Not to call bull shit, but I'm going to call bull shit.  

On the other thread there are a bunch of people that say they do 15 minuets or less of prep.   Then they say they do a bunch of campaign prep so the don't have to do session prep.  Then they say they have pre generated dungeons rdy to go.  

So first of all bull shit you aren't doing zero prep.

Second of all and more importantly.  Can you teach me your ways?  You have a couple of short cuts and cheats that (from the sounds of it) vastly shorten you prep time (just not down to zero).

Specifically. How much campagin prep do you do?  How much time?  How many dungeons do you have preped?  How many NPCs? ( do you recycle NPCs?) world map?  How much of a plot do you have?  

If you are working it out as you go along who takes the notes?  When do you take them, during or after?  How long does it take?

Dungeons.  Do you have a source for pre generated ones?  How long does it take you to build one from scratch?  Renovate one?  

Please add any other other tricks that can help cut down prep time.  When I was younger I wanted to world build.  Now I just want to play.

For me. Literally zero prep. (Not counting the players creating characters. Thats not DM prep) No nada.

Other times I'll grab the mostly blank Karameikos map as a basis and roll from there.

But as play progeresses I note down whats happened, whos been met and so on so what has transpired is now set and part of the world as it grows.

Dungeons are just plotted out on the fly. Sometimes not even using a random generator, just calling turns as seems to fit the locale. Usually sketching it out as things progress so there arent any irregularities.

I keep alot of index cards handy to jot down notes either during or after a session.

Quote from: Omega;924161For me. Literally zero prep. (Not counting the players creating characters. Thats not DM prep) No nada.

Other times I'll grab the mostly blank Karameikos map as a basis and roll from there.

But as play progeresses I note down whats happened, whos been met and so on so what has transpired is now set and part of the world as it grows.

Dungeons are just plotted out on the fly. Sometimes not even using a random generator, just calling turns as seems to fit the locale. Usually sketching it out as things progress so there arent any irregularities.

I keep alot of index cards handy to jot down notes either during or after a session.

If I have a good story, with clear scenes in my head that I want to run, then I don't need much prep beyond that these days.

For me, it comes down to what kind of adventure I wish to run. Often my players are interested in mindless dungeon crawls, and for me those really do take pretty much zero prep time. I have my old Judges Guild dungeon maps or I simply google "dungeon" and "map" and print one off. I often populate the dungeon on the fly, sometimes by just making something up or opening the monster book to a point at random and using that.

 Keep in mind, however, that my players are used to my "on the fly" methods and realize that they are not always "supposed" to beat a monster just because they encounter it -- the whole notion of balancing encounters by challenge ratings is a newfangled thingie (starting around 2000, I think, with 3E) and I don't subscribe to it.

 Sometimes I use random encounter tables balanced a little by level so that low-level characters don't get eaten by dragons or the like all of the time. Sometimes I think of a generic plotline (rescue the princess, steal the gem, escort the caravan to the next village) and we just go from there. I have a few generic NPCs that pop up over and over and the players are familiar with their quirks. Most come from books or movies, so I'm not really having to make them up from scratch.

 Adventures with puzzles, a complex plot, or really innovative NPCs take longer to prep.

For me, it comes down to what kind of adventure I wish to run. Often my players are interested in mindless dungeon crawls, and for me those really do take pretty much zero prep time. I have my old Judges Guild dungeon maps or I simply google "dungeon" and "map" and print one off. I often populate the dungeon on the fly, sometimes by just making something up or opening the monster book to a point at random and using that.

Keep in mind, however, that my players are used to my "on the fly" methods and realize that they are not always "supposed" to beat a monster just because they encounter it -- the whole notion of balancing encounters by challenge ratings is a newfangled thingie (starting around 2000, I think, with 3E) and I don't subscribe to it.

Sometimes I use random encounter tables balanced a little by level so that low-level characters don't get eaten by dragons or the like all of the time. Sometimes I think of a generic plotline (rescue the princess, steal the gem, escort the caravan to the next village) and we just go from there. I have a few generic NPCs that pop up over and over and the players are familiar with their qui

Adventures with puzzles, a complex plot, or really innovative NPCs take longer to prep.

When I think of  Zero Prep games we go right to Apocalypse World. The game even calls out the MC (their version of a GM) and tells them not to plan anything for the session. As for the overall campaign, the setting is developed collectively and the only prep I can think of is the assigning of Fronts, these are potential scarcities or threats as based on the setting the group has established. In game these fronts only come into play as a means to drive story when there is a lull.

Quote from: Headless;924139Can you teach me your ways?

I could, but since you have already declared them to be "bull shit" why should I bother?

Quote from: Headless;924139Not to call bull shit, but I'm going to call bull shit.

And right you are.

QuoteSecond of all and more importantly.  Can you teach me your ways?

And there you have it. Either there are methods to reduce prep time to zero (or at least vastly reduce it) or there are not. But it took time to develop those methods. So, still not zero no matter what.

Because that's all prep time is. An investment to make future games or events run better/smoother/different. That's why someone bothered to take the time to make rules for "lets pretend", why there are different rules available (to ostensibly produce different results), and why we bother even so much as statting out characters.

In my "zero prep" days, I simply allowed players to wander around the World of Greyhawk (which of course someone else took the time to prep), and whenever they wandered into a particular location or did some set of actions, or encountered particular random encounters (rolled from tables someone took time to prep) that happened to trigger some adventure module I'd read (which took someone time to write and me time to read), I'd have a full-fledged adventure waiting for them.

I found some legit drawbacks to the absence of prep. Some players, not the majority, but some--the ones I deemed the best--were forward-looking enough where I was left with three choices a) frustrate their forward looking with no information of interest, b) improvise the new content on the fly, or c) prep. I think a is obviously a problem, and c is obviously prepping. b is a less obvious problem. You can actually observe it at the table, when (even half jokingly) a player takes prudent action to account for something that might happen or might be, for which there is presently no evidence, but it can't be ruled out and if true would spell disaster, is met with a player who says, "Ssshhh! Don't give the GM any ideas!" Action and choice are just as futile under B as they are under A.

However, just like you can drive from one place to another at night without being able to see the whole path, all you need is an idea of where you're going and 80 feet of light, you can also prep just far enough ahead while the current scene is playing out. This may give the appearance of no prep, but it really is prepping ahead.

So does this give you a helpful line on a mindset for going essentially zero prep?

Incidentally, these days, I spend the vast majority of my "prep" time programming tables and stats into the inspiration pad, that way when I actually sit down to prep an actual session, I don't have to look a bunch of stuff up. And one of the most helpful (to me) benefits I get out of prepping individual sessions at all is to produce stat sheets with space to track monster hit points and such, so it saves me time and keeps everything more organized during actual play.

The key to prepping I think is remembering that the GMs job is "Playing the World".  Wherever the PCs are, if there are monsters, NPCs, whatever around that they may encounter, you need to either know in advance what those things are and what their motivations are, or be able to wing it.  The more detail you can lay out ahead of time, or the better you are at improv is going to make all the difference when the PCs run into the encounter.  Also, for any given area, if you have in your mind or laid out in detail what the NPCs/monsters do when the PCs aren't there, then it makes it a lot easier to prep for the next session.

Ill catch some shit for this but I cant resist the temptation.

I find it weird that the same people that crucify someone for 'railroading' their players by moving a planned encounter in front of them no matter the choices they make are perfectly fine with waiting till they actually make a choice then plopping down an instantly created encounter. It amounts to the same thing. There is no way to discern if said encounter was actually created without bias to their decision or not. The only truly Non Railroad way to game would be to have a completely made up encounter located on the map and only using it if the players actually went there. Making up the world 10 seconds in the future is a fun, albeit lazy, way to GM and certainly has its place in the hobby. (Ive done it too!) But those who use this method should be careful about condemning other seemingly unconventional approaches (Story gaming or whatever) as its just as far from how RPGs were meant to be played initially.

You can break this down in many ways based on your starting point.

There is zero prep based on bona-fide zero prep games like 3:16 and Inspecters. That is genuine no prep.

There is zero prep based on running games in established, ongoing campaign.  That's a bit of a cheat calling it zero prep because the GM has hours and hours of actual play that acts as prep. It's not an option if you just planning a one-shot or fancy trying something new.

There is zero prep which isn't really zero prep at all because the GM is actually thinking about the game all the time, in shower, on the way to work, while he should be working, while watching a movie. It is just called zero prep because the GM isn't technically spending a lot of time writing up notes.

I fail on all three counts. I don't enjoy running the genuine no prep game (I have tried), my gaming is more focused on one shots and short campaigns and it doesn't help they tend to be more investigative than exploration based. And I natural multi-tasker. The only way for me to prep is to focus on prep.

Kind of sucks.

My most succesful "zero prep" games have been with rules and settings that I have a lot of familiarity with. This familiarity comes, of course, from hours of play and study. They also tend to be for games that I spent quite a bit of time thinking about what might be going on in the world, even if I don't write it all down and am not specifically relating it to a campaign.

Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures has almost zero prep adventures that are meant to be prepped during character creation. They consist of a series of tables, some of which are filled in with results that spring from the characters being generated. These tables then give the who, what, where, and why of the adventure. Extreme low prep, but not zero prep.

I find that if I try to run a game with literally zero prep it never goes well. Even five minutes to quickly think of an idea is better than just starting cold.

Quote from: DavetheLost;924209My most succesful "zero prep" games have been with rules and settings that I have a lot of familiarity with. This familiarity comes, of course, from hours of play and study. They also tend to be for games that I spent quite a bit of time thinking about what might be going on in the world, even if I don't write it all down and am not specifically relating it to a campaign.

Yeah, that's 'zero prep' to me.  Other than character creation, it's a game I can sit down and crack open a book (or two) and just go.

Someone called it the 'cold and stupid' method, which ignoring that I usually am (right guys?), and I think it's perfectly describes it.

Quote from: Headless;924139You have a couple of short cuts and cheats that (from the sounds of it) vastly shorten you prep time (just not down to zero).

My #1 suggestion is to learn how to quickly reskin stuff.

There is a fuckton of free stuff online. You can scavenge endlessly and reskin for your campaign.


How much campaign prep do you do?  

A fuckton.


How much time?  

Weeks, easily 40+ hours.


How many dungeons do you have prepped?  

I love random generators and reskinning. I usually do 3-4 "location breakdowns" during campaign prep.


How many NPCs? ( do you recycle NPCs?) world map?  

26 NPCs - with A-Z names, motivations and conflicting goals.


How much of a plot do you have?  

My campaign has a main theme (alien invasion, civil war, rescue the widget, stop the lich, etc).

Then I focus on the NPC's personal goals and how their plots will interweave and create conflicts.


If you are working it out as you go along who takes the notes?  When do you take them, during or after?  How long does it take?

I take secret notes and I ask the players to email me their notes. I usually spend 30mins on post-game stuff as prep for the next session.


Do you have a source for pre generated ones?  How long does it take you to build one from scratch?  Renovate one?  

There are several online generators and there are some software options. You may want to start a thread just about online RPG resources and have people contribute. That would make a good sticky.

I will spend hours building a dungeon from scratch if I have the time (but I love prep).

I only have 15 minutes, I will grab one something I know and quickly tailor it. AKA, I will take a premade dungeon, decide I only want certain sections, alter the encounters to fit the adventure, quickly write up some custom descriptions of the atmosphere and go.

But I mostly run rules light stuff.

For "dungeons" for modern games or CoC, I usually just google floor plans of actual places.

Quote from: Headless;924139When I was younger I wanted to world build.  Now I just want to play.

There are LOTS of great freebies on DriveThruRPG and many GREAT PDFs for low price.

Quote from: Headless;924139On the other thread there are a bunch of people that say they do 15 minuets or less of prep.   Then they say they do a bunch of campaign prep so the don't have to do session prep.  Then they say they have pre generated dungeons rdy to go.  

I can give you fairly concrete numbers because I kept a work log while I was doing the campaign prep for my OD&D hexcrawl. I stocked 256 hexes over the course of 10 days, spending a total of 40-45 hours of actual time working on it. This prep work consisted almost entirely of prepping adventure locations (although I also built some random encounter tables), which included adapting existing material and also creating original material. (I talk about stocking hexes extensively on my blog.)

I then used this material to run approximately 50 sessions, never spending more than 10-15 minutes prepping for any given session. (And, in fact, frequently not doing any prep at all.) The actual session prep consisted of:

1. Creating a "key update" for any locations which had been changed by PC actions in the previous session. This takes very little time because I would keep notes of what was happening during each session, which meant that this was mostly just a matter of quickly compiling those notes into an easier-to-reference format for future sessions.

2. Checking to see if dungeons which had been cleared out by the PCs in previous sessions had been reoccupied (and, if they were, restocking them). This also takes very little time because I use adversary rosters.

The common denominator here is that most of the time I wasn't needing to completely redo content: I could go in and very precisely refresh and repurpose it.

This also meant that I could frequently do this work at the beginning of the session while the players were leveling up their characters, buying new equipment, or the like. (Which is why I often had no session prep whatsoever. It was all happening at the table.)

That's one method.

Another low prep game I have a lot of experience with is Technoir. Technoir uses plot mapping mechanics in combination with a minimalist setting document it refers to as a "transmission" to create noir cyberpunk scenarios during play. Much like my OD&D hexcrawl, the initial process of creating a scenario seed happens at the table while the players are taking care of their bookkeeping (and is, in fact, integrated into that bookkeeping). During actual play, the combination of the PCs' actions and the plot mapping mechanics will inform how their investigation will lead them towards understanding/revealing/destroying/whatever the scenario seed.

It's a very clever system. And if you're looking for an out-of-the-box experience with a low prep game, I highly recommend it.

Also: The Three Secrets of Prep.

EDIT: Third example would be a Numenera campaign I ran where roughly half of the scenarios basically consisted of me flipping through the Bestiary, picking one of the sundry awesome creatures Cook, et al. had designed for the game, and quickly jotting down an adventure structure based around it. Unfortunately, there was no real technique at play here: It mostly relied on me having 25+ years of experiencing running games. When you can sketch a dungeon map as a simple relationship diagram and trust your improv skills to make that dungeon into a real place, that's a big advantage when it comes to running low/no-prep games. Although having fallback structures like the 5 Room Dungeon and 5 Node Mystery certainly helps.