And yes, flexibility is always good. Sometimes it is harder to do, especially if the system makes improvisation too intricate, but always a valuable tool.

The tricky thing for me is that the insanely detailed backstory prep can be fun. I like creating things, and I have trouble balancing my enjoyment the act of creation with the practical knowledge that what I’m creating may never get used.

ScottM: You’re right about the bolded sentence — I’m making a couple of assumptions there. One is that that focus shouldn’t = railroading. In nearly every session, though, there will be things you’re as close to 100% certain as possible will come up — that’s where I think the focus should be.

The second assumption is that you’re flexible, and can create new material on the fly. I’m a big fan of winging it, and if you follow this guideline and focus on the certainties when you prep, you’ll have some grey areas (unprepped) to deal with during play.

Does that make sense?

Russell: I’d argue that groundwork prep (foreshadowing, etc.) fits this guideline pretty well as long as you know it’ll come up. Prepping 10 facts about drow culture, for example, sounds like a concise and useful thing to have for the game you were running. A list of the the drow’s 10 favorite foods, on the other hand, probably wouldn’t be.

If you know it’s important, focus on it. I’d still prioritize prep time for stuff that has immediate impact, but you’re right that setting up some things in advance is equally important over the long haul.

On the topic of reusable prep, Chris Chinn wrote a great post awhile back about GMing character-driven games that sounds very similar. It boiled down to having strong, interesting NPCs and essentially just GMing the way players play: They know their PCs, and react accordingly.

Jens: I like your list a lot. Thank you!

Yes, when they’ve hit an area that’s completely unprepped– that you haven’t thought ahead to at all– it’s a good time to call a commercial break… or just end early for the night, as you suggested. It doesn’t take much prep to continue– a good picture (or mental image) of a drow that you can extrapolate from– but your “10 basic facts” is great reusable prep.

Perhaps a good sequential checklist would be a way to go about building adventures.

It could be something like this:

1) Brainstorm things that you and your players would find EXCITING and FUN!

2) Take the 3 best thing and try formulate plots that involve them all. Pirates, Men in Black, Trade Embargo => “Some pirates have looted a secret transport carrying a precious and dangerous religious artifact. Players are secret agents who specialices in retreival and cover up”

3) Start in the middle of the Action: What would a cool start scene be?

4) NPC’s and motivation

5) Cool scenes that would be FUN and MEMORABLE.

6) Rough storyline

7) Maps of key places of interest

Prepare to improvise. Random encounters and that sort of stuff.

Then indulge yourself in favourit DM work.

- Jens Poder

History/Backstory is something that you’ll probably not need, per-se, but I feel like if you skimp out on it too much … You’re likely to end up stumbling into a corner where there’s no sensible explanation for why events are happening.

Naturally this isn’t entirely contradicting to the general principle of only focusing on what you know will come up … I suppose it’s a matter of knowing the art of triage. As an art rather than a skill, a lot will likely depend on your gut instincts and your perception of your intended audience (the group).

For example, in one game, the PCs were eventually headed into a territory that was inhabitated by
drow-equivalents. I had vaguely planned a random encounter with drow rangers at that point, but hadn’t really thought beyond that because I thought the adventure that they’d face before they got there would take the whole session. When they got through the previous bit faster than I expected,
and hit the borders of the drow forest, my narration suddenly went into the toilet. “Ummm..
you’re in a dense forest… there are some Fallen
elves around…. ” I could have put in the prepped random combat encounter, but it would have sucked because it would have been totally pointless. Instead, I admitted I wasn’t prepared,
and we quit early for once.

For the next game, I prep by making up a list of about 10 basic facts about
Fallen elf culture: how their society is organized, what kind of classes are
appropriate for which social groups, where they
live, what their taboos are, who is allied with whom, etc. The list gave me a number of ideas for
adventure hooks, such as a holiday , “The Feast
of the Queen of Never”, a place where one could
have a vision of one’s death, and a feud between rival priestesses of Lolth.

The next game, we picked up with where we left off.
The PC’s found a concealed ramp, looking like
a fallen log, where the road continued into the
canopy, where the drow actually lived.
They got to a drow settlement that was unexpectedly
hospitable to outsiders, and bought a bunch of
souvenirs, including Lolth trinkets for good luck.
They encountered the rangers, but in a way that
they had common cause with them against a mutual
foe. They were really excited about the Measure
of Days, and seeing their deaths, so they went
there directly, where they met one of the feuding
priestesses. On the other hand, they heard about
the Feast of Never and said, “Sounds cool, but it’s a bit out of our way.” So the prep for that
was “wasted”. Except in my view, cool options that the players can opt OUT of make the game cooler.

By realizing that some prep will be “wasted” to
give the players choices, the temptation to core-dump everything on them is minimized. They don’t need to know everything I need to know about
the setting. In this case, I actually gave the
player whose character had a drow contact the
original list of facts about drow culture. They could consult it as needed; I didn’t use game time on it.

The trick I’ve learned to make prep slightly easier is to use foreshadowing. I’ll prep a few things in a big picture sort of way, and let the party hear rumors about these things, a session or two
before they’ll become relevant. Those that the players get enthusiastic about, I prep in greater detail for the next session. The rest can stay
as background, with the party continuing to hear about their development. Maybe some other group of adventurers goes off to find the missing blacksmith. Later, our group hears that the other party is still missing, or has succeeded. No pressure, they either eventually take the hook or the situation resolves itself in the background.

Russell

I suspect it’s better to focus on reusable prep– like villain + motivation, whether he makes it onscreen this episode or next. If you have enemies with motivation, they will cross the PCs path. On the flipside: even if you plan out the Senator’s speech, wasting your time on getting it right down to the word is a waste, even if that’s where the session will start (so you’re guaranteed to hit it).

The whole article’s good; I just think that bolded piece is misleading in isolation.

I brought a friend to the same game, and the same thing happened to him.

And neither of us are any worse off for not remembering anything… I figure, the DM put a lot of work into it and it was probably fun for him to explain everything, so I can’t really begrudge him that.

Once you have that moment, you kind of realize that what it means to be a Game Master isn’t playing with pawns on a nicely detailed chess board, but being more of a referee and building a collaborative story.

It can be a tough lesson to learn, as the standard methodology we’ve been taught for so long invovles GMs, in isolation, engaging in extensive Tolkien-esque world-building. This just doesn’t make sense to me any more.

In terms of facility history, a barebones framework should suffice: founded by Mr. Smith in the year 20XX for the purpose of guiding humanity to the Singularity; experiments worked on have included research into artificial intelligence, cyberware, etc. You don’t need to know who the third Director of Operations was 50 years ago, but it might be good to know that Dr. Von Suchandsuch was in charge of the research and experimentation that left the Big Bad (an escaped test subject) with superhuman strength, some badass implants, and a sociopathic dissociation.

What level of detail do you other GMs find appropriate for your locales?