How I Prep
Jean de Bosschère. "Read Books on Practical Navigation" from Weird Islands. 1921.
There's a bandwagon going in the Rainbow OSR Discord asking referees to talk about how they prep their games. Reading over some of the other entries, I think I am on the low prep end of the spectrum, but I figured I'd share. We can basically break my prep into two phases: before and during the campaign.
Before the Campaign
These days, my games are almost exclusively in a micro-campaign format - about six sessions and focused in on a specific question or tense situation. This helps limit the scope of my prep significantly.
Before the first session, I gather the following materials:
- A player-facing map.
- A copy of the player-facing map that I have annotated with hidden points of interest and location notes.
- An encounter table (ideally annotated with stats).
- A list of 20 or so setting appropriate names.
- A roster of factions with characters, goals, and resources
Am I running a published system or some homebrew I've cobbled together? If the former, I make myself a cheat sheet with page numbers or links to the parts I expect to need to reference most often - price lists, travel procedures, spell details.
Am I running a published module? If so, I read through the module cover to cover, trying to digest the general material and skimming over specific locations. In practice, this is how I populate my encounter table and faction roster.
During the Campaign
The biggest outlay in effort mid-campaign comes in the form of the detailed session reports that I write. I try to type these up within 24 hours of running a game in order to crystallize the people, places, and concepts that came to the fore.
Before each session, I gather:
- Local area maps (often drawn by hand and scanned)
- Handouts or reference images I plan to share
- A local encounter table (often linked to the broader region)
I review the factions on my roster. Did any actions in the last session affect their resources or goals? Did a significant amount of time pass such that they might have acted on their own recognizance? Are they active in the areas I anticipate the players are likely to visit during our session?
I also review the players and their characters. What have they been interested lately? What character abilities or gear have they not used in a while? I don't really bend my prep towards those and I tend to rely heavily on procedure at the table, but I will bend my improv so it's useful to make a note of themes to pull forward later.
Occasionally, the players will loudly announce what they plan to do next session - for instance, rob a governor's mansion. If they do, then I will go out of my way to prepare handouts, maps, and character rosters for the place they intend to visit. I rarely spend more than 20 minutes on this though.