How I prep

Joining Weird Writer’s blog challenge.

So, how do I prep?

First, I stock up on weapons, ammo, first aid essentials, canned and dry goods. Next, I transport it all into my rural fenced-off compound and store it in my underground vault. Then I post a shelfie on the survivalist forums…

What?

Oh, this is about RPG referee prep.



Sure, here are a couple of disjointed ideas. I don’t have a system and, well, just don’t run games regularly enough nowadays, but when I do, I like to do as many of these as possible.

I’m only covering pre-session prep here, not campaign prep.

• I write a lot of random game content, adventures, random tables, etc. So before a session, I check back to see if there is anything useful or relevant or something I just want to try in my archive.

• I run 75% homebrew stuff, 25% published modules.

Notetaking, general:

• I often make flowcharts and relationship matrices. I write out important factions, NPCs, locations, McGuffins and draw lines and arrows between them, note their relationships or connections. To me, this is the best way to organize info.
• If the adventure has a monster summary, I print that out. If it doesn’t, I try to make one. Stats & special abilities on one page, so it’s all in one place, no need to look it up in the module or the bestiary.
• I might do a condensed key for dungeons. But that’s pretty time consuming.
• Print out the map separately! It also helps to annotate the map, add notes about room contents, etc.
• I like re-drawing maps. Esp. for bigger dungeons. You memorize the layout and note interesting things for yourself, AND if you run an online game, this can double as preparing a VTT version of the map.

Pre-session prep for ongoing games:

• Check notes, curse yourself for not taking better notes.
• Any dangling threads or cliffhangers that require resolution or extra thought? E.g. a character was bit by a werewolf, how do we handle this, setting-wise and also rules-wise (see next section)? An enemy ran away, are there consequences? Any restocking needed Is there anything that might come back and bite the players’ ass?
• Rules-wise, are there any complex situations that might come up? E.g. aerial combat, underwater adventuring, chases, mass combat, anything that I need to look up the rules for or make rulings on.

Pondering the moldy tomes