Last month I got on my soapbox about prep, specifically talking about how it does not matter how long your prep is, and I thought I would stay on the topic and talk about how I prep a game today.  This article will be a snapshot of my prep process because this is a GM skill that constantly evolves. It is one that is both a product of the way I GM, and the games I play. What I want to show you is the thought process behind how I get a game ready for the table, what stays in my head, and what gets written down.

Two Page Prep

Today, my prep is basically two pages, or one-page front and back, if you are getting really technical. That is not a constraint, but rather where I wind up. That prep is good for 4-8 hours of play, depending on how hard I am driving the game. I don’t have a single format, allowing the prep to fit the structure of what I am playing, but I do have elements that are always present. When I run a game for the first time, I usually spend a bit of time figuring out the template for my prep, which involves incorporating the important elements I need with the overall structure of the game. For instance: In my prep for Blades in the Dark, the middle portion of my prep is sectioned into Freeplay, The Job, and Downtime, to reflect the three major phases of the game.

How I GM and What I Play

I mentioned in the intro that your GMing style and what you run has a major impact on how you prep. So that the rest of this makes sense, let me take a few sentences to explain both of those. My GMing style is about 70% improv and 30% planned, with my planning mostly up front. I like to come up with a general idea of what is going to happen in the session, set that up, and then let the players loose. I then improv as I play off of what the characters do, always using where I had originally intended the game to go as a guide to where play should lead, but never adhering to that too hard. I am very much a play to see what happens GM.

As for what I play, I mostly play Powered by the Apocalypse games, because they mesh well with how I want to GM. Aside from PbtA games, I have been enjoying the Mutant Year Zero mechanics, used in Tales of the Loop.

The Essential Elements … For Me

When it comes to what I put into my prep, here are my essential elements that are always in my prep:

What Is Going On

This section was inspired by Fear The Boot and has never left my prep, once I learned about it. It is a few paragraphs that describe what is going on in the adventure and can sometimes take up to 25% of my 2-page prep. It is nearly always written in the absence of the player characters and does two things. One, it gives me a background of what has been going on, before the characters get involved. Two, it tells me what the forces in play will do if the characters do not succeed in intervening.

I cannot emphasize enough how important for me this piece is. If I had to reduce or eliminate most of my prep, I would not cut into this section one bit. I can do more with just this section than anything else I prep.

This piece is crucial for me because this gives me the logical construct for the game. What I mean is that as a background, it gives me some understanding of why things are going on and what has happened before. That is important for understanding motivations, clues, and for answering questions about what is going on. As a direction of what is going to happen, it gives me a direction in which to improv the actions/reactions of the NPCs, which then makes their actions drive towards a logical goal.

I cannot emphasize enough how important for me this piece is. If I had to reduce or eliminate most of my prep, I would not cut into this section one bit. I can do more with just this section than anything else I prep.

Major Scenes

Building off the information in What Is Going On, I then come up with 4-6 scenes that I think are most likely to happen in the session. The earliest scenes are the most probable to happen while the latter ones are less possible, as the game unfolds through play. These scenes are typically based on the story beats that would need to be achieved to accomplish the players’ goal, which is nearly always to interfere with the NPCs goal that I outlined above.

As I do for the overall story, I prep these scenes to set up a problem but not how to solve it (something learned from Vincent Baker in Dogs in the Vineyard). They are always based on a logical path to how the problem would be solved.

Example: In a dungeon exploration game (not a dungeon crawl) where the players are to recover a holy artifact, my major scenes would be something like this:

  • Entering The Dungeon – encounter with some monsters to set the tone.
  • Finding Clues of The Big Monster – a scene where I reveal something much worse is in the dungeon, that the players did not know about.
  • Navigating Ancient Traps – a scene about getting past an elaborate trap.
  • Dangerous Battle – combat scene in a location with difficult/dangerous terrain.
  • The Big Monster and the Artifact – A confrontation with the big monster who is also trying to use the artifact.

In each of those cases, there is a clear set-up for what the scene will be about, and then I leave it up to the players’ ideas, the mechanics of the game, the genre we are playing in, and my improv skills to do the rest.

Essential Dialog or Clues

At all costs, I never want to retcon my game to give the players some important piece of information or clue that I was supposed to give them earlier, that I forgot in a past scene. So all of those essential pieces of information get written into my prep so that they can be referenced in play.

Stat Blocks

I always include the stat blocks for anything that the players may encounter. Even if the block is listed in the main book, I copy it into my notes. I do not want to stop and look things up, mid game. I want that information right at my fingertips.

If my game has a lot of different stat blocks, then I may make this its own page (sometimes expanding past my 2-page prep, if needed) and then I have them all in one place. In most cases, I will just put the block or two I need inline with my text.

Relevant Rules

If the scene has any esoteric rules that are not part of my normal play, then they get copied into this section so that, once again, I am not flipping through the book during the game.

Conclusion

As a way to wrap up the session, I have a section where I have notes about how to bring the session to a conclusion. These are often in the form of, “If the players do this, then that happens”. It also includes reminders for any end of session mechanics that need to be engaged.

Putting That All Together

In the absence of the elements or structures needed for a specific game, this is what my prep looks like, at it’s core:

  • What is going on
  • Opening Scene
    • Essential Dialog/Clues
    • Stats
    • Rules
  • Scene
    • Essential Dialog/Clues
    • Stats
    • Rules
  • Scene
    • Essential Dialog/Clues
    • Stats
    • Rules
  • Scene
    • Essential Dialog/Clues
    • Stats
    • Rules
  • Conclusion

I Showed You Mine…Show Me Yours

Your prep is a constantly evolving structure. It changes as you grow as a GM and as you play different games. It is something that both naturally evolves as well as something you can hone.

I showed you what goes into my prep, now show me yours. What elements are essential to you? What structures do you use? What element could you never give up?