I was Way underprepared for tonight’s game… (TTRPGs)

I did so little preparation work for the game tonight. Here I’m talking about evening…

[RIVERSRPGChannel]

Glad you’re excited again.
Sounds like they’re having fun too.
Yes I’ve had the PCs do things I had not perceived beforehand. They’ve been some of the best sessions we’ve had mostly improv from me.

[Vaerceagoth]

I’ve ran nearly an entire campaign of Vampire: the Masquerade like that. It was nerve-wracking but fun and felt extremely rewarding afterwards. My biggest suggestion if you want to continue running like that is collect lots of maps so you can prepare a location on the fly. Having a bunch of small maps is good but focus more on getting bigger maps since you can pull out a section and use it as a smaller map.

[calciumtrioxin]

That exact "under-prepared" and "appropriate" world response is more so what I was trying to iterate in the video where you were not excited and not having fun! Super glad to see you are excited again! Your style of preferred prep is *exactly* how I used to prepare my games, which is what i meant by suspecting we were alike.

This gameplay loop of keeping track of character responses to the world, and then the world (bad guys, factions, monsters) responding back.. That allows for this smaller amount of prep and proportional responses from the world.

However that is really the *first* step to such play. If you as a DM become more concerned with prep as.. say rolling dice to determine if your bad guys notice the lack of response from Annabella.. maybe it takes a week, maybe it takes 2 days. But the threat you gave will come to pass. Then that excitement will continue to be there! As opposed to wracking your brain and using logic to determine all of the *possible* outcomes or responses. You are right! That is incredibly exhausting, and as other commenters have noted, there are other ways to prep that give you some relief in that area.

Personally I swear by Matt Finch's Tome of Adventure Design Revised Edition. Its a great resource to bounce ideas off of, to design dungeons, quests, npcs, all sorts of things. I think you may find some good use from that book.


Either way, I'm excited to see where things take you and your journey as a DM!

[TimothyRice-pr]

I used to do a lot of prep and it burned me out a lot, for little benefit. GMing Blades in the Dark this year has taught me how to take a more improvizational approach, and it has been improving every other game I run. What I've learned from Blades in the Dark is to treat the game as a conversation and a negotiation, and that random tables are excellent improv prompts. You might also want to check out Mike Shea's "Lazy Dungeon Master" stuff.

[WardenMaximus]

Sometimes it is difficult to prepare for all the possible directions your players can go. having a rough outline of what can happen if they do this or that is sometimes enough. I have run games like this a lot. I ran several sessions on stream that way. The chaos is real and you just have to roll with it and keep the game moving the best you can. Making it work and seeing everyone have fun and progress the story is very satisfying.

[lolsonchciwy]

Underprepared? Usually I go unprepared and improvising all the way through. Most of the things happen just because I think it fits right in, some as a nice flavour of a bigger world... And truth to be said - lowering or even eliminating prep-time entirely (besides learning the system and/or setting from simple book reading) gives me more time to spent on activites that are more important than preparing a ttrpg session. That's also a point why I do that, besides just being lazy ;P
So I fit usual "prep-time tomfoolery" in the session - they did that so well, I'll write down the consequence right now instead of later. But strict "this exactly is going to happen" ain't so good if there's possible player agency being taken away. Another point standing in "improvisations favor"... And another way to lay waste to my very own "hard" prep ;3
Welp, don't know what to say more than I am also aware of the desire to deliver a good campaign to your close ones.

Thus
Merry Christmas and Godspeed, mate! Wishing all the best!

[jackneller]

Most of the more epic and fun moments in all my years of GMing have come from when i have to go off the cuff and improvise for the most part. I don't prep that much. I mainly jot down a couple of ideas and ideas for encounters and roll with it. Just make sure you keep good notes during the session so you can stay consistent and remember all the stuff you made up along the way. Because your players sure will. :/

[The-Blind-Bard]

Yeah, I ran a session where I had some notes in my head, but never wrote them down. Everyone had fun, but I always felt like I was winging it the whole time and that was a little bit overwhelming.

[antomanifesto]

This is typically what I do in Wildsea. I made my cheat sheet with details of the overall setting they're in, but session to session, I'm using 2-4 index cards maximum. My players are far too chaotic for me to ever plan more than that.

[FrostSpike]

I've played games where I've underprepared and it's gone well, and those where it's not gone so well. Likewise with games where I consider to be "fully" prepared! The chance of a game going well seems to be increased when I think I'm adequately prepared for what they're likely to be doing though.

My campaigns tend to have quite detailed story arcs and lots of NPC interactions, as that's what the players like, and I find it's hard to improvise cohesive plot events (and foreshadowing) on the fly without contradictions or "plot holes" creeping in (or I just miss stuff out and have to retcon later) so I prefer to have a goodly amount of possible responses and options I've considered. If it's a section of the campaign where they're just doing a bit of a side-quest delve, then it's not so important - hence the amount of prep that's adequate various quite a lot.

If you're having problems deciding on how your bad guys are going to be responding, you can always just do a roll under Intelligence or Wisdom check for the leader or their advisors to get an idea. You can apply a modifier to the roll based on how egregious the action taken against them was - a positive mod if it was neglible, or a negative mod if it was serious. If, say, they have Int 15, then a roll over 15 means that they don't respond very well in that period - too busy or distracted to focus on the issue at hand. 11-15 means that handle it but it's not their full-focus, they might want to investigate more or don't want to commit resources. 6-10 and under means that they're on it, it has proper focus and they'll respond optimally to address the issue, 1-5 means that they're ON IT as a super high priority to get sorted out, they might already have had some additional intelligence from informers and/or some competent resources at hand to just TAKE CARE OF THE PROBLEM - they might even try ambushing player characters one-by-one, taking significant hostages to draw them out into a vulnerable position, or setting up stings to frame characters in the eyes of the law forcing them out of the neighbourhood.

It doesn't mean that the reaction is going to be a face-to-face fight. In one of my games the party killed a Zhent leader... a month or so later their favourite serving girl down their regular inn went sick one evening and there was a stand-in, luckily the innkeeper managed to find a convenient replacement at the last minute... Unfortunately for the characters the faction were smart and had made a low roll, so this stand-in was a Zhent assassin and they found, much to their chagrin, that their meals and drinks laced with a rather expensive cumulative delayed-action poison.

The Faction rules in Worlds Without Number are well worth looking at if you want a structured form of deciding what a faction (as small as a gang, or as large as a country) is going to be doing over a period of time.

[Glazius]

Sounds like it went pretty alright. As long as you can keep going with at most the occasional water break to think, you're fine for prep. The thing it helps most to have are the next steps for everybody you expect the players to run into; beyond that it's fine to think about bigger pictures, but prepping stuff on an "I can realize this in the game" level gets more and more likely to get invalidated the further in the future it is from one step ahead.

[MesheeKnight]

i always underprepare :D my NPC are just names, 2-3 descriptors, a Goal and a Fear. I never have maps ready, i never plan more than 1 session ahead;

Why? I have very little time for that, i rather play than prep for a play. Players never do what you expect, so don't expect anything.

I never plan for possible outcomes/responses from NPC/Factions if player do X Y or Z... it is just a waste of time and it can be deceptive for the GM when you planed for 4 outcomes, took a long time to do that, and at the table they just skip the all situation.

One thing i do: if say the 3 factions react to previous game night, whatever players decide to address, the other factions do progress on there own toward their goals unless PC mess with them. So each sessions the narative progress

[wickedly]

Dumbing down the world for the reaction, there is truth. The world needs time to react to it, and process it. There are knee-jerk reactions, but there is 100% a chance for the world to process. As for the other locations, just relax and save them for later. Think of the campaign book as the A Plot and what you are doing now as the B Plot. One has lulled, and you're on the B Plot, when the B Plot lulls, return to the A Plot. Keeps the game fresh.

[sirguy]

Next time use the classic “suddenly 400 zombies 🧟 attack” on your players- totally makes up for unpreparedness

[coltonkinder]

BFRPG, second game ever. I just read the module, sketched out a rough idea of the map, and ran it improv. The players always think of stuff you're not prepared for, so why bother and stress over what they might not even notice?

[mikemcmahon]

A few thoughts: You can NEVER plan for everything. Lately, AI has been helping me fill in the unexpected. I do some prep, but filling in the unexpected with detailed explanations is something that the AI has been exceptional at.

Second: That said, the world response will absolutely wax and wane, otherwise the pressure could be overwhelming. The pressure should be there, and bad choices have consequences, but not constant, imo.

[jasonvl]

It sounded like you didn't under prepare but you prepared tactically. You figured out where the players were going and thought of general response to it.
I think maybe your issue of dming is preparing for every action the players take and it's overloading you. This day you didn't take into account the minute details of what they would do and trusted yourself to come up with answers at the time with the general layout of what would happen.
If you haven't already I would suggest the lazy dungeon master book for preparing what is necessary to the game and not over preparing causing stress.

[yellotang]

I don't know why, but when I watch your videos I wonder when you will experience complete burnout. #1 I think you are trying to hard. #2 pregame prep should be minimal work #3 if you or your players are not having relaxing fun while playing, you are playing the wrong game(s). Along for the ride and praying you get a handle on this before you give up on ttrpgs.

[ParkerKent-rz]

Yes you have to be both a referee and a cheerleader, so you need to carry both the carrot and the stick.
You are doing too much if you think you can prepare for every possibility your players will do and say. (That is both impossible and Insane).

The only advice I can give is read more books, watch more movies, and listen to more music. (Especially the original iliads, sagas, and classics).
These are all great things to draw from at any time.
Eventually as you do this you will see the truth: There are no original ideas, they are all just reiterations of something already done before.
Sure they may have changed them around to fit a different time, setting, or genre, but they are all still based on work already done.
Once you realize this and see how they integrated and changed them just enough to seem different, you will be able to re-call them and do the same.
I can not tell you how many times over the years people have came to me claiming they have some grand new story in mind or some new twist to add to a BBEG, for me to listen to and say, "Oh that's great". (When really it is not new at all, it is just new to them).

[Mr.CheeseyPoof]

If you're doing it for just the money your in the wrong game.