GMs: Prep More by Prepping Less

If you've been exploring the world of Game Master resources, you may have come across the content of Mike Shea over at Sly Flourish. If you haven't, I'm here to tell you that you really should take a look. He's got a newsletter, tons of books, a podcast, a YouTube channel, and many helpful articles over on his website. Even better, his older books like The Lazy Dungeon Master are available completely for free under a Creative Commons license (Hasbro could NEVER). His pronunciations are terrible but his content is wonderful. I can honestly say it has transformed the way that I do prep for my campaigns, and it all stems from "The Eight Steps of Lazy RPG Prep."

I'll leave you to check out his site for the finer details, but the checklist goes like this:

1. Review the characters

2. Create a strong start

3. Outline potential scenes

4. Define secrets and clues

5. Develop fantastic locations

6. Outline important NPCs

7. Choose relevant monsters

8. Select magic item rewards

   
   

I literally copy this list into a google doc and fill out each section for my prep now and maybe it's just my personal love of worksheets but it makes everything so much easier for me to process. I like to use published adventures but then alter them based on the players' character backgrounds and familiarity with the game. Even when I have so much information covered by the published adventure, it is still invaluable to lay things out for the very next session according to this checklist. Some parts may even be the same from one session to another if less progress is made than expected, but it's still important to lay them all out and be thinking about everything in the context of the next session.

Although I love this resource, I must confess that I am NOT a "lazy gm." This checklist has transformed my prep because it lets me deal with the essentials necessary for my next session quickly... so that I can continue to spend the obscene numbers of hours on things that I enjoy. These are things important to me, but not essential for running a session. Things like writing out how each character's backstory ties into the overarching plot of the campaign, making a map in Dungeon Alchemist that would be totally playable with just what's in the book, or making a custom boss monster and lair because the normal version didn't excite me. I used to be scrambling after using so much of my free time on these elements and then still having to figure out the necessities of the session.

Here's the thing though, you CAN'T prep for everything your players might do anyways. I realized naturally before finding Sly Flourish that in some ways things felt better when I didn't have a whole lot prepared for a given session, because then when they bypassed a whole third of the dungeon I didn't feel like I wasted a bunch of time on it. Improvisation is an important skill for a GM. Not in the acting sense necessarily, but just in the ability to know your players and guide them through an experience that they will enjoy --- even if it isn't the one you had in mind.

So that's the pitch. Spend more time doing the prep you like by spending less time on the prep you need. Also you really should read the stuff over at Sly Flourish, especially the Eight Steps of Lazy RPG Prep. It may be that when you do, you'll find you "need" a lot less than you realized.