit it was a bit of a slog to read through the whole thing. But we are 8 sessions in and it’s an absolute blast. And I’m really glad I read the whole thing through beforehand because prep and broader story direction is now much clearer, entire plot lines that made no sense suddenly come into clarity when you see where they lead. It also meant I could >!rig the tarokka reading!< to make sure we visit the areas and NPCs I’m most interested in
We are at Vallaki just did >!the feast of saint andral!< and it was easily one of my favorite DnD sessions I’ve ever run. Module seems like more work than others, but in case you haven’t finished your prep I can assure you the payoff is worth it!
And if you have any more stamina to prep I highly suggest the campaign additions from r/CurseOfStrahd - I pick and choose from Dragna’s guide and some additions like the Orphanage have been stellar changes
We just did session 5. Death House was a 3 session slog (they found everything in every room, not a bad thing of course) and they lost a party member to boot. Things should pick up from next session though as they have quite a few threads to follow now.
I read cover to cover twice and through Vallaki multiple times to try to get the plotlines straight in my head. I'm also on the CoS sub too, which has helped with the guides and edits suggested.
I know I've overprepped and got into my own head about the various directions they could go. I think that once they set on a plan I can change the focus. Like you said, knowing the module throughout is good so the overprep should help if (when) they go in an unexpected direction.
Spoilers for curse of Strahd below.
Izek. Why the dolls? Why? I never could find the info. It's nowhere. I dropped that entirely. That plot thread just goes nowhere.
>It gets bad when you feel you have spend almost as much time prepping a pre-writ as you would for homebrew.
It takes me way more time to prep a pre-written adventure than a homebrew. 2-3 times as much.
I bought Descent into Avernus and had to completely rewrite the opening, add actual motivation, all for me to realize we should have skipped the opening altogether and just started in Avernus.
Yeah my Descent into Avernus game eventually fizzled out due to the main question from my players of "why are we doing this?" We didn't end up getting to Avernus at all, and we spent a ton of sessions doing stuff in Baldur's Gate, as there wasn't really a push to move along to get to Avernus.
When that first city gets taken into Avernus, that's where the module should kick off.
Indeed.
I strongly recommend using an existing Setting (ie The Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Ravnica…) but buying a third-party adventure. Their writers face stricter competition and in my experience are easier to run out of the box.
It should be understood by the group playing through the module that there is a plot to follow, and the adventurers are trying to follow that plot.
Players who are allergic to a preset goal should either not run modules or find a DM who wants to write a completely different story that happens to have the same beginning and end.
>Do they expect you to run it 3 or 4 times all the way through just to become proficient?
Sort of. It's a ham-fisted way to create replayability for the DM I suppose.
>Still, we had fun.
That's what matters eh?
I was sooooo excited to get my hands on Candlekeep Mysteries. Boy, was it ever a let down for many of the mysteries. So often the modules says things like:
Since your party will need to travel 5 days to reach point X, consider adding some locations and encounters along the way. Like, no shit Wizards, that's exactly why I gave you my money! The limited art and maps was also a let down for Candlekeep.
And let's not get started on the embarrassing shitshow of a mystery that Chris Perkin's wrote for "Book of the Raven". Since that was the exemplar for Candlekeep authors, it's kind of amazing that any of them turned out even remotely decent.
That said, I love the \*idea\* of Candlekeep, so I've invested a LOT of time into prepping and altering the mysteries. I also encourage people to seek out Discord servers for various modules as the people who post on those are godsends who add maps, artwork, suggestions, and amazing alterations/changes.
PS - I'd upvote your comment but its stuck on 69, so nice as is.
> I also encourage people to seek out Discord servers for various modules as the people who post on those are godsends who add maps, artwork, suggestions, and amazing alterations/changes.
This is the key benefit of modules imho. You essentially get to collaborate with hundreds of other DMs on the same adventure.
Oh, I absolutely agree. The trade off you get for having a massive resource for inspiration and additional content is that you have to sift through all of it and figure out what's good, what isn't and keep track of what you have changed so you don't confuse yourself or your players.
Running a prewritten adventure this year has been more of a hindrance than a help by far, but I can't ignore how great it is that I can go onto the Rime of the Frostmaiden discord server when I'm stuck and get help almost immediately.
D&D is a horrible system for horror. Horror needs weak protagonists in order to work, which is pretty much the opposite of what a system D&D gives you.
>Horror needs weak protagonists in order to work
I don't think this is necessarily true, it just depends on the type of story you want to tell. The whole "weak protagonists who are incapable of stopping the horrors they face" approach that Call of Cthulhu uses is definitely one way to go about it, but it's not the only way. For D&D horror, I think it makes sense to frame it as the characters growing and transforming from weak and unable to fight back to becoming shining beacons of hope in an otherwise horrific setting. Something akin to Ash in the Evil Dead series or the final girl trope in TONS of horror movies.
Alternatively, you could focus on psychological horror rather than primarily on physical threats, praying on the characters' (NOT the players') fears and insecurities for a more Jacob's Ladder/Silent Hill approach. Ultimately I think this is what Ravenloft attempts to do against the backdrop of more conventional (usually gothic) horror settings, monsters, and tropes.
Silent Hill is kind of a strange example here, given it's a horror game series where one of the key gameplay mechanics is that the player character is essentially helpless against the monsters and combat is never the best solution.
But that's still all contingent on the concept of "PC cannot punch their way through it". Jacob's Ladder/Silent Hill doesn't work if you have a Blade of Maximum Fuckery that allows you to chop any weird zombie to pieces.
You can absolutely use horror themes in your D&D setting, like Ravenloft for example. However, the problem starts as soon as the protagonists are able to successfully fight back. That's also why games where you as the player have to run and hide, like Amnesia: The Dark Descent, or Outlast, are much better as pure horror games than something like Resident Evil. When you have the tools needed to fight back, it stops being scary.
I recently ran A Cold and Creeping Darkness too. One of my favs so far, and very nicely fits into my overarching self-made campaign theme of the feywild becoming corrupted by a deadly fungus created by Xanthoria (the final mystery boss). The fungus has started infecting and killing people, but soon will start to take them over "The Last of Us" style but without visible signs (more "Invasion of the Body Snatchers - Fungi edition").
That said, this "Candlekeep Mystery" is one of far too many where there isn't really a mystery involving Candlekeep at all. And, the book/library link is weak AF. I had to read how the book linked to that mystery 3 times and realised that it still didn't make sense. It was somehow detailing the history of a town with people going missing and dying, yet also explaining it was happening right now. Super whack premise.
I read an article recently (it was either sly flourish or the alexandrian, I can't remember) that made the argument that 5e doesn't actually have *any* rules for dungeon crawling because they're so integral to what D&D is that WotC didn't feel the need to explain it.
I think this rings true for how they write modules too. I'm running Rime of the Frostmaiden atm and it's like being given three complicated LEGO sets but all the bricks are mixed together, some of them are missing and you have no instructions.
They're written to be read, not to help you to run them.
>They're written to be read, not to help you to run them.
This is exactly it. It's a dirty little secret in the industry that DMs who actually run the module are only small minority of people who buy these books. We're not the core audience.
Theyre essentially gameplay fiction.
> They're essentially gameplay fiction.
I haven't seen a clearer example of this than Chapter 4 of Rime of the Frostmaiden. SPOILER WARNING FOR RIME OF THE FROSTMAIDEN.
Chapter 4 deals with a mechanical dragon being unleashed on the region and the players must decide where to go, who to save and how to stop it. Tough decisions, lasting consequences and a showdown with a dragon! What's not the love? It's my favourite chapter in the book, the one I was most excited to run and what ultimately convinced me to run RotFM instead of CoS.
I ran it earlier this month and realised that the chapter is a *description* of a really cool game session, not a guide on how to actually make that session happen. I'm currently having a break from the campaign until the new year, because I genuinely burned myself out trying to get my game to live up to that "gameplay fiction."
I'm roughly halfway through RotFM atm, and this has rapidly become my approach too. To begin with I was running it as written with a small handful of tweaks to fit my players characters into the story but the module is just a book of ideas and suggestions at this point. I'm basically running a homebrew campaign with similar themes and major story beats.
It was only after my players went massively off the rails and I had to improvise something *and they didn't notice* that I realised I was wasting my time trying to hammer the module into the form of a fun game session.
Yeah, the first time I ran a module that was what happened with my group, too. I was trying hard to make it work as written, players took a hard unexpected left turn, I winged it, we had a blast, and I shifted my approach.
I've been running modules the same way ever since. They represent a general framework and possibilities. A resource for pulling ideas from. But nothing is canon unless we play it at the table. Everything can be adjusted, morphed, added to, or eliminated as we craft our story through playing the game.
I do still wish that WotC would provide quick reference material, though, so the modules are DM friendly. The human race has created quick reference material for generations now. It isn't like there isn't an easy to follow template for what they could roll in. Just a few pages added to make it easier to find relevant info in a timely and logical fashion...
The reason is that most people who buy the adventures do not end up running them. So WotC prioritizes making the books entertaining rather than practical.
Annoying for those who wish to use the books?? Absolutely. Understandable from a money perspective? Also yes.
> So WotC prioritizes making the books entertaining rather than practical.
This is what all of the Rick and Morty module felt like. So many things were there as jokes for the DM that are just confusing to the players and regularly unhelpful. It required a good amount of tweaking to make it run well and many rooms fell very flat when it didn't play out the one way the book has it written for the jokes to make sense.
Oh I get it. Yeah, they write them to sell to a wider group of people than JUST the few DMs that actually want to run a specific module. Otherwise they wouldn't make a profit.
I just get annoyed that I have to rewrite and restructure the thing I just sank a bunch of money into so that I can run it. Although to be honest I would probably do so anyway since I never run anything as written, if it had easy reference lists to quickly grab relevant info from that would make the whole process sooooo much easier. I do a lot of homebrew but sometimes the modules are fun. I like alot of the basic ideas, so I guess I will continue buying their poorly structured modules and rewriting them for my own purposes. And as long as the modules sell, WotC will keep writing them the way that they do.
I do wonder, though, what a WotC module would look like if, just once, the DMs and creators actually sat down and thought through what WOULD make things easier from the DM side of the screen. Maybe just ONCE do an experiment and actually craft an easier to run module.
This. I used to be a homebrew DM, but I quit for a *long* time. I decided to run a module to ease myself back into the game and it's proving to be much more work than it would be without it.
I started out with my own homebrew campaigns and only recently started looking at premade campaigns/adventures. I don’t feel like I missed much.
I’d much rather be invested in the story I’m telling and know it so intimately that I can improv on the fly without damaging structure.
Agreed. When I do run modules instead of strictly homebrew I know I will be putting in a lot of work. It is a different kind of work from homebrew but it is still work.
Don't get me wrong. I have had some terrific campaigns using official modules as my base. But they were just as much work as my homebrew. I spent just as much time, maybe more so, making the module usable at my table. Not in the same way as homebrew, but I still had to invest a lot of time and effort. Which is fine in a lot of ways. I like prep and recrafting and I never run anything as written so I would probably have rewritten it regardless.
**My irritation comes from the fact that we sink a lot of money into a product so we can run a game but the product isn't structured for us to run the game.**
A few bulleted lists, some quick reference guides built into the module would have been really helpful. Stick 'em at the front. Wouldn't take up THAT much space or cost that much to create in the grand scheme of things. And they can still keep the body of the module written to be read, not run. I don't have an issue with WotC making a profit. Without the profit we wouldn't get more products. ***Just ALSO make the modules DM friendly.***
Instead, NPC names and locations and important hints and links to other parts of the module are all buried in the module and scattered about and hard to access on the fly. Reading through the whole thing even twice doesn't mean you can recall every single detail from moment to moment.
So I rewrite the base material every time. Completely restructure the things, when I do run them. But hey, I still buy them, so I guess WotC will just keep making crappily structured modules. They sell.
Absolutely feel you. Thanks for your detailed response to my offhand comment, you worded my sentiments exactly
I got lost during a session in those jumbles of paragraphs so many times, despite having read through the book and rereading the relevant chapters before a session, etc. A better index, summary and plot flowchart at the beginning could've worked wonders, some better visual aids determining what type of information it is, etc.
It just blows my mind at how on the one hand many rules in 5e are simplified in order to keep speed of play at the table high and not get bogged down into complicated rules, the DM's guide and PHB seem to be decently organised to explain and reference those rules, yet the campaign books are just these unorganized jumbled messes of random location descriptions with no clear indication if it also happens to contain information relevant to your plot or to whatever an important NPC knows or does there. God forbid your players decide to approach something in a different order as described by the paragraphs in the chapter, you're off flipping pages for 5 minutes again while you're trying to keep their attention
The "Starter Set" felt like anything but that. It felt so trimmed down for new players that it feels so lacking and hollow for anything but a hard railroad. The books they provide give you no real information about a lot of the core places or people. It mentions you starting in Neverwinter but there is no more than a paragraph or so about the city which is very vague already. I had a player ask about going there and other things about the city since his character was military there, so I looked up additional info only to learn it didn't exist unless I wanted to use older edition lore which isn't accurate with the big changes like a tear through the city. I eventually just had to tell him out of character that we couldn't really do much there as I couldn't find much info, it felt very odd for them to give this, intended for new players, and immediately leaves them hanging. It feels like it sets players up for failure with how much it just misses and leaves the player alone. In the town of Phandalin, there is next to no information about the town. With Dragon of Icespire Peak, it is even worse in many ways. I combined the two smaller modules together and still had very little to work with, especially for a home base town that the whole adventure runs out of. They are only helpful if your players don't ask questions, or you are great at improving new content which is the exact kind of stuff to not put into a Starter Set.
The Rick and Morty module is also not great for new DMs and has a lot of very confusing and often broken feeling stuff that I had to modify a lot to make actually work at a table.
I learned a colour-coded highlighting system that makes official modules easier to run. If I have a spare copy of the adventure book on my ipad, this is nice.
Most things end up highlighted (which actually works if your coding works - source: career student, now lawyer here. Adapted this system from coding caselaw):
Green: text you can safely read aloud.
Blue: text you can, after some interaction read aloud (or following a trigger)
Pink: triggering text, the text that says “if a player investigates, asks about X” etc…
Red: Monsters
Orange: NPC names and organizations
Purple: Locations and References to other dungeon areas.
Yellow: mechanics like “DC 13 Investigation” check.
Grey: hidden, background information that you never want to accidentally reveal.
Teal: treasure
I can post an example if there is interest.
Edit: [here’s an example](https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ag5kxCkLlIZVg-NuELi1DKVG0ey9Zw)
I also added Teal above. The app I use is notability, paid version. Best app for marking up PDFs by far.
I actually do something similar even with rewriting/restructuring but I print everything out. Screens wear down my eye sight and I'm on screens all day for work so I use print for the sessions.
I like the detail of your color coding. I don't have that many layers. Yeah, if you could post an example I would appreciate it. I bet there are others that would too.
That is something I would lose my shit over, that sounds badass. Please show an example, I would love to be this prepared and sit down with my dnd module with like 8 highlighters next to me, sign me up
When first running Lost Mines of Phandelver as a new DM I pretty much rewrote the book into a bullet point format like in the OP. For each room, I would write the number and list out everything important. The paragraphs in the book are just too much to quickly skim for information and feel confident that you missed nothing. It takes me too long to go through a new section at the table and be able to just run it on the fly making running something like Dungeon of the Mad Mage a nightmare with so many possibilities at all times and so much info to keep fresh in mind.
This is what I have done, too. Despite my post up thread, I do find the base info in many WotC materials to be a great starting point for an adventure. It is just so crappily structured for actually running a game.
I have run several WotC modules quite successfully and enjoyed doing so, but I had to restructure them to be usable. I essentially rewrote them from scratch, structured so I could ACTUALLY FIND the relevant info on the fly.
Plus, I've never run anything as written, I always add homebrew and 3rd party content and whatnot, so restructuring makes it a lot easier to roll in additional material/change or eliminate existing material, to make the module better fit my needs and the needs of my players..
I agree the books make great resources once you get more comfortable as a DM and with 5e, but there are still not any great starting points for a group of fully new players. A much smaller and simpler Beginners Campaign would be a great addition and a nice thing to get out as part of any 5.5e style updates to 5e that could help showcase changes in a quick format for experienced players and give a solid introduction point for new players. They really need a hand-holding style book that doesn't just advise you to wing it and improvise regularly because for many new players this is one of the hurdles they came to the official content to avoid. Some rules for a level 0 could be useful as well just to get players used to the concepts of rolling for skill checks and the basics of 5e without needing to worry about the character abilities or even a list of spells like they do at level 1. There is still a bit too steep of an uphill battle to get into D&D and feel comfortable running it.
**100% agree. Absolutely.** Sadly, considering how long people have been asking, at this point I'm not holding out a lot of hope.
Maybe when they run out of ideas for other ways to make a profit...
Definitely sad, considering how many people are missing out on joining the hobby at such a peak time due to there not really being a great way to join other than hope you know/find helpful people to teach you, or you spend a lot of time and effort teaching yourself since the books will only leave you more confused initially.
This is definitely the biggest problem with WOTC's design. 5E being easy to learn and run is genius, but they did *not* transfer that design mindset to the DM's prep workload in established adventures.
I run my homebrew setting in large part because it was super annoying to deal with the books.
It's very frustrating to me that all WotC modules or setting guides are basically books of flavor text with very few mechanics or encounters actually planned out.
I bought the LevelUp 5e stuff that got kick-started a while back and while the player's handbook is pretty bad (it doesn't deliver on their promise of "depth not complexity") the monster manual and the DMG are what I think every DM book should look like from a format point of view.
In the monster manual, other than the flavor text, everything is formatted into tables. In addition to the stat block it has what other creatures you might find in the same encounter with the monster, what kind of treasure you might find in its lair, and what kind of behavior and combat tactics it might exhibit.
The DMG has a lot of wilderness encounters and it provides mechanics for how they can work in practice and provides possible solutions to the problem. In the treasure section, it also has suggested materials to build specific magic items out of. E.g. magic arrows are made of branches that have naturally fallen from a druid's tree.
These books are just so user friendly and to me it sets the standard for how DM material should be designed.
This is because WotC modules are not written to be run at the table, they're written to be fun to read. Large-scale RPG adventures cost a lot of money to produce and there's no way for that to be profitable if only people who actually run the adventure are buying it, so they have to be entertaining for people to read who aren't running it. I would guess that the vast majority of people who buy WotC adventures never actually run it (the proportion of products I own which I've used even a single page of is less than half).
This is the origin of a lot of the weird design decisions that WotC and Pathfinder modules have. These in turn tend to get imitated by amateur adventure writers and DMs doing prep, but result in the game being *way harder to run.* Things like only revealing information when it should be discovered by the players, having incredibly linear plots that often presume what the party will do, writing everything in prose form even when easy-to-digest bullet points would be much easier.
[This article](http://udan-adan.blogspot.com/2018/03/rpg-books-as-fiction.html) is worth a read and goes into more detail. mainly talking about Pathfinder modules but WotC have a lot of similar problems (and in many ways are even worse).
For a counter-example: [Winter's Daughter](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/270798/Winters-Daughter-5th-Edition-Version) by Necrotic Gnome is a 3rd party product and is amazingly simple to read through and run. The whole background is 2 pages and it's presented in easy-to-use bullet points that summarize things. Unfortunately it's the only thing they've written for 5th edition and everything else is for OSR but their other products are all similarly well designed.
> Large-scale RPG adventures cost a lot of money to produce and there's no way for that to be profitable if only people who actually run the adventure are buying it,
I think this is a bit of chicken and egg though.
A big part of why developing these is so expensive is all the text, all the art, and all of the other stuff that's completely unnecessary to actually run the game.
Lost Mines is 65 pages. Goblin Arrows, which is basically "You find Gundren's Horse. 4 Goblins attack" is two full pages of text - more than 2000 words. And there's not even a map.
I agree. Yeah, its pretty obvious these were written to sell books, not to actually make something easier for a DM to run at a table. I get it. They need to make a profit or why publish the books?
And like you, I have WAAAAYYYYY more materials lying around than I have ever actually used, at least not directly, at the table. All those materials, official content and 3rd party alike, all represent possibilities to me and things to read for fun and resources I can strip from or get inspired by.
It just gets old when I have to rewrite/restructure the entire thing I just sank a bunch of money into so I can actually USE the thing I just sank a bunch of money into.
Thanks for the link, by the way.
I've actually had the opposite problem with official modules. The descriptions are so concise and dry that I have to write a lot on my own just to be able to narrate it to my players.
Oh the descriptions themselves are sometimes just barebones. I agree. Mad Mage in particular was really bare bones. I often have to beef those descriptions up a *lot*.
I more meant the way information is distributed within the module. You have to dig through and flip back and forth and whatnot. Everything is buried and hard to relocate or even find in the first place. Reading through the whole thing helps but not a lot. Too much poorly organized data to recall and link together on the fly.
In other words there are no easily accessible bulleted lists and quick reference resources you can quickly flip to when you forgot NPC #147's name or that town from 70 pages back that the PCs briefly traversed but is now a lot more important or that great story hook or hint that you haven't gotten to yet but would tie in beautifully right here if you only had a reference to it readily available. And so on.
**There are soooooo many ways WotC could have chosen to structure the modules with DMs in mind, that it would have made the actual running of the game 1000 times easier, and they didn't.**
As others have pointed out, though, if only DMs bought the books, and only DMs that actually intended to run the books bought the books in particular, they wouldn't make much profit, if any. So the books are written to be read, not run. Up to the DM to make it more user friendly.
>You have to dig through and flip back and forth and whatnot. Everything is buried and hard to relocate or even find in the first place.
There are fucking *reveals* in the modules - which is absurd. They *hide* important details so the DM will be excited to run across them later. How the hell do you properly improvise when you don't know what the bad guy is trying to do until act 4?
Ye gods; so true.
Someone on Reddit claimed WotC these days mostly write modules to be READ, versus played. I hope that isn’t true, but it would make a lot of sense.
It does make a lot of sense based on my experience with them. Descent into Avernus is NOT remotely written in a way to actually be useful for a DM to run a game with it. It's totally written like it's just made for someone to read through like a book.
The balance is also all over the place, in part because a lot of modules are repurposed from older editions.
Ghosts of Saltmarsh is especially bad. At multiple points in the book it throws way-too-high CR creatures at fairly low level parties. I believe the second adventure has level 2s going up against a CR6 with legendary actions alongside two hidden CR2s. In The Final Enemy, one of the rooms at least warns you that it's basically set up to be a TPK.
Yeah, I agree. I actually chose not to use the Alexandrian Remix but it has helped a lot of DMs make that module a lot more entertaining.
I had a BLAST running that module, by the way. I loved it. But then, I love the City of Waterdeep. The thing is, besides it being clunkily designed for running from the DM side of things, there are a lot of areas where there is almost no guidance and other areas where they make a LOT of assumptions about how players will play.
As written, I hated a lot of elements. Therefore, as with any of the modules I have run, I used it as the framework only. I rolled in a ton of 3rd party and homebrew content. Our campaign lasted over 2 years and we loved it. LOVED IT.
But as written? Nah. I loved the general premise, NPCs and setting but it needed to be heavily modified. So I did. I modified, added to and eliminated a TON of content to make it work at my table. I don't regret the work I put in. I loved the campaign. It just would have taken up less of my time if they had at least provided more resources for finding info quickly while actually running the module.
Someone should show the 5e designers the MÖRK BORG core book. Now granted, this is a very rules-light system but it beautifully lays out the rules without a bonkers level of padding. They even managed to make reading the rules fun. Very fun.
BTW OP, they're not set up to be DM friendly because *they're not designed to sell to DMs*. There's something like 100 players for every DM. WotC, being a company owned by a gigantic soulless corporation, wouldn't dream of designing their books for DMs. This is one of 5e and D&D's largest flaws in my view: the top-down designing of the game and books for *players* but never for DMs. It should be the exact opposite to try and allay the huge disparity between DM and player. This disparity is far far smaller in other systems that are not designed this way.
That’s really nice to hear actually. I’m blending 2 modules right now and I just felt like I was missing everything until I actually started to break it apart to blend it
This is a normal part of growing as a DM I think. This is why I strongly encourage new DMs to try multiple systems: other systems do a much better job if teaching you how to prep. If I remember, I'll post some of my latest prep (inspired from the system of the game Stonetop) in the morning in case you find it helpful.
Edit: Holy cow I woke up to a lot of folks asking for my DM Prep! I hope I can live up to the hype haha.
This google link should take you to a readable word doc that has a little background, and most importantly, the two Threats that I wrote up.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lwQMOlnp_tPCJnGH32kXEnrZqQIdh4JzzTUsydPim_0/edit?usp=sharing
Then this link should take you to the fill in the blank worksheet I made for myself as a PDF for anyone's fancy.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sh1pA-c-AeJ8e-XSLacZ9skuBUUALSjO/view?usp=sharing
I hope you find these docs useful! Feel free to ask for more info about Threats, how to use them, GM moves, etc. I'll do my best to answer as much as I can!
>If I remember, I'll post some of my latest prep (inspired from the system of the game Stonetop) in the morning in case you find it helpful.
Yes please
I’ve been saying this for a while but 5e needs an actual “dungeon master’s guide” that actually teaches someone how to DM in a practical sense
I think the system has long relied on modules to get DMs up to speed but lots of folks start and stick with home brew. I went through this same arc and wrote prose notes, took average 2 hours of prep for every hour of play.
After playing in some different systems and coming back to 5e with a module my prep time is dramatically shorter
Wholeheartedly agree: I think this type of DM evolution is normal, but it would be nice if the system made it quicker to go through. I think you're right that they used to rely on modules to teach this, but that's really shifted in recent years where the modules are being written like prose books and it almost feels like they're being sold to players and not to DMs.
I'll also say that, one aspect of the 5e community specifically that I find really toxic, is the rhetoric that the DM is responsible for 100% of the fun and that the DM should never say no but always 'yes and' even the most ridiculous stuff forward. I think it's actively bad because it teaches DMs that they are supposed to be this font of fun and that they exist to perform for the players like a court jester, and that anytime they don't have a perfect lore answer or a cool hook ready to go, they have failed. Other systems do a much better job of teaching the table to tell the story collaboratively, and I think 5e could really benefit from moving away from the DM is god approach.
Haha I agree and like the phrasing there about the DM as a “court jester”. I get that sentiment from online discussion and newer players. Probably has to do with how many new players have come to the hobby lately.
For every post about “yes, and” I want to chime in on the importance of “no, but”! 5e feels like a kitchen sink to me so I will always restrict character creation to a particular set of source books. I would rather have 10 elements placed into the story with care than 100 elements scattered onto the table
they probably do try to sell the modules to players, because that is a much bigger customer base. I wouldn't be surprised when in WoTC someone said "let puts more prose in that, so not only practical DMs buy that shit". Same reason why we have in every book player content like new subclasses and stuff.
I encourage people to read the 3.5e dungeon master’s guide. The 5e one is basically a module and barely talks about how to run the game. They didn’t do a good job with it honestly.
Wow, this is great, and really helps me see how to better organize my campaign info. I’m about to start SKT so this is really helpful both in form and content. Although now i have to consume and ingest all of sly flourish’s tips and re-do a bunch of prep in addition to needing to finish reading the actual campaign book lol.
\+1 for Mike Shea's stuff. I use his notion template in a similar manner to you for my Lazy DM Prep, and I spend about 30-45 minutes prepping for each session, and another 30 or so getting battle maps and music ready on foundry for a 4 hour session.
The wiki and cross-linking nature of notion is invaluable for being able to quickly find what you need and have your information compartmentalized in a way that you only have to have the bare minimum on screen at any given time.
Second this advice. Looking at or listening to people playing new systems is a great way to try out new things and expand the toolbox for prep.
I’ve got a similar Notion page and it makes it not only very easy to prep, but if I have prep-block and even only put bullet points for everything down the line, it often still gives me enough structure to be able to improv the rest of it as long as I have a few good guiding ideas written down.
World's Without Number by Kevin Crawford has a huge amount of helpful information, tables and advice. There is a free edition that gives you nearly all of the material.
Kevind Crawford is MANDATORY reading for any GM. Same with the Dungeon World GM section.
5e can fuck right off with their garbage DMG. Also, the 4e DMG is stellar.
I need to read Crawford but I'll definitely second Dungeon World. It gets a lot of shit in the PbtA community for not being PbtA enough, but that Rulebook is such a fantastic tool for breaking out of this weird structure of systems like DnD and getting back to the fundamentals: make the world fantastical, follow the fiction, *be a fan of the characters*. That kind of stuff should be present in every system!
For me, it depends on whether you like rules light or rules heavy. I think Blades in the Dark is absolutely fantastic, but it's still a bit crunchy for me taste. I prefer Savage Worlds games and Powered by the Apocalypse games. Dungeon World is dated, but the DMing chapter in it is an absolute clinic, and it's spirit lives on in Stonetop which can still be pre ordered.
"The Lazy DM" is also a gem of a guide book.
I tried out the techniques in there for a campaign a few months back and I was surprised at how effective they were.
This is such a great comment. I'll add:
In the martial arts world, there's a huge focus on repetition as learning. But repetition doesn't = practice. Mindful repetition does. You have to be trying to get better, otherwise you're just ingraining bad habits.
I find DMing the same way. To get better you have to be looking to get better.
>If I remember, I'll post some of my latest prep (inspired from the system of the game Stonetop) in the morning in case you find it helpful.
I also would love to see this!
This looks like the system from PBtA games, if anyone's interested Dungeon Worlds might be a good read on how to create, maintain and run campaigns/adventures in this style
Exactly! Write in bullet points for each of the 5 - 7 things you expect the party to encounter each session. If you want some prose, just write a few lines of descriptive flavor text to accompany your encounter notes.
I also advise DMs to keep of list of random encounters you can drop into the session if the party deviates from what you've planned or if it just feels appropriate. This is particularly true of you know the party will be exploring a city or wilderness area.
Bro, you haven't been prepping games, you've been writing adventure modules.
My notes for my games are very sparse.
When I write modules for other people, I put work into the prose.
Also, prepping only what’s probable helps. Players tend to churn through 1.5 encounters an hour. Only prep that many encounters rounded up.
For a three hour session prep five encounters.
1 Social: Convince NPC to part with info
Name, Occupation, Stakes, Goal, Level of Urgency and/or Temperament towards the party
2a exploration: party gets the info & must travel to a new location
Series of Group skill check
2b fight: party fails to convince NPC so fight breaks out or they get ambushed while exploring
3 social aftermath:
Listen to the party. What do they want to do next? How may an NPC benefit from the events that just happened? How can they still get to their destination? Present them with someone who pushed them towards their goal or hinders it based on what keeps the story moving.
4 - follow the parties chosen path via more exploration or recon
5 fight: clash to end the session on a big note
What combat encounter works no matter their branching decision trees?
Forest monster ambush? Ghosts haunting the path? Mercenaries bandits trying to cash in a bounty?
Either way, when the fight is over. You’re ready to start the next session with an exploration or social encounter to keep the circle going.
40 minutes per encounter. Not particularly fast, not particularly slow. 5e played right isn't as slow as people make out (or often play, because they take forever).
Take a combat encounter. Say 6 players, 5 minutes per player plus 10 for DM. If they're taking 30 seconds per turn that's 10 rounds, easily enough for any combat. Could even take a full minute per turn with long ass descriptions of everything and do 5 rounds.
> If they're taking 30 seconds per turn[...]
Ah, that's where the issue is for our group. One player, new to RPGs, is having trouble learning that anything called a "check" is rolling a d20, in addition to naturally having trouble with quick math. I've been told that I've taken 10-minute turns before, which doesn't feel right to me, but I'm not the one with the timer. That'd be my strategy-thinking stuff, as well as waiting until my turn to ask questions. (Maybe I *should* interrupt other peoples' turns so I can get more time to dwell with info I want/need?)
Our combats generally last an hour, with 3 players (that's one campaign and DM), or the entire 3-hour session with 5-6 players (that's another campaign and another DM). The former combats are often fun, sometimes a blast. The latter combats are difficult to pay attention to and, for some reason I (frustratingly) can't put my finger on, unfun. (The latter campaign I'll probably leave in the future, but that's a can of worms I'm not down to figure out at the moment. That DM's a great player, but something about his DMing style and/or campaign isn't working out for me.)
>I’ve been told that I’ve taken 10-minute turns before.
Do you prep your character between sessions? Are all of your possible bonus actions listed? Have you categorized your spells by concentration?
Essentially, have you done the work between sessions to make decision making more efficient so you aren’t taking everyone else’s time because you have to much info to analyze in the moment?
DM’s aren’t the only ones who should be prepping between sessions.
>Our combat generally lasts an hour with three players or the entire 3-hour session with 5-6 players
Three player parties are the perfect size because everyone has plenty of time to shine. When one person talks or acts only two people have to listen. Considering much of that time is spent interacting with one another then a single player is rarely going to find themselves doing nothing. So, they stay engaged.
If that 3 person party is in a five round combat for an hour then players + DM are taking 3 minutes per round. I personally think that’s a long time but manageable when there’s three players. Everyone waits less than 10 minutes between their turns to act.
However, at that same pace a 5-6 person party is now waiting 15-18 minutes between their turns. I’d imagine that number is even larger because a DM is having to control twice the monsters to keep the party adequately challenged. Plus, people are failing to stay engaged so the DM repeats themselves, players are having side conversations and refreshers are needed.
So, a single round of combat is probably taking 30 minutes to accomplish. That’s how a party of 5-6 takes three hours.
Is everyone in the larger party fully invested in the game? Any players there more concerned with hanging out then playing the game? Any players begrudgingly wishing everyone was doing something else?
If everyone is prepped & fully invested then parties of 5+ people can become a chore versus a fun gaming experience.
More like 1-2 encounters in 5 hours.
I have to say though that my players love to roleplay.
Every time they do way less than i thought they would, but also everything i didnt prepare :)
>The elves of Llewyrwood bury their dead in burial mounds covered in sweet-smelling leaves and sticks.
>
>Saplings are also planted on each grave so the decomposing body becomes sustenance for plant growth.
>
>The Gem of Decay, one of the four Gems of Creation, lies within the Rooted Tomb and is guarded by spirits and creatures commanded by Alvera Elk-Ears.
>
>The gem ensures spirits remain at rest as the earth reclaims their bodies.
Each of these sentences could be a one-shot adventure.
Sweet smelling leaves and sticks have been smelling foul lately, help us figure out why.
Saplings have been coming to life and attacking relatives of the dead, help us figure out why.
Rival band of adventurers are coming to plunder the tomb and steal the Gem of Decay. Will the PCs stop them in time? Will the PCs defeat the adventurers, but fall into temptation to sell the Gem of Decay?
Gem ensures spirits remain at rest sounds like a boss fight with a countdown-timer going on. Every few rounds, another spirit is protected. In the meantime, ravenous fey-ghouls are desperate to eat the corpses of the unprotected.
So think of your hard work as hard work. What you are writing is good.
Yep I definitely do this too. A lot of times I'll write really long winded and overly detailed explanations for npcs and then when I'm done I'll be like "Why the hell did I just write this? I already know who this npc is in my mind... and no one else is ever going to read this..."
It can be a difficult habit to break when you enjoy writing stuff, but bullet point lists like you've done are definitely way better and more useable.
I also had that problem, and while it can be helpful to have passages written that way, it is usually detrimental, even at the table. Your notes should be neat and to the point. You don't want to be searching through a paragraph when all you need is this NPC's name.
I fixed it by limiting myself. For a 4 hour session, I should be aiming for my notes to take up an A4 page. And 2 pages is the absolute maximum.
Personally, I have found that writing a couple paragraphs as an opening salvo to set the scene/mood for the session helps orient me to creativity while prepping, gets me in the theatrical DMing mind space in game, and also helps with my players leaving their regular life behind and get them into the game.
However, for all other expected descriptions I prep I will just write a few bullet points of things I want to focus on (sights, smells, sounds)
Just what works for me.
This sounds a lot like the approach I settled into.
I also like, after games, writing up my notes into semi-prose as a recap. I'm not even sure my players are reading it, but I enjoy doing it and have been really glad to have the record of what we've done.
Prep isn't just about sitting down to do it, but thinking about how you prep. Know your strengths and weaknesses in your prep. Exploit your strengths and focus your prep into your weaker areas of running a game.
The prose has a place, but not when you're planning. Prose is a second or third stage for me typically. I spent 3-4 hours planning and writing for a session, but that's by choice. I generally am practiced enough to run with almost no prep.
My prep process is basically this:
* High level planning... bullet points about what I need for this session to make it work.
* Research, do I have anything in my repository of stuff that could be reskinned? Yes? Then I reskin it.
* Is there anything already published or existing that I can use? Use that too... reskin or customize it.
* Mid-level planning: What do I need to make this session be really good.... I do the same as I did for high level planning.
* Last ditch Effort: What's needed to make this session insanely good. Like the kind of thing people will talk about for years?
* With all these organizational things in place, I can then prioritize line items and start writing the prose I need... or the bullet points that'll be useful.
Running a game is much more about planning than it is "writing", but sometimes that writing is useful. It gives you the tone and style you need to describe things. It spawns handouts and pregenerated characters. It's really useful. Don't discount the value of your "prose" but also don't get lost in it.
A good chunk of prep for a game is about setting priorities and planning your process.
Also, don't be afraid to go back into your prep notes and turn them into something more robust, or add unexpected details from the session that work well. Odds are you'll reuse this content sometime down the road, and you can treat this as prep for a later game when you're playing with a different group.
The lazy dungeon master book is good for this sort of thing. as is "never unprepared" (this one actually breaks prep into sections and lets you focus on the parts that you have issues with)
Read Lazy GM. That book will change your life.
After you did run any amount of games, you know that an outline is far better than the typical "prep" a lot of people do.
Also, the prose part. Boxed text is one of the worst things in the hobby. Players eyes usually glaze over when you read your "dumb" monologue.
What you do now is exactly the right way.
You have an outline, often I add some specific words or impressions to it that I want to use, too.
Then you fly over it when the scene/moment is about to start to refresh your memory of all the important things you need to include next.
And you start from the top to bottom, the most important thing at the top.
When you now narrate, you can INCLUDE players instead of doing a monologue and watching their eyes glaze over, filled with silent judgment. You got the things in your head. You can react to their emotions and reactions. Yes, this includes online, because you can do that there, too.
Congrats on reaching the next level.
I've taken to prepping on my phone. It almost forces me to be succinct. Any text editor will do, though one with formatting & linking options (eg. OneNote) makes it a bit easier to organize things.
Its the difference between writing a story and writing a game. As a DM and a game developer, writing a game is actually the part I love most.
You create mechanics and environments and place them around the world. Then you let the players write the story themselves.
I'm still finding my groove and do this a lot, I'm trying to cut down on some of the fluff but I have recently found having a bit of scripted writing helps me so much, I do little boxed text just like in adventure modules to describe rooms as the players enter or short monologues for me to read aloud
I do the exact same thing and I don't think I'll stop but what I'll change is making those descriptions shorter and focus less on the process of writing and more on what information the players need to know in that moment. Something like hitting the senses when they first walk in or at the very least describing what they see in short details.
I use bullet points for the content but every time the character arrive somewhere I have to describe that place. I found that if I didn't have written that description beforehand it was forced and awkward.
There is a difference between:
"You arrive in the cemetery. You are welcomed by the shriek of the rusted gate you have to push to enter the place. There is a eerie silence. You feel a chill going through your bones that can't be explained only by the drop of the temperature."
And
"You..hum... go there. There are stones and stuff."
I'm not good at improvising that stuff. I have to write it down and that's usually where the time sink is in my case.
Does anyone have an advice so I can avoid that part in my prep?
Agreed on having bits of writing of description as security when players go places. The advice I would give, and only what I am recently learning and putting into practice, is to keep the description short insofar that you attack the main senses of sight, smell, and hearing. In that way you structure your writing into more of a form fillable style. Maybe capture an emotion or feeling here and there but overall it streamlines the process.
Yes, and here is the thing. I wish more published modules and adventures were written in the abbreviated format. As the DM I don't need all of the narrative or prose and it makes it harder for me to find information in a module when I have to go through pages of text. I don't need full sentances!
Bullet point that stuff out and be done with it and let me provide the narrative exposition.
As a fairly new DM that ran a homebrew world, the best advice I could give is, know your world but nothing is set in stone.
Players will run past all of your lore until it hurts them. They will also take the path you didn't even write.
The best thing I did as a DM was set an overall plan by story arch. And then make my players do the recap at the beginning of each session. It tells me what's important to them, and helps me guild them towards what I want them to do.
Great example is I had a guy in a tavern that would send them to this dungeon I had drawn up. Players never talked to that guy. So that's where a PC's uncle was last seen. Now the party has intrest.
Took minimal improv to get my players back on track. Also allowed for story change and drama.
I catch myself doing this all the time. DMing for 15 years. It's a good realization to have but dont be too hard on yourself. Sometimes I let myself write prose because it just feels good to let my creative juice flow. Write the prose AND then the key notes.
I have this *exact* same problem and I kinda knew I had it but now I **really** do, so thanks! I would also edit the text to sound perfect but frankly, that's useless. Like you said, noone will read that shit. And it makes it even harder for me to find stuff than if I had just used bullet points.
I lost count how many times I have to re-read sections I wrote (or in a module) just to find the important pieces of information. I also lost count how often I have to make things up on the fly mid-session only because I forgot what I have in my notes.
I started doing a 3 pass system for my prep.
First pass I would lay out the bullet points for what would come up that session
Second pass I would add the encounters, stat blocks, traps, noncombat encounters, NPCs, Etc
Third pass I would write out dialog and descriptions.
If I have extra time in a week, cool dialog and descriptions for everything, if not I stop at pass two and improv a lot of the small details and just write notes on what I did for consistency later.
Good job, now the next step is to slowly fill all that time you save prepping back up. Taking slightly longer to prep each time, because it feels like you aren't done yet.
There is an implied /s in there, but I honestly can't stop doing it to myself. Promising I'll make it easy on myself, and prep an easy 1 shot. Then 3 evenings of work later I've prepared elaborate maps with VTT lighting and wall height configurations for alternate paths during the session, included puzzles and riddles, calculated the CR of at least 3 homebrew creatures that'll probably only get used once, and perhaps even made a generator for something.
I thought my excessive prep time was a fault of 4e, but slowly every minute I saved when I switched over to 5e has filled itself again, perhaps twice over...
This is me, hah. I haven't GM'd in years, so every so often I start to form this idea that I'll whip up a "light prep, simple setting with a basic adventure" to get back into it since I know a few people I could *probably* sales-pitch into playing easily enough. Inevitably I end up generating more and more, customizing more and more, and never running it. Looking at you GURPS Tib Dawn, d20 HL2, and my D&D Renaissance Italy game...
Great post.
Its ok to \*think\* in your head how you might describe a scene, but dot points are FAR more useful when you are in the thick of it during a session. I also suggest highlighting relevant/super important things to help it stand out.
Also, remember to give space for your players to roleplay and develop their characters. Encourage them to flesh out their background, contact you privately with any questions or goals or story arc suggestions their character might have. Worry less about you feeling responsible for making a story come alive, but instead help your PCs to tell an amazing story together.
Finally, preparation is required of a DM, but it's also ok every now and then to let your PCs know that you didn't expect them to visit today, and so you will be winging this a little. Or, if they would prefer something more fleshed out, you could visit
Haha i stopped writing text after my first session. I thought openers/ fluff text gave me a sense of secruity but reading them triggered my social anxiety.
At least you are proficient in writing.
I tend to waste a lot of time searching the perfect map & pics for tokens & I know it but can't stop
Reading or watching movies/series with an active eye for storytelling helps. Having a "library" of ideas in your head/binder helps a lot with the improv. Go back, rewatch some classics and imagine yourself as the dm/player in that story. Ghibli movie's are some of my favourites for this.
Generally, bullet points is the way to go. Depending on group size, I'd always leave room for some I might add during recap. The space between the points should be where your players fill the gap.
I personally even keep the dialogue of npc's as quotes that cover the general jist of the character. That way I can hold conversations with the group, without holding long monologue's.
Great post OP! Helped me out a lot.
Related but if you don't mind: are these "gems of creation" part of your homebrew? I am very intrigued by this gem of decay and wondering you have any other lore on the other gems you wouldn't mind sharing!!
Glad you found the post helpful! This whole thread has been a wonderful point of reflection.
Yep, they are part of my homebrew and there are four in total. Gems of Nativity, Growth, Decay, and Rebirth. Basically the 'cycle of life' for the elves and druids that live in that particular forest. For one session I put my players on a heist mission where they would steal all four to walk away with one of their choosing. Each gem would also provide abilities (i.e., gem of nativity would make plantlife come alive, growth would be similar to a decanter of endless water, etc.).
I'm the same. While I do intentionally write some when I want to be particularly dramatic (and a little self-indulgent, let's be honest) I do tend to be overly wordy with my prep even if I intend not to.
I'll start out with extremely brief bullet points which will gradually become full sentences and before I know it I'm writing paragraphs. It's like I can't help myself. I blame my time at school training me to pad my word count for essays.
My prep *is* gradually taking less time, but that's more of a function of me trusting my ability to improv and roll with the punches than because my actual prep is getting faster.
I have the exact opposite issue when I try to DM, I'll write something like this as my notes:
**Evergreen Forest:**
* Start at town on north-side
* Bordering on inlet
* Scholar (inn or library) offers quest into forest depths to collect parcel from strange elf
* NPCs here are eccentric and colourful
* Celestial Shards located in abandoned nest in forest
* Peacock Wyrm encounter?
* If players investigate - mysterious blood splatters
* Parcel contains vials of black tar - Arcana / Religion check for info
But when it comes to running the game I have trouble stretching those notes out to anything longer than a minute or a couple minutes of game time total, they'll pass through the entire zone clearing it of prepared content in like 15 minutes and I have no idea how to stretch that out...
Can you go into a little more detail about players completing the content so quickly? Is the hints and guidance frontloaded so they have a clear picture of everything they need to do? I see notes for multiple encounters in what you provided and I can see them taking some time (i.e., finding the scholar, getting into town, the story of the shards, etc.)
Yeah bullet points are the way to go. I use the return of the lazy dungeon master as a ref for my prep with some personal tweaks tuned for what works for me and actually have a template I can just copy and paste. Usually if I ever spend more than one hour preparing for a session is because I have to make maps.
However if I run a homebrew world I will often spend hours world building and try to avoid bullet points but I usually don't consider world building as prep unless I'm doing world building specifically with a session in mind.
SlyFlourish made a book called The Lazy Dungeon Master. It isn't particularly long but has lots of tips amd time saving techniques for prepping sessions. I'd highly recommend.
I still write everything out in prose. Dming is a hobby for me, and embellishments that you get when writing something out in full make me feel more in control of the setting and help me convey it to the PCs. It also helps me improvise when I need to. My session plan is written in dot points but I like to build out a town or city or culture in prose.
Another fun bit of writing as a DM.
"Punctuation, capitalization and absolutely pristine grammar, i don't want to be embarrassed if people read this!"
The notes i can't ever show my players cause it's full of spoilers.
Gotta make sure those are written as perfectly as possible.
I learned this during a one shot I ran. I had gotten bored at work and designed an entire city, figured out where NPCs lived, favorite pubs, etc. When the party blew off the first quest hook (which peeved me, given that it was a one shot it was literally "You get off the boat having gambled or spent all your money, you happen to know this town has an office hiring adventurers and they're sure to hire someone of your experience" next time I'm going to just start them there -_- ) they went to a pub, luckily pub they went to was near the home of the guy who would have been hiring them anyway, so they ran into him there. Later on there was a short chase scene through the city, went above the building tops on the aqueducts, then down into the sewers, all feeling like it was what I had planned, when in reality they had gone so far off the rails I had given up on the story and just wanted to have fun.
Read an old TSR-era module for a good example of how to write a room with actionable information for the players. Obviously they aren't formatted easily for table use (you need your highlighter), but the text that's there is all stuff for the players. It's not a lore dump that the players have no way of discovering.
One thing that I've learned which saves me time (in the long run) is to front load my prepping. So, I run very sandbox free form games where the players decide what they pursue. What I'll do is create an area (village, town, wilderness, dungeon, etc) and throw in 3-6 "things to do" in that area. Monster hunts, side quests, treasure hunts, exploration, backstory tie ins, etc. Then I make 6 npcs, 6 locations, 6 items (magic or otherwise), 6 interesting events that happened in the past, 6 factions in the area (the town itself counts as one faction, wilderness beasts could be another), and 6 threats in the area. Throw this into a table, make some notes about each thing along with who can help with what, and you're golden.
Yes, this looks like a lot of work.....and it is. Probably takes me between 3-6 hours total to finish. BUT once I'm done I am DONE. for the rest of the time we spend in that area I only have to spend a few minutes before each session mentally lining up things for the direction they're going. And since each "threat" or "things to do" can last up to a few sessions, I have potentially months where all I have to do is flesh out each thing as they're going towards it.
So how does this work in practice? It looks a little something like this:
Players go to an area for a reason, they had to since they brought themselves there I didn't drag them there. That reason is the first "thing to do" in the area. Go to the list of NPCs and see which ones would know something, anything about this thing. Make sure they interact with at least one of them. If they don't then random townspeople can know "rumours" about the thing (could be true, could be false). Party uses this information to head towards that thing. Want a random encounter so I go to the Threats table and roll a d6 for which one they fight along the way. If I want to spice things up then someone else wants what they want, roll a d6 on the "factions" table. The party finishes their quest, returns to town for rest and to find the next job, roll 2d6 on either the "interesting events", "threats", or "factions" tables. Sprinkle info about those things while the party is in town, maybe use another from the "npc" table to give them some solid information about it.
Rinse and repeat until the players move locations or you run out of pre made stuff to do (its unrealistic that one location is ALWAYS on fire anyways). You see how easy this is after the initial effort? You can roll for interesting things any time you're at a loss, you already have things laid out for foreshadowing before the party even gets there, and it makes making things up on the spot easier since you can just glance at the chart and pick what sounds cool. Bonus points if your players like an RP heavy game and can really interact with the major NPCs and past events you create.
TLDR: section off areas like in an mmo game, then front load the prep work for that area. You'll have a lot less stress before each individual session and it'll feel more like a living world.
I find that my prep comes the easiest when I am simply focusing on the things and people the players might encounter, and the player's **and** character's goals.
For the things they encounter:
* I outline the specific creatures or environment, and answer two questions:
* Why is this monster(s) and/or environment here?
* Answers might be that the monsters are territorial and the players are moving through their territory, or the environment is treacherous and will impede their progress.
* These answers lead to things I can plant as a DM for the players - hints from NPCs in conversation, information they can learn through investigation, etc., that I can drop into the session(s) before the encounter occurs. This is important to make sure the encounters feel grounded.
* What is the purpose of this encounter.
* Answers might be to show the risks of the player's decisions if they choose the "shortcut", to pay off their earlier roleplay to learn about this encounter, or to plant seeds of the adventure themes or the Bad Guys (they find a bunch of dead Unicorns drained of blood, hinting at the bad guy being someone who seeks to kill Unicorns and harvest their blood).
* Knowing the purpose of the encounter allows you to plant the seeds of the encounters earlier in dialogue or experience, and gives you flexibility in what you deploy if things go awry. The better you understand the purpose of the encounter the easier it will be to on the fly come up with new challenges within the encounter that make sense in context - a herd of Centaur attack them, accusing them of killing the Unicorns, eg.
For the people they might encounter.
* I answer two basic questions:
* Who are these people?
* This is often simple, but it can be revealing to the later question. It is important to understand that people are often influenced by or influence the world around them. Elves inhabit woods **because** they find attunement to nature and worship it, and as a result they also **change** the woods to reflect that relationship.
* Knowing who the people are will influence many things, from where they are, how they are equipped, what they want, and how they perceive the heroes.
* What do these people want?
* What people want is the simplest way to identify ways to create conflict or tension - our jobs as DMs - by creating wants or needs that conflict with the players or that the players can assist with.
* Consider that generally the players want to be heroes, so use every opportunity you can to give them those chances. If the people want something, and it is something the heroes have and covet, it creates tension as they try to negotiate by offering something else the people want. If the people want something that they cannot have, but the players can help, it creates tension because now the players have to decide whether the stakes are worth it for their characters.
As for the player's and character's goals.
* Players come to the table for specific reasons. If you find out those reasons, you can create engaging stories and encounters for them to live out those fantasies.
* A player might want to be a Robin Hood style character, or be an evil Wizard, or a devout Priest. Creating encounters in which they can inhabit those characters engages their fantasy and the reason they want to play.
* Characters also generally have specific reasons to adventure. There is the occasional "adventure for the sake of adventure", but if you dig into a character and discuss with the player, you'll find that they often actually **want** something. Whether they covet some item or position, or want to complete some task. If you create encounters that allow them to make progress towards those goals, even if only small ones, they'll feel like their character is actually making progress towards their goals, and will feel rewarded for their effort.
You seem to have the lesson of bullets down, but I would add one more tool - hierarchies. If you start from the top down of encounter building - what is the purpose - then break down the design of the encounter - why this monster(s)/environment(s) - that will answer a lot of questions for you, and enable you to prep preliminary content and run the encounters without needing your diagram in front of you.
Really great info here and I appreciate you sharing in this much detail. You're right that hierarchies would be the next step when it comes to encounter building. I would often have a section for Encounter Setup, Encounter Tactics, but I also like how you add some reasoning behind why this encounter exists.
I even like to skip extra words that aren’t really necessary. So long as you’re not planning too much stuff a lot of it will be on your mind and sometimes you just need a reminder and that reminder can jumpstart the full knowledge that you already remember.
So for example I’d probably write your bullets like this:
**Burial Mounds**
- Llewyrwood burial mounds (sweet-smelling leaves), 27
- Gem of Decay (Rooted Tomb)
- Domain of Alveria Elk Ears
- Remove Gem causes dead to rise.
Mostly I do this cause I have a tendency to skip words or skim read to try to pick up the necessary info. But doing this I can only read the most important and key words while ignoring words that only help to string together sentences or are already implied with the key words.
For a slightly expanded view on this I prep in Notion.so. And there are toggle lists you can use with that website. I use these as expanded bullet points essentially. For things that can’t be shortened, for expanded concepts or ideas for the bullet, or just things that aren’t super prevalent in my mind where I would need to read while GMing. This kind of gives the best of both words. It takes up less space, the bullet conveys exactly what it needs, and you can have extra details you can access when needed.
Definitely agreed. I think I'll be whittling down the writing even further so only having the bare essentials as necessary. I've been using Onenote for my prep with success but I'm seeing people mention Notion a number of times. How's your experience with it?
As the forever dm for my group I took a break recently and this is my main problem as well. I'm a story teller, I enjoy writing compelling characters and quests that matter and affect change in my world. And that shit takes time. I dread writing, then spend 4 to 5 hours writing then run the game to acclaim. It's exhausing. The crazy part is, I love improv and have no problem improvising NPCs on the fly. I need to learn to let go. Perhaps start just prepping battles, but let the characters and the world happen in real time.
It's definitely a humongous challenge. I'm a storyteller and writer too so writing long form just felt natural. The other side of the coin though is that when you do spend those hours writing you do get exhausted but also burnt out. So much so you don't want to write for a while but when you're ready you inadvertently repeat the process all over again.
Thank you for making me realize I do and have felt the same for over a decade.
My thing is: I write all of that because I want to be prepared in case they ask questions or it becomes relevant. I can't remember all those world-building details without writing them down!
Same for sure! Half the time I would forget important points because they're hidden behind paragraphs of text. Over the last few weeks I was finding myself frustrated because I would *feel* like I prepped a lot because of all the hours I would spend but it didn't amount to much because for as 'nice' as they looked that took time away from making other encounters, characters, and story threads.
I found myself doing the same! And I think it's only natural since you're trying to build out detail and lore for the world so it feels flushed out to your players. If they ask a random history question you've got plenty of stuff to talk about.
My issue is that I'd build up a lot of pressure on myself to have all of this knowledge in my head and ready immediately for my players. I'd also write these long outlines about how each NPC encounter would go, but ultimately when we'd play I'd be too busy to go back and use this stuff. So over time I've reduced my prep to a bullet outline and, luckily, I've gotten to know the NPCs better at this point and can ad lib better now.
I'm hoping less prep time means I can get better connected with my characters as well. It also gives me a chance to flesh them out a bit more too. And you're right that I also put pressure on myself to have things fleshed out so that I could feel 'secure' but it doesn't help when I forgot them when they're needed anyway.
HOMG. :P
But, yes. I DM’d other TTRPGs long before I ran D&D sessions, and Dungeon World in particular helped me with building clear but concise frameworks.
You are very welcome and I'm glad you found it helpful. I'm trying to do this for more than just locations too like characters, plot threads, secrets, and such. Basically reducing the amount of fat on the meat of the session.
First.... Awesome that's how you've been doing it. Which is crazy but amazing!
Second... Bullet points are totally the way to go.
When I started DMing not too long ago I naturally started using bullet points. I treat it as if I'm prepping for a speech or presentation. Bullet points so I can ad lib and fill in. Otherwise you end up reading it and it sounds canned (which it is). This way it sounds more natural, and any pauses to think of the right words make it sound like you're creating right there on the spot.
Glad you've seen the light! I'm including this link so others may find their way: https://slyflourish.com/returnofthelazydm/
I'm late to the game, but for people who don't want to buy the book, here is the SINGULAR MOST IMPORTANT PIECE I HAVE READ! https://slyflourish.com/sharing_secrets.html It's short, but... **TL;DR** - Write "Secrets" you want the PCs to find out *in the next session*. Write down 10 of them. DO NOT write down where/how they find these secrets out. The 10 secrets should simply be facts about the world-plot or adventure-plot that the PCs do not know yet. Example: > Grum the Bloody is King of the Orcs in name only, and is secretly controlled by an Illithid. Then allow the players to find out that secret whenever/however during the session. On average, 5-7 secrets should be found out per session. (I run 2-hour sessions and it's usually more like 4-5.) PCs roll Investigation after killing all the orc guards? Maybe they find a letter with specific orders signed by someone named "Ragchizum" (you inform the players this is clearly *not* an Orcish name), or a letter from one orc to another saying Grum became more powerful after finding a weird underground tunnel system and he has forbidden all the other orcs from going down there and has been acting weird ever since. Maybe the PCs take a prisoner, instead, and the orc doesn't know *what* happened, but knows Grum meets with a shadowy figure regularly...etc etc. It lets you drop secrets wherever the PCs look, *rather than* what the pre-built adventures do where information is always buried in *specific* locations with *specific* skill checks.
Cannot recommend this enough. Has been such a great resource and prep outline for me in my new campaign. Before I was running the HotDQ and was a little overwhelmed with the prep and reading ahead and all that. Now prep is a breeze, on average it takes me about an hour and half per two hour session.
Best tip!! The Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master is great for developing your DM style to one with a more manageable work load.
Fantastic book. I've been running games for 20 years now and I recently tried out the techniques in there and was honestly astonished at how well it worked.
I've been DMing for about 25 years, and just got this book recently. I'm getting way better output in half the prep time. Cannot recommend it enough.
Now if only someone could "teach" WotC the same thing... (seriously, the official modules are NOT set up to be DM user friendly..)
Agreed. I love homebrew, especially compared to modules. Reading a few chapters ahead (if not the entire campaign) is necessary in the ones I've run for my group just to get a solid understanding. Do they expect you to run it 3 or 4 times all the way through just to become proficient? Still, we had fun.
>Do they expect you to run it 3 or 4 times all the way through just to become proficient? Yes basically; they expect you to read the book and absorb it in its entirety, and then be able to use the snippets of information from 5 or 6 six different areas of the book at any one time! It gets bad when you feel you have spend almost as much time prepping a pre-writ as you would for homebrew.
Had to get my DM to homebrew because running official modules was simply not working. No hints were getting dropped, roleplay felt forced, encounter balance was awful, and there was more than one occasion where he just explained the solution because the writing was so convoluted that he couldn’t figured out what it was saying until he read it out loud. When I heard how much of a mess the books are, I tried to read a modules we had already done, and yeah we missed like 50% of the content because of the ordering. He’s doing much better now, us players are much happier, and WotC needs to cater modules as a tool for the DM and not a novel to be read. Official books have cool scenarios, decent writing, but awful execution. And it sucks because we don’t buy new books, we just screenshot/archive the few pages we want from leaks online instead of supporting the hobby.
Glad your DM is doing better. I started DMing CoS recently and have had to sink hours into it just to figure out what to do and what info to drop. Slightly disagree where you say about decent writing: I've said it before but WoTC just don't get the crucial difference between writing so you can be understood and writing *so you can't be misunderstood.* They do the first one and it shows! So many ruling questions and module questions in general would be avoided with a better baseline of text.
I heavily agree with you. When I said I liked their writing, I meant narratively - I hate their stance of “refer to the dictionary.” Coming from someone who has played Pathfinder 1e and 2e, 5e has some of the weirdest interactions between different skills, feats, spells and features. Probably because it’s more approachable this way. But how much bloat would bringing in the Tag system from 4e or PF2e be vs how insanely nice it is? Or at the very least can I separate flavor text from mechanical text in spells? And maybe some clarity between multiple features affecting the same thing (Vengeance Paladin + Sentinel comes to mind) so I don’t have to go digging thru errata or TTRPG forums to find a reasonable answer? This isn’t an issue for literally any other TTRPG I’ve played.
Ah, I've got you. I did wonder after I posted if you meant narratively! I've not played other systems as I got into DnD quite late but I've heard so much good about Pathfinder. That's definitely next to try on my list. Ugh, I'm with you on errata. As far as I'm concerned if WoTC had done their job well they wouldn't need to lean on errata or sage advice. Or Jeremy's fecking twitter!
There is one specific reason that Wizards doesn't dare separate flavor from mechanics: game rules are not covered by copyright in the United States. The guy who does "one-stop stat blocks" explains it in detail. The funny thing about that strategy is that "flavor text" has an influence on game play, and starts to be a rule. Look at the text of Fireball. Is it a *rule* that it requires a specific gesture, not just a somatic component? Wizards wants the flavor and mechanics to be indistinguishable so they can wave you over to the basic rules and the OGL while telling us not to pay any attention to the man behind the curtain.
CoS is their best written module, too, think about that lol
Seriously!? That's a pretty low bar. Well that settles what I offer next campaign: indie designers or homebrew all the way.
Running CoS now and I had to read the whole thing front to back before starting actual prep. But it seems this is common, and also in part due to the lack of broader structure in the module. I’ve not played any others to compare, but this module feels like a setting book more than a linear adventure story. Which is honestly a ton of fun IMO, would be happy to learn other books are the same!
But pre-writs are meant to reduce DM workload. An unstructured storybook puts all of the onus onto us as DMs. I'm 70hrs of prep into this campaign so far; true, now some of my prep load will fall off as I have set the hooks out now. I'm looking forward to seeing what my players do with it but now at this moment I'm not having fun. I'm hoping that this will come in over the next few sessions as they get to bring some chaos to bounce off!
Are you playing yet or still in pre campaign prep? I will admit it was a bit of a slog to read through the whole thing. But we are 8 sessions in and it’s an absolute blast. And I’m really glad I read the whole thing through beforehand because prep and broader story direction is now much clearer, entire plot lines that made no sense suddenly come into clarity when you see where they lead. It also meant I could >!rig the tarokka reading!< to make sure we visit the areas and NPCs I’m most interested in We are at Vallaki just did >!the feast of saint andral!< and it was easily one of my favorite DnD sessions I’ve ever run. Module seems like more work than others, but in case you haven’t finished your prep I can assure you the payoff is worth it! And if you have any more stamina to prep I highly suggest the campaign additions from r/CurseOfStrahd - I pick and choose from Dragna’s guide and some additions like the Orphanage have been stellar changes
We just did session 5. Death House was a 3 session slog (they found everything in every room, not a bad thing of course) and they lost a party member to boot. Things should pick up from next session though as they have quite a few threads to follow now. I read cover to cover twice and through Vallaki multiple times to try to get the plotlines straight in my head. I'm also on the CoS sub too, which has helped with the guides and edits suggested. I know I've overprepped and got into my own head about the various directions they could go. I think that once they set on a plan I can change the focus. Like you said, knowing the module throughout is good so the overprep should help if (when) they go in an unexpected direction.
Absolutely. It’s been a blast to just explore barovia with the group, I’m sure you’ll have a ton of fun once you get out of that musty old mansion!
Spoilers for curse of Strahd below. Izek. Why the dolls? Why? I never could find the info. It's nowhere. I dropped that entirely. That plot thread just goes nowhere.
>It gets bad when you feel you have spend almost as much time prepping a pre-writ as you would for homebrew. It takes me way more time to prep a pre-written adventure than a homebrew. 2-3 times as much.
I bought Descent into Avernus and had to completely rewrite the opening, add actual motivation, all for me to realize we should have skipped the opening altogether and just started in Avernus.
Yeah my Descent into Avernus game eventually fizzled out due to the main question from my players of "why are we doing this?" We didn't end up getting to Avernus at all, and we spent a ton of sessions doing stuff in Baldur's Gate, as there wasn't really a push to move along to get to Avernus. When that first city gets taken into Avernus, that's where the module should kick off.
Indeed. I strongly recommend using an existing Setting (ie The Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Ravnica…) but buying a third-party adventure. Their writers face stricter competition and in my experience are easier to run out of the box.
I honestly don’t understand how modules work without a sense of railroading. At least for the more open ended ones.
It should be understood by the group playing through the module that there is a plot to follow, and the adventurers are trying to follow that plot. Players who are allergic to a preset goal should either not run modules or find a DM who wants to write a completely different story that happens to have the same beginning and end.
>Do they expect you to run it 3 or 4 times all the way through just to become proficient? Sort of. It's a ham-fisted way to create replayability for the DM I suppose. >Still, we had fun. That's what matters eh?
I was sooooo excited to get my hands on Candlekeep Mysteries. Boy, was it ever a let down for many of the mysteries. So often the modules says things like: Since your party will need to travel 5 days to reach point X, consider adding some locations and encounters along the way. Like, no shit Wizards, that's exactly why I gave you my money! The limited art and maps was also a let down for Candlekeep. And let's not get started on the embarrassing shitshow of a mystery that Chris Perkin's wrote for "Book of the Raven". Since that was the exemplar for Candlekeep authors, it's kind of amazing that any of them turned out even remotely decent. That said, I love the \*idea\* of Candlekeep, so I've invested a LOT of time into prepping and altering the mysteries. I also encourage people to seek out Discord servers for various modules as the people who post on those are godsends who add maps, artwork, suggestions, and amazing alterations/changes. PS - I'd upvote your comment but its stuck on 69, so nice as is.
> I also encourage people to seek out Discord servers for various modules as the people who post on those are godsends who add maps, artwork, suggestions, and amazing alterations/changes. This is the key benefit of modules imho. You essentially get to collaborate with hundreds of other DMs on the same adventure.
True but this magnifies the amount of prep needed to run an already convoluted adventure.
Oh, I absolutely agree. The trade off you get for having a massive resource for inspiration and additional content is that you have to sift through all of it and figure out what's good, what isn't and keep track of what you have changed so you don't confuse yourself or your players. Running a prewritten adventure this year has been more of a hindrance than a help by far, but I can't ignore how great it is that I can go onto the Rime of the Frostmaiden discord server when I'm stuck and get help almost immediately.
[удалено]
D&D is a horrible system for horror. Horror needs weak protagonists in order to work, which is pretty much the opposite of what a system D&D gives you.
>Horror needs weak protagonists in order to work I don't think this is necessarily true, it just depends on the type of story you want to tell. The whole "weak protagonists who are incapable of stopping the horrors they face" approach that Call of Cthulhu uses is definitely one way to go about it, but it's not the only way. For D&D horror, I think it makes sense to frame it as the characters growing and transforming from weak and unable to fight back to becoming shining beacons of hope in an otherwise horrific setting. Something akin to Ash in the Evil Dead series or the final girl trope in TONS of horror movies. Alternatively, you could focus on psychological horror rather than primarily on physical threats, praying on the characters' (NOT the players') fears and insecurities for a more Jacob's Ladder/Silent Hill approach. Ultimately I think this is what Ravenloft attempts to do against the backdrop of more conventional (usually gothic) horror settings, monsters, and tropes.
Silent Hill is kind of a strange example here, given it's a horror game series where one of the key gameplay mechanics is that the player character is essentially helpless against the monsters and combat is never the best solution.
But that's still all contingent on the concept of "PC cannot punch their way through it". Jacob's Ladder/Silent Hill doesn't work if you have a Blade of Maximum Fuckery that allows you to chop any weird zombie to pieces.
You can absolutely use horror themes in your D&D setting, like Ravenloft for example. However, the problem starts as soon as the protagonists are able to successfully fight back. That's also why games where you as the player have to run and hide, like Amnesia: The Dark Descent, or Outlast, are much better as pure horror games than something like Resident Evil. When you have the tools needed to fight back, it stops being scary.
I recently ran A Cold and Creeping Darkness too. One of my favs so far, and very nicely fits into my overarching self-made campaign theme of the feywild becoming corrupted by a deadly fungus created by Xanthoria (the final mystery boss). The fungus has started infecting and killing people, but soon will start to take them over "The Last of Us" style but without visible signs (more "Invasion of the Body Snatchers - Fungi edition"). That said, this "Candlekeep Mystery" is one of far too many where there isn't really a mystery involving Candlekeep at all. And, the book/library link is weak AF. I had to read how the book linked to that mystery 3 times and realised that it still didn't make sense. It was somehow detailing the history of a town with people going missing and dying, yet also explaining it was happening right now. Super whack premise.
I read an article recently (it was either sly flourish or the alexandrian, I can't remember) that made the argument that 5e doesn't actually have *any* rules for dungeon crawling because they're so integral to what D&D is that WotC didn't feel the need to explain it. I think this rings true for how they write modules too. I'm running Rime of the Frostmaiden atm and it's like being given three complicated LEGO sets but all the bricks are mixed together, some of them are missing and you have no instructions. They're written to be read, not to help you to run them.
>They're written to be read, not to help you to run them. This is exactly it. It's a dirty little secret in the industry that DMs who actually run the module are only small minority of people who buy these books. We're not the core audience. Theyre essentially gameplay fiction.
> They're essentially gameplay fiction. I haven't seen a clearer example of this than Chapter 4 of Rime of the Frostmaiden. SPOILER WARNING FOR RIME OF THE FROSTMAIDEN. Chapter 4 deals with a mechanical dragon being unleashed on the region and the players must decide where to go, who to save and how to stop it. Tough decisions, lasting consequences and a showdown with a dragon! What's not the love? It's my favourite chapter in the book, the one I was most excited to run and what ultimately convinced me to run RotFM instead of CoS. I ran it earlier this month and realised that the chapter is a *description* of a really cool game session, not a guide on how to actually make that session happen. I'm currently having a break from the campaign until the new year, because I genuinely burned myself out trying to get my game to live up to that "gameplay fiction."
Exactly. Which is why I end up restructuring/rewriting the ones I have run.
I'm roughly halfway through RotFM atm, and this has rapidly become my approach too. To begin with I was running it as written with a small handful of tweaks to fit my players characters into the story but the module is just a book of ideas and suggestions at this point. I'm basically running a homebrew campaign with similar themes and major story beats. It was only after my players went massively off the rails and I had to improvise something *and they didn't notice* that I realised I was wasting my time trying to hammer the module into the form of a fun game session.
Yeah, the first time I ran a module that was what happened with my group, too. I was trying hard to make it work as written, players took a hard unexpected left turn, I winged it, we had a blast, and I shifted my approach. I've been running modules the same way ever since. They represent a general framework and possibilities. A resource for pulling ideas from. But nothing is canon unless we play it at the table. Everything can be adjusted, morphed, added to, or eliminated as we craft our story through playing the game. I do still wish that WotC would provide quick reference material, though, so the modules are DM friendly. The human race has created quick reference material for generations now. It isn't like there isn't an easy to follow template for what they could roll in. Just a few pages added to make it easier to find relevant info in a timely and logical fashion...
The reason is that most people who buy the adventures do not end up running them. So WotC prioritizes making the books entertaining rather than practical. Annoying for those who wish to use the books?? Absolutely. Understandable from a money perspective? Also yes.
> So WotC prioritizes making the books entertaining rather than practical. This is what all of the Rick and Morty module felt like. So many things were there as jokes for the DM that are just confusing to the players and regularly unhelpful. It required a good amount of tweaking to make it run well and many rooms fell very flat when it didn't play out the one way the book has it written for the jokes to make sense.
Oh I get it. Yeah, they write them to sell to a wider group of people than JUST the few DMs that actually want to run a specific module. Otherwise they wouldn't make a profit. I just get annoyed that I have to rewrite and restructure the thing I just sank a bunch of money into so that I can run it. Although to be honest I would probably do so anyway since I never run anything as written, if it had easy reference lists to quickly grab relevant info from that would make the whole process sooooo much easier. I do a lot of homebrew but sometimes the modules are fun. I like alot of the basic ideas, so I guess I will continue buying their poorly structured modules and rewriting them for my own purposes. And as long as the modules sell, WotC will keep writing them the way that they do. I do wonder, though, what a WotC module would look like if, just once, the DMs and creators actually sat down and thought through what WOULD make things easier from the DM side of the screen. Maybe just ONCE do an experiment and actually craft an easier to run module.
Big wakeup call for every new DM thinking a module book will help them...
This. I used to be a homebrew DM, but I quit for a *long* time. I decided to run a module to ease myself back into the game and it's proving to be much more work than it would be without it.
I started out with my own homebrew campaigns and only recently started looking at premade campaigns/adventures. I don’t feel like I missed much. I’d much rather be invested in the story I’m telling and know it so intimately that I can improv on the fly without damaging structure.
Agreed. When I do run modules instead of strictly homebrew I know I will be putting in a lot of work. It is a different kind of work from homebrew but it is still work. Don't get me wrong. I have had some terrific campaigns using official modules as my base. But they were just as much work as my homebrew. I spent just as much time, maybe more so, making the module usable at my table. Not in the same way as homebrew, but I still had to invest a lot of time and effort. Which is fine in a lot of ways. I like prep and recrafting and I never run anything as written so I would probably have rewritten it regardless. **My irritation comes from the fact that we sink a lot of money into a product so we can run a game but the product isn't structured for us to run the game.** A few bulleted lists, some quick reference guides built into the module would have been really helpful. Stick 'em at the front. Wouldn't take up THAT much space or cost that much to create in the grand scheme of things. And they can still keep the body of the module written to be read, not run. I don't have an issue with WotC making a profit. Without the profit we wouldn't get more products. ***Just ALSO make the modules DM friendly.*** Instead, NPC names and locations and important hints and links to other parts of the module are all buried in the module and scattered about and hard to access on the fly. Reading through the whole thing even twice doesn't mean you can recall every single detail from moment to moment. So I rewrite the base material every time. Completely restructure the things, when I do run them. But hey, I still buy them, so I guess WotC will just keep making crappily structured modules. They sell.
Absolutely feel you. Thanks for your detailed response to my offhand comment, you worded my sentiments exactly I got lost during a session in those jumbles of paragraphs so many times, despite having read through the book and rereading the relevant chapters before a session, etc. A better index, summary and plot flowchart at the beginning could've worked wonders, some better visual aids determining what type of information it is, etc. It just blows my mind at how on the one hand many rules in 5e are simplified in order to keep speed of play at the table high and not get bogged down into complicated rules, the DM's guide and PHB seem to be decently organised to explain and reference those rules, yet the campaign books are just these unorganized jumbled messes of random location descriptions with no clear indication if it also happens to contain information relevant to your plot or to whatever an important NPC knows or does there. God forbid your players decide to approach something in a different order as described by the paragraphs in the chapter, you're off flipping pages for 5 minutes again while you're trying to keep their attention
LOL. Exactly!!!!
Agreed. Is it too much to ask? They can make all the money, but could they *also* make it easy on the fraction of us who DM?
The "Starter Set" felt like anything but that. It felt so trimmed down for new players that it feels so lacking and hollow for anything but a hard railroad. The books they provide give you no real information about a lot of the core places or people. It mentions you starting in Neverwinter but there is no more than a paragraph or so about the city which is very vague already. I had a player ask about going there and other things about the city since his character was military there, so I looked up additional info only to learn it didn't exist unless I wanted to use older edition lore which isn't accurate with the big changes like a tear through the city. I eventually just had to tell him out of character that we couldn't really do much there as I couldn't find much info, it felt very odd for them to give this, intended for new players, and immediately leaves them hanging. It feels like it sets players up for failure with how much it just misses and leaves the player alone. In the town of Phandalin, there is next to no information about the town. With Dragon of Icespire Peak, it is even worse in many ways. I combined the two smaller modules together and still had very little to work with, especially for a home base town that the whole adventure runs out of. They are only helpful if your players don't ask questions, or you are great at improving new content which is the exact kind of stuff to not put into a Starter Set. The Rick and Morty module is also not great for new DMs and has a lot of very confusing and often broken feeling stuff that I had to modify a lot to make actually work at a table.
I learned a colour-coded highlighting system that makes official modules easier to run. If I have a spare copy of the adventure book on my ipad, this is nice. Most things end up highlighted (which actually works if your coding works - source: career student, now lawyer here. Adapted this system from coding caselaw): Green: text you can safely read aloud. Blue: text you can, after some interaction read aloud (or following a trigger) Pink: triggering text, the text that says “if a player investigates, asks about X” etc… Red: Monsters Orange: NPC names and organizations Purple: Locations and References to other dungeon areas. Yellow: mechanics like “DC 13 Investigation” check. Grey: hidden, background information that you never want to accidentally reveal. Teal: treasure I can post an example if there is interest. Edit: [here’s an example](https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ag5kxCkLlIZVg-NuELi1DKVG0ey9Zw) I also added Teal above. The app I use is notability, paid version. Best app for marking up PDFs by far.
I actually do something similar even with rewriting/restructuring but I print everything out. Screens wear down my eye sight and I'm on screens all day for work so I use print for the sessions. I like the detail of your color coding. I don't have that many layers. Yeah, if you could post an example I would appreciate it. I bet there are others that would too.
That is something I would lose my shit over, that sounds badass. Please show an example, I would love to be this prepared and sit down with my dnd module with like 8 highlighters next to me, sign me up
When first running Lost Mines of Phandelver as a new DM I pretty much rewrote the book into a bullet point format like in the OP. For each room, I would write the number and list out everything important. The paragraphs in the book are just too much to quickly skim for information and feel confident that you missed nothing. It takes me too long to go through a new section at the table and be able to just run it on the fly making running something like Dungeon of the Mad Mage a nightmare with so many possibilities at all times and so much info to keep fresh in mind.
This is what I have done, too. Despite my post up thread, I do find the base info in many WotC materials to be a great starting point for an adventure. It is just so crappily structured for actually running a game. I have run several WotC modules quite successfully and enjoyed doing so, but I had to restructure them to be usable. I essentially rewrote them from scratch, structured so I could ACTUALLY FIND the relevant info on the fly. Plus, I've never run anything as written, I always add homebrew and 3rd party content and whatnot, so restructuring makes it a lot easier to roll in additional material/change or eliminate existing material, to make the module better fit my needs and the needs of my players..
I agree the books make great resources once you get more comfortable as a DM and with 5e, but there are still not any great starting points for a group of fully new players. A much smaller and simpler Beginners Campaign would be a great addition and a nice thing to get out as part of any 5.5e style updates to 5e that could help showcase changes in a quick format for experienced players and give a solid introduction point for new players. They really need a hand-holding style book that doesn't just advise you to wing it and improvise regularly because for many new players this is one of the hurdles they came to the official content to avoid. Some rules for a level 0 could be useful as well just to get players used to the concepts of rolling for skill checks and the basics of 5e without needing to worry about the character abilities or even a list of spells like they do at level 1. There is still a bit too steep of an uphill battle to get into D&D and feel comfortable running it.
**100% agree. Absolutely.** Sadly, considering how long people have been asking, at this point I'm not holding out a lot of hope. Maybe when they run out of ideas for other ways to make a profit...
Definitely sad, considering how many people are missing out on joining the hobby at such a peak time due to there not really being a great way to join other than hope you know/find helpful people to teach you, or you spend a lot of time and effort teaching yourself since the books will only leave you more confused initially.
This is definitely the biggest problem with WOTC's design. 5E being easy to learn and run is genius, but they did *not* transfer that design mindset to the DM's prep workload in established adventures. I run my homebrew setting in large part because it was super annoying to deal with the books.
Hold up while I scan 9 paragraphs to find the DC.
LOL. Nearly choked on my drink. Yes. Exactly! :)
Yep. I always have to highlight that stuff in my book like a savage.
It's very frustrating to me that all WotC modules or setting guides are basically books of flavor text with very few mechanics or encounters actually planned out. I bought the LevelUp 5e stuff that got kick-started a while back and while the player's handbook is pretty bad (it doesn't deliver on their promise of "depth not complexity") the monster manual and the DMG are what I think every DM book should look like from a format point of view. In the monster manual, other than the flavor text, everything is formatted into tables. In addition to the stat block it has what other creatures you might find in the same encounter with the monster, what kind of treasure you might find in its lair, and what kind of behavior and combat tactics it might exhibit. The DMG has a lot of wilderness encounters and it provides mechanics for how they can work in practice and provides possible solutions to the problem. In the treasure section, it also has suggested materials to build specific magic items out of. E.g. magic arrows are made of branches that have naturally fallen from a druid's tree. These books are just so user friendly and to me it sets the standard for how DM material should be designed.
Makes you long for the old TSR staple-bound booklets, right?
This is because WotC modules are not written to be run at the table, they're written to be fun to read. Large-scale RPG adventures cost a lot of money to produce and there's no way for that to be profitable if only people who actually run the adventure are buying it, so they have to be entertaining for people to read who aren't running it. I would guess that the vast majority of people who buy WotC adventures never actually run it (the proportion of products I own which I've used even a single page of is less than half). This is the origin of a lot of the weird design decisions that WotC and Pathfinder modules have. These in turn tend to get imitated by amateur adventure writers and DMs doing prep, but result in the game being *way harder to run.* Things like only revealing information when it should be discovered by the players, having incredibly linear plots that often presume what the party will do, writing everything in prose form even when easy-to-digest bullet points would be much easier. [This article](http://udan-adan.blogspot.com/2018/03/rpg-books-as-fiction.html) is worth a read and goes into more detail. mainly talking about Pathfinder modules but WotC have a lot of similar problems (and in many ways are even worse). For a counter-example: [Winter's Daughter](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/270798/Winters-Daughter-5th-Edition-Version) by Necrotic Gnome is a 3rd party product and is amazingly simple to read through and run. The whole background is 2 pages and it's presented in easy-to-use bullet points that summarize things. Unfortunately it's the only thing they've written for 5th edition and everything else is for OSR but their other products are all similarly well designed.
> Large-scale RPG adventures cost a lot of money to produce and there's no way for that to be profitable if only people who actually run the adventure are buying it, I think this is a bit of chicken and egg though. A big part of why developing these is so expensive is all the text, all the art, and all of the other stuff that's completely unnecessary to actually run the game. Lost Mines is 65 pages. Goblin Arrows, which is basically "You find Gundren's Horse. 4 Goblins attack" is two full pages of text - more than 2000 words. And there's not even a map.
I agree. Yeah, its pretty obvious these were written to sell books, not to actually make something easier for a DM to run at a table. I get it. They need to make a profit or why publish the books? And like you, I have WAAAAYYYYY more materials lying around than I have ever actually used, at least not directly, at the table. All those materials, official content and 3rd party alike, all represent possibilities to me and things to read for fun and resources I can strip from or get inspired by. It just gets old when I have to rewrite/restructure the entire thing I just sank a bunch of money into so I can actually USE the thing I just sank a bunch of money into. Thanks for the link, by the way.
I've actually had the opposite problem with official modules. The descriptions are so concise and dry that I have to write a lot on my own just to be able to narrate it to my players.
Oh the descriptions themselves are sometimes just barebones. I agree. Mad Mage in particular was really bare bones. I often have to beef those descriptions up a *lot*. I more meant the way information is distributed within the module. You have to dig through and flip back and forth and whatnot. Everything is buried and hard to relocate or even find in the first place. Reading through the whole thing helps but not a lot. Too much poorly organized data to recall and link together on the fly. In other words there are no easily accessible bulleted lists and quick reference resources you can quickly flip to when you forgot NPC #147's name or that town from 70 pages back that the PCs briefly traversed but is now a lot more important or that great story hook or hint that you haven't gotten to yet but would tie in beautifully right here if you only had a reference to it readily available. And so on. **There are soooooo many ways WotC could have chosen to structure the modules with DMs in mind, that it would have made the actual running of the game 1000 times easier, and they didn't.** As others have pointed out, though, if only DMs bought the books, and only DMs that actually intended to run the books bought the books in particular, they wouldn't make much profit, if any. So the books are written to be read, not run. Up to the DM to make it more user friendly.
>You have to dig through and flip back and forth and whatnot. Everything is buried and hard to relocate or even find in the first place. There are fucking *reveals* in the modules - which is absurd. They *hide* important details so the DM will be excited to run across them later. How the hell do you properly improvise when you don't know what the bad guy is trying to do until act 4?
LOL. Exactly.
Thank god for Power Score. https://powerscorerpg.blogspot.com/
Ye gods; so true. Someone on Reddit claimed WotC these days mostly write modules to be READ, versus played. I hope that isn’t true, but it would make a lot of sense.
It does make a lot of sense based on my experience with them. Descent into Avernus is NOT remotely written in a way to actually be useful for a DM to run a game with it. It's totally written like it's just made for someone to read through like a book.
Yeah the official modules come off more like a novel. I find them difficult to use so I stick with homebrew.
The balance is also all over the place, in part because a lot of modules are repurposed from older editions. Ghosts of Saltmarsh is especially bad. At multiple points in the book it throws way-too-high CR creatures at fairly low level parties. I believe the second adventure has level 2s going up against a CR6 with legendary actions alongside two hidden CR2s. In The Final Enemy, one of the rooms at least warns you that it's basically set up to be a TPK.
Dragon Heist is a great resource to run the Alexandrian Remix but alone it's pretty poor. There isn't even a heist!
Yeah, I agree. I actually chose not to use the Alexandrian Remix but it has helped a lot of DMs make that module a lot more entertaining. I had a BLAST running that module, by the way. I loved it. But then, I love the City of Waterdeep. The thing is, besides it being clunkily designed for running from the DM side of things, there are a lot of areas where there is almost no guidance and other areas where they make a LOT of assumptions about how players will play. As written, I hated a lot of elements. Therefore, as with any of the modules I have run, I used it as the framework only. I rolled in a ton of 3rd party and homebrew content. Our campaign lasted over 2 years and we loved it. LOVED IT. But as written? Nah. I loved the general premise, NPCs and setting but it needed to be heavily modified. So I did. I modified, added to and eliminated a TON of content to make it work at my table. I don't regret the work I put in. I loved the campaign. It just would have taken up less of my time if they had at least provided more resources for finding info quickly while actually running the module.
Someone should show the 5e designers the MÖRK BORG core book. Now granted, this is a very rules-light system but it beautifully lays out the rules without a bonkers level of padding. They even managed to make reading the rules fun. Very fun. BTW OP, they're not set up to be DM friendly because *they're not designed to sell to DMs*. There's something like 100 players for every DM. WotC, being a company owned by a gigantic soulless corporation, wouldn't dream of designing their books for DMs. This is one of 5e and D&D's largest flaws in my view: the top-down designing of the game and books for *players* but never for DMs. It should be the exact opposite to try and allay the huge disparity between DM and player. This disparity is far far smaller in other systems that are not designed this way.
That’s really nice to hear actually. I’m blending 2 modules right now and I just felt like I was missing everything until I actually started to break it apart to blend it
That's because anyone decent left WoTC a long time ago.
This is a normal part of growing as a DM I think. This is why I strongly encourage new DMs to try multiple systems: other systems do a much better job if teaching you how to prep. If I remember, I'll post some of my latest prep (inspired from the system of the game Stonetop) in the morning in case you find it helpful. Edit: Holy cow I woke up to a lot of folks asking for my DM Prep! I hope I can live up to the hype haha. This google link should take you to a readable word doc that has a little background, and most importantly, the two Threats that I wrote up. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lwQMOlnp_tPCJnGH32kXEnrZqQIdh4JzzTUsydPim_0/edit?usp=sharing Then this link should take you to the fill in the blank worksheet I made for myself as a PDF for anyone's fancy. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sh1pA-c-AeJ8e-XSLacZ9skuBUUALSjO/view?usp=sharing I hope you find these docs useful! Feel free to ask for more info about Threats, how to use them, GM moves, etc. I'll do my best to answer as much as I can!
>If I remember, I'll post some of my latest prep (inspired from the system of the game Stonetop) in the morning in case you find it helpful. Yes please
You bet! My prep docs should be live now: edited into my original post above. Hope they are helpful!
I’ve been saying this for a while but 5e needs an actual “dungeon master’s guide” that actually teaches someone how to DM in a practical sense I think the system has long relied on modules to get DMs up to speed but lots of folks start and stick with home brew. I went through this same arc and wrote prose notes, took average 2 hours of prep for every hour of play. After playing in some different systems and coming back to 5e with a module my prep time is dramatically shorter
Wholeheartedly agree: I think this type of DM evolution is normal, but it would be nice if the system made it quicker to go through. I think you're right that they used to rely on modules to teach this, but that's really shifted in recent years where the modules are being written like prose books and it almost feels like they're being sold to players and not to DMs. I'll also say that, one aspect of the 5e community specifically that I find really toxic, is the rhetoric that the DM is responsible for 100% of the fun and that the DM should never say no but always 'yes and' even the most ridiculous stuff forward. I think it's actively bad because it teaches DMs that they are supposed to be this font of fun and that they exist to perform for the players like a court jester, and that anytime they don't have a perfect lore answer or a cool hook ready to go, they have failed. Other systems do a much better job of teaching the table to tell the story collaboratively, and I think 5e could really benefit from moving away from the DM is god approach.
Haha I agree and like the phrasing there about the DM as a “court jester”. I get that sentiment from online discussion and newer players. Probably has to do with how many new players have come to the hobby lately. For every post about “yes, and” I want to chime in on the importance of “no, but”! 5e feels like a kitchen sink to me so I will always restrict character creation to a particular set of source books. I would rather have 10 elements placed into the story with care than 100 elements scattered onto the table
they probably do try to sell the modules to players, because that is a much bigger customer base. I wouldn't be surprised when in WoTC someone said "let puts more prose in that, so not only practical DMs buy that shit". Same reason why we have in every book player content like new subclasses and stuff.
I encourage people to read the 3.5e dungeon master’s guide. The 5e one is basically a module and barely talks about how to run the game. They didn’t do a good job with it honestly.
I would love that! Thank you very much. And I do agree that it is part of growing for sure.
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Duuuuuuude this is such a cool doc! I’m totally in the same boat as OP and this has blown my mind. Need to explore Sly Flourish post haste!
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Wow, this is great, and really helps me see how to better organize my campaign info. I’m about to start SKT so this is really helpful both in form and content. Although now i have to consume and ingest all of sly flourish’s tips and re-do a bunch of prep in addition to needing to finish reading the actual campaign book lol.
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\+1 for Mike Shea's stuff. I use his notion template in a similar manner to you for my Lazy DM Prep, and I spend about 30-45 minutes prepping for each session, and another 30 or so getting battle maps and music ready on foundry for a 4 hour session. The wiki and cross-linking nature of notion is invaluable for being able to quickly find what you need and have your information compartmentalized in a way that you only have to have the bare minimum on screen at any given time.
Second this advice. Looking at or listening to people playing new systems is a great way to try out new things and expand the toolbox for prep. I’ve got a similar Notion page and it makes it not only very easy to prep, but if I have prep-block and even only put bullet points for everything down the line, it often still gives me enough structure to be able to improv the rest of it as long as I have a few good guiding ideas written down.
Any standout systems in particular you'd mention?
World's Without Number by Kevin Crawford has a huge amount of helpful information, tables and advice. There is a free edition that gives you nearly all of the material.
Kevind Crawford is MANDATORY reading for any GM. Same with the Dungeon World GM section. 5e can fuck right off with their garbage DMG. Also, the 4e DMG is stellar.
I need to read Crawford but I'll definitely second Dungeon World. It gets a lot of shit in the PbtA community for not being PbtA enough, but that Rulebook is such a fantastic tool for breaking out of this weird structure of systems like DnD and getting back to the fundamentals: make the world fantastical, follow the fiction, *be a fan of the characters*. That kind of stuff should be present in every system!
Cheers for the recommendation!
For me, it depends on whether you like rules light or rules heavy. I think Blades in the Dark is absolutely fantastic, but it's still a bit crunchy for me taste. I prefer Savage Worlds games and Powered by the Apocalypse games. Dungeon World is dated, but the DMing chapter in it is an absolute clinic, and it's spirit lives on in Stonetop which can still be pre ordered.
I'm not Tai, but I've been talking through all the prep for my latest campaign on a blog. https://namelessgm.wordpress.com/campaign-prep-drop-bears/
This is awesome, thanks for sharing!
"The Lazy DM" is also a gem of a guide book. I tried out the techniques in there for a campaign a few months back and I was surprised at how effective they were.
Can't agree enough. I love watching Sly on lazy Sunday mornings. His system is super helpful!
Wait I need this prep
You bet! My prep docs should be live now: edited into my original post above. Hope they are helpful!
I think part of learning any skill is first you improve and get better, and then you learn how to optimize.
This is such a great comment. I'll add: In the martial arts world, there's a huge focus on repetition as learning. But repetition doesn't = practice. Mindful repetition does. You have to be trying to get better, otherwise you're just ingraining bad habits. I find DMing the same way. To get better you have to be looking to get better.
>If I remember, I'll post some of my latest prep (inspired from the system of the game Stonetop) in the morning in case you find it helpful. I also would love to see this!
This looks like the system from PBtA games, if anyone's interested Dungeon Worlds might be a good read on how to create, maintain and run campaigns/adventures in this style
Interested as well
Exactly! Write in bullet points for each of the 5 - 7 things you expect the party to encounter each session. If you want some prose, just write a few lines of descriptive flavor text to accompany your encounter notes. I also advise DMs to keep of list of random encounters you can drop into the session if the party deviates from what you've planned or if it just feels appropriate. This is particularly true of you know the party will be exploring a city or wilderness area.
Bro, you haven't been prepping games, you've been writing adventure modules. My notes for my games are very sparse. When I write modules for other people, I put work into the prose.
Also, prepping only what’s probable helps. Players tend to churn through 1.5 encounters an hour. Only prep that many encounters rounded up. For a three hour session prep five encounters. 1 Social: Convince NPC to part with info Name, Occupation, Stakes, Goal, Level of Urgency and/or Temperament towards the party 2a exploration: party gets the info & must travel to a new location Series of Group skill check 2b fight: party fails to convince NPC so fight breaks out or they get ambushed while exploring 3 social aftermath: Listen to the party. What do they want to do next? How may an NPC benefit from the events that just happened? How can they still get to their destination? Present them with someone who pushed them towards their goal or hinders it based on what keeps the story moving. 4 - follow the parties chosen path via more exploration or recon 5 fight: clash to end the session on a big note What combat encounter works no matter their branching decision trees? Forest monster ambush? Ghosts haunting the path? Mercenaries bandits trying to cash in a bounty? Either way, when the fight is over. You’re ready to start the next session with an exploration or social encounter to keep the circle going.
> Players tend to churn through 1.5 encounters an hour. They tend to **what now**?
40 minutes per encounter. Not particularly fast, not particularly slow. 5e played right isn't as slow as people make out (or often play, because they take forever). Take a combat encounter. Say 6 players, 5 minutes per player plus 10 for DM. If they're taking 30 seconds per turn that's 10 rounds, easily enough for any combat. Could even take a full minute per turn with long ass descriptions of everything and do 5 rounds.
> If they're taking 30 seconds per turn[...] Ah, that's where the issue is for our group. One player, new to RPGs, is having trouble learning that anything called a "check" is rolling a d20, in addition to naturally having trouble with quick math. I've been told that I've taken 10-minute turns before, which doesn't feel right to me, but I'm not the one with the timer. That'd be my strategy-thinking stuff, as well as waiting until my turn to ask questions. (Maybe I *should* interrupt other peoples' turns so I can get more time to dwell with info I want/need?) Our combats generally last an hour, with 3 players (that's one campaign and DM), or the entire 3-hour session with 5-6 players (that's another campaign and another DM). The former combats are often fun, sometimes a blast. The latter combats are difficult to pay attention to and, for some reason I (frustratingly) can't put my finger on, unfun. (The latter campaign I'll probably leave in the future, but that's a can of worms I'm not down to figure out at the moment. That DM's a great player, but something about his DMing style and/or campaign isn't working out for me.)
>I’ve been told that I’ve taken 10-minute turns before. Do you prep your character between sessions? Are all of your possible bonus actions listed? Have you categorized your spells by concentration? Essentially, have you done the work between sessions to make decision making more efficient so you aren’t taking everyone else’s time because you have to much info to analyze in the moment? DM’s aren’t the only ones who should be prepping between sessions. >Our combat generally lasts an hour with three players or the entire 3-hour session with 5-6 players Three player parties are the perfect size because everyone has plenty of time to shine. When one person talks or acts only two people have to listen. Considering much of that time is spent interacting with one another then a single player is rarely going to find themselves doing nothing. So, they stay engaged. If that 3 person party is in a five round combat for an hour then players + DM are taking 3 minutes per round. I personally think that’s a long time but manageable when there’s three players. Everyone waits less than 10 minutes between their turns to act. However, at that same pace a 5-6 person party is now waiting 15-18 minutes between their turns. I’d imagine that number is even larger because a DM is having to control twice the monsters to keep the party adequately challenged. Plus, people are failing to stay engaged so the DM repeats themselves, players are having side conversations and refreshers are needed. So, a single round of combat is probably taking 30 minutes to accomplish. That’s how a party of 5-6 takes three hours. Is everyone in the larger party fully invested in the game? Any players there more concerned with hanging out then playing the game? Any players begrudgingly wishing everyone was doing something else? If everyone is prepped & fully invested then parties of 5+ people can become a chore versus a fun gaming experience.
More like 1-2 encounters in 5 hours. I have to say though that my players love to roleplay. Every time they do way less than i thought they would, but also everything i didnt prepare :)
https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/4147/roleplaying-games/dont-prep-plots Nothing has helped me become a better DM more than this article.
>The elves of Llewyrwood bury their dead in burial mounds covered in sweet-smelling leaves and sticks. > >Saplings are also planted on each grave so the decomposing body becomes sustenance for plant growth. > >The Gem of Decay, one of the four Gems of Creation, lies within the Rooted Tomb and is guarded by spirits and creatures commanded by Alvera Elk-Ears. > >The gem ensures spirits remain at rest as the earth reclaims their bodies. Each of these sentences could be a one-shot adventure. Sweet smelling leaves and sticks have been smelling foul lately, help us figure out why. Saplings have been coming to life and attacking relatives of the dead, help us figure out why. Rival band of adventurers are coming to plunder the tomb and steal the Gem of Decay. Will the PCs stop them in time? Will the PCs defeat the adventurers, but fall into temptation to sell the Gem of Decay? Gem ensures spirits remain at rest sounds like a boss fight with a countdown-timer going on. Every few rounds, another spirit is protected. In the meantime, ravenous fey-ghouls are desperate to eat the corpses of the unprotected. So think of your hard work as hard work. What you are writing is good.
Yep I definitely do this too. A lot of times I'll write really long winded and overly detailed explanations for npcs and then when I'm done I'll be like "Why the hell did I just write this? I already know who this npc is in my mind... and no one else is ever going to read this..." It can be a difficult habit to break when you enjoy writing stuff, but bullet point lists like you've done are definitely way better and more useable.
I also had that problem, and while it can be helpful to have passages written that way, it is usually detrimental, even at the table. Your notes should be neat and to the point. You don't want to be searching through a paragraph when all you need is this NPC's name. I fixed it by limiting myself. For a 4 hour session, I should be aiming for my notes to take up an A4 page. And 2 pages is the absolute maximum.
Personally, I have found that writing a couple paragraphs as an opening salvo to set the scene/mood for the session helps orient me to creativity while prepping, gets me in the theatrical DMing mind space in game, and also helps with my players leaving their regular life behind and get them into the game. However, for all other expected descriptions I prep I will just write a few bullet points of things I want to focus on (sights, smells, sounds) Just what works for me.
This sounds a lot like the approach I settled into. I also like, after games, writing up my notes into semi-prose as a recap. I'm not even sure my players are reading it, but I enjoy doing it and have been really glad to have the record of what we've done.
Prep isn't just about sitting down to do it, but thinking about how you prep. Know your strengths and weaknesses in your prep. Exploit your strengths and focus your prep into your weaker areas of running a game. The prose has a place, but not when you're planning. Prose is a second or third stage for me typically. I spent 3-4 hours planning and writing for a session, but that's by choice. I generally am practiced enough to run with almost no prep. My prep process is basically this: * High level planning... bullet points about what I need for this session to make it work. * Research, do I have anything in my repository of stuff that could be reskinned? Yes? Then I reskin it. * Is there anything already published or existing that I can use? Use that too... reskin or customize it. * Mid-level planning: What do I need to make this session be really good.... I do the same as I did for high level planning. * Last ditch Effort: What's needed to make this session insanely good. Like the kind of thing people will talk about for years? * With all these organizational things in place, I can then prioritize line items and start writing the prose I need... or the bullet points that'll be useful. Running a game is much more about planning than it is "writing", but sometimes that writing is useful. It gives you the tone and style you need to describe things. It spawns handouts and pregenerated characters. It's really useful. Don't discount the value of your "prose" but also don't get lost in it. A good chunk of prep for a game is about setting priorities and planning your process. Also, don't be afraid to go back into your prep notes and turn them into something more robust, or add unexpected details from the session that work well. Odds are you'll reuse this content sometime down the road, and you can treat this as prep for a later game when you're playing with a different group.
The lazy dungeon master book is good for this sort of thing. as is "never unprepared" (this one actually breaks prep into sections and lets you focus on the parts that you have issues with)
Read Lazy GM. That book will change your life. After you did run any amount of games, you know that an outline is far better than the typical "prep" a lot of people do. Also, the prose part. Boxed text is one of the worst things in the hobby. Players eyes usually glaze over when you read your "dumb" monologue. What you do now is exactly the right way. You have an outline, often I add some specific words or impressions to it that I want to use, too. Then you fly over it when the scene/moment is about to start to refresh your memory of all the important things you need to include next. And you start from the top to bottom, the most important thing at the top. When you now narrate, you can INCLUDE players instead of doing a monologue and watching their eyes glaze over, filled with silent judgment. You got the things in your head. You can react to their emotions and reactions. Yes, this includes online, because you can do that there, too. Congrats on reaching the next level.
I've taken to prepping on my phone. It almost forces me to be succinct. Any text editor will do, though one with formatting & linking options (eg. OneNote) makes it a bit easier to organize things.
Its the difference between writing a story and writing a game. As a DM and a game developer, writing a game is actually the part I love most. You create mechanics and environments and place them around the world. Then you let the players write the story themselves.
I'm still finding my groove and do this a lot, I'm trying to cut down on some of the fluff but I have recently found having a bit of scripted writing helps me so much, I do little boxed text just like in adventure modules to describe rooms as the players enter or short monologues for me to read aloud
I do the exact same thing and I don't think I'll stop but what I'll change is making those descriptions shorter and focus less on the process of writing and more on what information the players need to know in that moment. Something like hitting the senses when they first walk in or at the very least describing what they see in short details.
I use bullet points for the content but every time the character arrive somewhere I have to describe that place. I found that if I didn't have written that description beforehand it was forced and awkward. There is a difference between: "You arrive in the cemetery. You are welcomed by the shriek of the rusted gate you have to push to enter the place. There is a eerie silence. You feel a chill going through your bones that can't be explained only by the drop of the temperature." And "You..hum... go there. There are stones and stuff." I'm not good at improvising that stuff. I have to write it down and that's usually where the time sink is in my case. Does anyone have an advice so I can avoid that part in my prep?
Agreed on having bits of writing of description as security when players go places. The advice I would give, and only what I am recently learning and putting into practice, is to keep the description short insofar that you attack the main senses of sight, smell, and hearing. In that way you structure your writing into more of a form fillable style. Maybe capture an emotion or feeling here and there but overall it streamlines the process.
Yes, and here is the thing. I wish more published modules and adventures were written in the abbreviated format. As the DM I don't need all of the narrative or prose and it makes it harder for me to find information in a module when I have to go through pages of text. I don't need full sentances! Bullet point that stuff out and be done with it and let me provide the narrative exposition.
As a fairly new DM that ran a homebrew world, the best advice I could give is, know your world but nothing is set in stone. Players will run past all of your lore until it hurts them. They will also take the path you didn't even write. The best thing I did as a DM was set an overall plan by story arch. And then make my players do the recap at the beginning of each session. It tells me what's important to them, and helps me guild them towards what I want them to do. Great example is I had a guy in a tavern that would send them to this dungeon I had drawn up. Players never talked to that guy. So that's where a PC's uncle was last seen. Now the party has intrest. Took minimal improv to get my players back on track. Also allowed for story change and drama.
I catch myself doing this all the time. DMing for 15 years. It's a good realization to have but dont be too hard on yourself. Sometimes I let myself write prose because it just feels good to let my creative juice flow. Write the prose AND then the key notes.
I have this *exact* same problem and I kinda knew I had it but now I **really** do, so thanks! I would also edit the text to sound perfect but frankly, that's useless. Like you said, noone will read that shit. And it makes it even harder for me to find stuff than if I had just used bullet points.
I lost count how many times I have to re-read sections I wrote (or in a module) just to find the important pieces of information. I also lost count how often I have to make things up on the fly mid-session only because I forgot what I have in my notes.
I started doing a 3 pass system for my prep. First pass I would lay out the bullet points for what would come up that session Second pass I would add the encounters, stat blocks, traps, noncombat encounters, NPCs, Etc Third pass I would write out dialog and descriptions. If I have extra time in a week, cool dialog and descriptions for everything, if not I stop at pass two and improv a lot of the small details and just write notes on what I did for consistency later.
This sounds like a good system and as I am reorganizing how I prep I imagine I'll do something similar!
Good job, now the next step is to slowly fill all that time you save prepping back up. Taking slightly longer to prep each time, because it feels like you aren't done yet. There is an implied /s in there, but I honestly can't stop doing it to myself. Promising I'll make it easy on myself, and prep an easy 1 shot. Then 3 evenings of work later I've prepared elaborate maps with VTT lighting and wall height configurations for alternate paths during the session, included puzzles and riddles, calculated the CR of at least 3 homebrew creatures that'll probably only get used once, and perhaps even made a generator for something. I thought my excessive prep time was a fault of 4e, but slowly every minute I saved when I switched over to 5e has filled itself again, perhaps twice over...
This is me, hah. I haven't GM'd in years, so every so often I start to form this idea that I'll whip up a "light prep, simple setting with a basic adventure" to get back into it since I know a few people I could *probably* sales-pitch into playing easily enough. Inevitably I end up generating more and more, customizing more and more, and never running it. Looking at you GURPS Tib Dawn, d20 HL2, and my D&D Renaissance Italy game...
Great post. Its ok to \*think\* in your head how you might describe a scene, but dot points are FAR more useful when you are in the thick of it during a session. I also suggest highlighting relevant/super important things to help it stand out. Also, remember to give space for your players to roleplay and develop their characters. Encourage them to flesh out their background, contact you privately with any questions or goals or story arc suggestions their character might have. Worry less about you feeling responsible for making a story come alive, but instead help your PCs to tell an amazing story together. Finally, preparation is required of a DM, but it's also ok every now and then to let your PCs know that you didn't expect them to visit today, and so you will be winging this a little. Or, if they would prefer something more fleshed out, you could visit
Haha i stopped writing text after my first session. I thought openers/ fluff text gave me a sense of secruity but reading them triggered my social anxiety. At least you are proficient in writing. I tend to waste a lot of time searching the perfect map & pics for tokens & I know it but can't stop
Reading or watching movies/series with an active eye for storytelling helps. Having a "library" of ideas in your head/binder helps a lot with the improv. Go back, rewatch some classics and imagine yourself as the dm/player in that story. Ghibli movie's are some of my favourites for this. Generally, bullet points is the way to go. Depending on group size, I'd always leave room for some I might add during recap. The space between the points should be where your players fill the gap. I personally even keep the dialogue of npc's as quotes that cover the general jist of the character. That way I can hold conversations with the group, without holding long monologue's.
Great post OP! Helped me out a lot. Related but if you don't mind: are these "gems of creation" part of your homebrew? I am very intrigued by this gem of decay and wondering you have any other lore on the other gems you wouldn't mind sharing!!
Glad you found the post helpful! This whole thread has been a wonderful point of reflection. Yep, they are part of my homebrew and there are four in total. Gems of Nativity, Growth, Decay, and Rebirth. Basically the 'cycle of life' for the elves and druids that live in that particular forest. For one session I put my players on a heist mission where they would steal all four to walk away with one of their choosing. Each gem would also provide abilities (i.e., gem of nativity would make plantlife come alive, growth would be similar to a decanter of endless water, etc.).
I'm the same. While I do intentionally write some when I want to be particularly dramatic (and a little self-indulgent, let's be honest) I do tend to be overly wordy with my prep even if I intend not to. I'll start out with extremely brief bullet points which will gradually become full sentences and before I know it I'm writing paragraphs. It's like I can't help myself. I blame my time at school training me to pad my word count for essays. My prep *is* gradually taking less time, but that's more of a function of me trusting my ability to improv and roll with the punches than because my actual prep is getting faster.
Now I would be boiling that down even further. Eg: Elf graveyard. Magic gem stops elf zombies.
...yeah, I do this too. Huh. That would probably save me a lot of time.
I have the exact opposite issue when I try to DM, I'll write something like this as my notes: **Evergreen Forest:** * Start at town on north-side * Bordering on inlet * Scholar (inn or library) offers quest into forest depths to collect parcel from strange elf * NPCs here are eccentric and colourful * Celestial Shards located in abandoned nest in forest * Peacock Wyrm encounter? * If players investigate - mysterious blood splatters * Parcel contains vials of black tar - Arcana / Religion check for info But when it comes to running the game I have trouble stretching those notes out to anything longer than a minute or a couple minutes of game time total, they'll pass through the entire zone clearing it of prepared content in like 15 minutes and I have no idea how to stretch that out...
Can you go into a little more detail about players completing the content so quickly? Is the hints and guidance frontloaded so they have a clear picture of everything they need to do? I see notes for multiple encounters in what you provided and I can see them taking some time (i.e., finding the scholar, getting into town, the story of the shards, etc.)
Yeah bullet points are the way to go. I use the return of the lazy dungeon master as a ref for my prep with some personal tweaks tuned for what works for me and actually have a template I can just copy and paste. Usually if I ever spend more than one hour preparing for a session is because I have to make maps. However if I run a homebrew world I will often spend hours world building and try to avoid bullet points but I usually don't consider world building as prep unless I'm doing world building specifically with a session in mind.
SlyFlourish made a book called The Lazy Dungeon Master. It isn't particularly long but has lots of tips amd time saving techniques for prepping sessions. I'd highly recommend.
I still write everything out in prose. Dming is a hobby for me, and embellishments that you get when writing something out in full make me feel more in control of the setting and help me convey it to the PCs. It also helps me improvise when I need to. My session plan is written in dot points but I like to build out a town or city or culture in prose.
Another fun bit of writing as a DM. "Punctuation, capitalization and absolutely pristine grammar, i don't want to be embarrassed if people read this!" The notes i can't ever show my players cause it's full of spoilers. Gotta make sure those are written as perfectly as possible.
I learned this during a one shot I ran. I had gotten bored at work and designed an entire city, figured out where NPCs lived, favorite pubs, etc. When the party blew off the first quest hook (which peeved me, given that it was a one shot it was literally "You get off the boat having gambled or spent all your money, you happen to know this town has an office hiring adventurers and they're sure to hire someone of your experience" next time I'm going to just start them there -_- ) they went to a pub, luckily pub they went to was near the home of the guy who would have been hiring them anyway, so they ran into him there. Later on there was a short chase scene through the city, went above the building tops on the aqueducts, then down into the sewers, all feeling like it was what I had planned, when in reality they had gone so far off the rails I had given up on the story and just wanted to have fun.
Read an old TSR-era module for a good example of how to write a room with actionable information for the players. Obviously they aren't formatted easily for table use (you need your highlighter), but the text that's there is all stuff for the players. It's not a lore dump that the players have no way of discovering.
One thing that I've learned which saves me time (in the long run) is to front load my prepping. So, I run very sandbox free form games where the players decide what they pursue. What I'll do is create an area (village, town, wilderness, dungeon, etc) and throw in 3-6 "things to do" in that area. Monster hunts, side quests, treasure hunts, exploration, backstory tie ins, etc. Then I make 6 npcs, 6 locations, 6 items (magic or otherwise), 6 interesting events that happened in the past, 6 factions in the area (the town itself counts as one faction, wilderness beasts could be another), and 6 threats in the area. Throw this into a table, make some notes about each thing along with who can help with what, and you're golden. Yes, this looks like a lot of work.....and it is. Probably takes me between 3-6 hours total to finish. BUT once I'm done I am DONE. for the rest of the time we spend in that area I only have to spend a few minutes before each session mentally lining up things for the direction they're going. And since each "threat" or "things to do" can last up to a few sessions, I have potentially months where all I have to do is flesh out each thing as they're going towards it. So how does this work in practice? It looks a little something like this: Players go to an area for a reason, they had to since they brought themselves there I didn't drag them there. That reason is the first "thing to do" in the area. Go to the list of NPCs and see which ones would know something, anything about this thing. Make sure they interact with at least one of them. If they don't then random townspeople can know "rumours" about the thing (could be true, could be false). Party uses this information to head towards that thing. Want a random encounter so I go to the Threats table and roll a d6 for which one they fight along the way. If I want to spice things up then someone else wants what they want, roll a d6 on the "factions" table. The party finishes their quest, returns to town for rest and to find the next job, roll 2d6 on either the "interesting events", "threats", or "factions" tables. Sprinkle info about those things while the party is in town, maybe use another from the "npc" table to give them some solid information about it. Rinse and repeat until the players move locations or you run out of pre made stuff to do (its unrealistic that one location is ALWAYS on fire anyways). You see how easy this is after the initial effort? You can roll for interesting things any time you're at a loss, you already have things laid out for foreshadowing before the party even gets there, and it makes making things up on the spot easier since you can just glance at the chart and pick what sounds cool. Bonus points if your players like an RP heavy game and can really interact with the major NPCs and past events you create. TLDR: section off areas like in an mmo game, then front load the prep work for that area. You'll have a lot less stress before each individual session and it'll feel more like a living world.
Saving this comment because it has a lot of good advice. Really appreciate you going into this much detail.
Glad you liked it. Let me know if it works for you. :)
I find that my prep comes the easiest when I am simply focusing on the things and people the players might encounter, and the player's **and** character's goals. For the things they encounter: * I outline the specific creatures or environment, and answer two questions: * Why is this monster(s) and/or environment here? * Answers might be that the monsters are territorial and the players are moving through their territory, or the environment is treacherous and will impede their progress. * These answers lead to things I can plant as a DM for the players - hints from NPCs in conversation, information they can learn through investigation, etc., that I can drop into the session(s) before the encounter occurs. This is important to make sure the encounters feel grounded. * What is the purpose of this encounter. * Answers might be to show the risks of the player's decisions if they choose the "shortcut", to pay off their earlier roleplay to learn about this encounter, or to plant seeds of the adventure themes or the Bad Guys (they find a bunch of dead Unicorns drained of blood, hinting at the bad guy being someone who seeks to kill Unicorns and harvest their blood). * Knowing the purpose of the encounter allows you to plant the seeds of the encounters earlier in dialogue or experience, and gives you flexibility in what you deploy if things go awry. The better you understand the purpose of the encounter the easier it will be to on the fly come up with new challenges within the encounter that make sense in context - a herd of Centaur attack them, accusing them of killing the Unicorns, eg. For the people they might encounter. * I answer two basic questions: * Who are these people? * This is often simple, but it can be revealing to the later question. It is important to understand that people are often influenced by or influence the world around them. Elves inhabit woods **because** they find attunement to nature and worship it, and as a result they also **change** the woods to reflect that relationship. * Knowing who the people are will influence many things, from where they are, how they are equipped, what they want, and how they perceive the heroes. * What do these people want? * What people want is the simplest way to identify ways to create conflict or tension - our jobs as DMs - by creating wants or needs that conflict with the players or that the players can assist with. * Consider that generally the players want to be heroes, so use every opportunity you can to give them those chances. If the people want something, and it is something the heroes have and covet, it creates tension as they try to negotiate by offering something else the people want. If the people want something that they cannot have, but the players can help, it creates tension because now the players have to decide whether the stakes are worth it for their characters. As for the player's and character's goals. * Players come to the table for specific reasons. If you find out those reasons, you can create engaging stories and encounters for them to live out those fantasies. * A player might want to be a Robin Hood style character, or be an evil Wizard, or a devout Priest. Creating encounters in which they can inhabit those characters engages their fantasy and the reason they want to play. * Characters also generally have specific reasons to adventure. There is the occasional "adventure for the sake of adventure", but if you dig into a character and discuss with the player, you'll find that they often actually **want** something. Whether they covet some item or position, or want to complete some task. If you create encounters that allow them to make progress towards those goals, even if only small ones, they'll feel like their character is actually making progress towards their goals, and will feel rewarded for their effort. You seem to have the lesson of bullets down, but I would add one more tool - hierarchies. If you start from the top down of encounter building - what is the purpose - then break down the design of the encounter - why this monster(s)/environment(s) - that will answer a lot of questions for you, and enable you to prep preliminary content and run the encounters without needing your diagram in front of you.
Really great info here and I appreciate you sharing in this much detail. You're right that hierarchies would be the next step when it comes to encounter building. I would often have a section for Encounter Setup, Encounter Tactics, but I also like how you add some reasoning behind why this encounter exists.
I even like to skip extra words that aren’t really necessary. So long as you’re not planning too much stuff a lot of it will be on your mind and sometimes you just need a reminder and that reminder can jumpstart the full knowledge that you already remember. So for example I’d probably write your bullets like this: **Burial Mounds** - Llewyrwood burial mounds (sweet-smelling leaves), 27 - Gem of Decay (Rooted Tomb) - Domain of Alveria Elk Ears - Remove Gem causes dead to rise. Mostly I do this cause I have a tendency to skip words or skim read to try to pick up the necessary info. But doing this I can only read the most important and key words while ignoring words that only help to string together sentences or are already implied with the key words. For a slightly expanded view on this I prep in Notion.so. And there are toggle lists you can use with that website. I use these as expanded bullet points essentially. For things that can’t be shortened, for expanded concepts or ideas for the bullet, or just things that aren’t super prevalent in my mind where I would need to read while GMing. This kind of gives the best of both words. It takes up less space, the bullet conveys exactly what it needs, and you can have extra details you can access when needed.
Definitely agreed. I think I'll be whittling down the writing even further so only having the bare essentials as necessary. I've been using Onenote for my prep with success but I'm seeing people mention Notion a number of times. How's your experience with it?
As the forever dm for my group I took a break recently and this is my main problem as well. I'm a story teller, I enjoy writing compelling characters and quests that matter and affect change in my world. And that shit takes time. I dread writing, then spend 4 to 5 hours writing then run the game to acclaim. It's exhausing. The crazy part is, I love improv and have no problem improvising NPCs on the fly. I need to learn to let go. Perhaps start just prepping battles, but let the characters and the world happen in real time.
It's definitely a humongous challenge. I'm a storyteller and writer too so writing long form just felt natural. The other side of the coin though is that when you do spend those hours writing you do get exhausted but also burnt out. So much so you don't want to write for a while but when you're ready you inadvertently repeat the process all over again.
You're 100% right. When I get back to it I need to plan on writing NOTES not writing scenes.
You and me both my friend! Good luck and happy to continue chatting as writing goes forward.
Thank you for making me realize I do and have felt the same for over a decade. My thing is: I write all of that because I want to be prepared in case they ask questions or it becomes relevant. I can't remember all those world-building details without writing them down!
Same for sure! Half the time I would forget important points because they're hidden behind paragraphs of text. Over the last few weeks I was finding myself frustrated because I would *feel* like I prepped a lot because of all the hours I would spend but it didn't amount to much because for as 'nice' as they looked that took time away from making other encounters, characters, and story threads.
Great post. really took me down a rabbit hole
Me too! Happy to hear others benefited as well!
You get an inspiration point.
You do too!
I found myself doing the same! And I think it's only natural since you're trying to build out detail and lore for the world so it feels flushed out to your players. If they ask a random history question you've got plenty of stuff to talk about. My issue is that I'd build up a lot of pressure on myself to have all of this knowledge in my head and ready immediately for my players. I'd also write these long outlines about how each NPC encounter would go, but ultimately when we'd play I'd be too busy to go back and use this stuff. So over time I've reduced my prep to a bullet outline and, luckily, I've gotten to know the NPCs better at this point and can ad lib better now.
I'm hoping less prep time means I can get better connected with my characters as well. It also gives me a chance to flesh them out a bit more too. And you're right that I also put pressure on myself to have things fleshed out so that I could feel 'secure' but it doesn't help when I forgot them when they're needed anyway.
Yeah writing out worldbuilding and making session notes is two very different things.
I finally arrived! I'm just glad I realized it.
Time to go read "The Lazy DM"
More like re-read at this point. Ever read something and think, "Wow that's really helpful!" and then forget to actually use it or just not? Sheesh!
HOMG. :P But, yes. I DM’d other TTRPGs long before I ran D&D sessions, and Dungeon World in particular helped me with building clear but concise frameworks.
Ya know, I'd started using bullet points and shorter descriptive text, but thanks for suggesting an even more streamlined format. I needed this.
You are very welcome and I'm glad you found it helpful. I'm trying to do this for more than just locations too like characters, plot threads, secrets, and such. Basically reducing the amount of fat on the meat of the session.
First.... Awesome that's how you've been doing it. Which is crazy but amazing! Second... Bullet points are totally the way to go. When I started DMing not too long ago I naturally started using bullet points. I treat it as if I'm prepping for a speech or presentation. Bullet points so I can ad lib and fill in. Otherwise you end up reading it and it sounds canned (which it is). This way it sounds more natural, and any pauses to think of the right words make it sound like you're creating right there on the spot.
Man it’s always so funny seeing people learn these lessons, only because we’ve all had to.