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Never Unprepared: The Complete

Game Masters Guide to SessionPrep is copyright 2012 by Phil

Vecchione, all rights reserved,

and is published by Engine

Publishing, LLC with permission

All artwork is copyright

2012 by Engine Publishing,

LLC, all rights reserved

Engine Publishing, the Engine

Publishing Logo, and the truncated

gear device are trademarks of

Engine Publishing, LLC

Gnome Stew, The Game Mastering

Blog, and the Gnome Stew logo

are trademarks of Martin Ralya

Mention of , , or TM products

and services is not intended as a

challenge to those rights or marks,

or to their holders All such products

and services are the propertyof their respective owners

The Engine Publishing logo was

designed by Darren Hardy

Published by Engine Publishing,

LLC in July 2012

Dedication

To my wife Florence, for putting me onto this path, and

supporting all my gaming and other endeavors over the years

To my children, Dante and Rose:

Embrace your creativity in all you do

To my gaming group, who were the lab rats for all my

tinkering and experimentation as this process evolved PV

Credits

Author: Phil Vecchione

Publisher: Martin Ralya

Editor: Martin Ralya

Art Director: John Arcadian

Graphic Designer: Darren Hardy

Layout: Darren Hardy

Cover Artist: Matt Morrow

Cover Designer: Darren Hardy

Interior Artists: Matt Morrow, Christopher Reach

Diagrams: Phil Vecchione

Indexers: Martin Ralya, Phil Vecchione

Proofreaders: Robert M Everson, Daniel Milne

Capitalist Tool: Kurt Schneider

In memory of Eric Wujcik

With special thanks to my Keurig and

my fatman chair, who supported me

throughout my writing PV

enginepublishingcom

PO Box 571992

Murray, UT 84157


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Contents

Foreword 4

Introduction 6

How to Use This Book 7

Understanding Prep 9

1: Prep is Not a Four Letter Word 10

2: The Phases of Prep 153: Brainstorming 21

4: Selection 28

5: Conceptualization 38

6: Documentation 48

7: Review 58

Prep Toolbox 66

8: Tools for Prep 67

9: Mastering Your Creative Cycle 75

Evolving Your Style 85

10: Your Personal Prep Templates 86

11: The Prep-Lite Approach 99

12: Prep in the Real World 106

Conclusion 117

References and Inspiration 119Index 121

Contributor Bios 125


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IntroductionIve never read an RPG or supplement that has told me how to prep or my sessions.Most o them talk about encounter building and campaign planning, but none othem lay out what inormation needs to be in my session notes, how long my notesshouldbe, or even the best way to recordthem. I dont know i thats an unrealisticexpectation to place on game designers, but since the dawn o the hobby we GMshave been let to wander in the desert trying to gure out how to prep our sessions.

Te RPG blogging community has done some work to help advance this aspect oGMing, but the number o articles on how one should prepare their session notesis drowned out by a deluge o articles on how to speed up combat, the best classcombinations to take, and the reasons to love/hate every version o Dungeons &DragonsM. I youre lucky, you may stumble on the occasional article with some

nuggets o inormation which, through trial and error, can be cobbled together intosome kind o system to prepare or your game.

Te end result is that many GMs hate to prepare their session notes. I have yet toencounter a GM who is excited to prepare their notesat best, they have made somekind o uneasy truce when it comes to getting their prep work done. Not me: I ama GM who likes to do my prep. Not because I like to give up time or other ormso leisure to write encounters, but rather because I have come to appreciate that thetime I spend on my prep will make the games that I run so much better. I have also

created a personal system whereby I am not a slave to my prep; instead, my prep isminor to-do accomplished in the course o my day.

My goals in writing this book are to share my own experiences with, and techniquesor, session prep; and to make prep much less painuland perhaps even pleasantor GMs. o the best o my knowledge, this is the rst gaming book ever writtenexclusively about game prep.

What I share in NeverUNprepared: Te Complete Game Masters Guide to Session

Prepis not a specic method or how to prepare or a game. Tat kind o approach isnovel but infexible and will become stale as our hobby continues to evolve. Ratherthis book looks at prep in a more holistic way, identiying its role and your specicneeds, but will require you to determine how to meet those needs. Dont worry,though: Tere are plenty o tips and suggestions on how to do exactly that in thisbook.

When you have completed the book, uncovered those needs, and worked to solve

them, the end result will beyourprep systemand you will know how to grow andadapt that system as you run dierent games and embark on dierent campaigns.

Phil VecchioneBualo, NYMarch 2012


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How to Use this BookNever Unpreparedis designed to be read, internalized, and adapted or your own useas a GM. Whether youve run a ew games, never run one, or have run hundreds orthousands o sessions, youll nd things in this book that you can put to use rightaway to improve, streamline, and better understand your prep process.

Why a Book about Game Prep?Im hardwired at the genetic level to prepare or things: Trough my maternalbloodline I am hal-Scottish, and come rom the Johnston clan. Our clan mottoisNunquam non paratus, Never Unprepared. And while this trait does not carrythrough to all o my relatives, it is strongly expressed in me. I am rarely without apocketknie, and I always have just what I need in my work bag. I hate to be caught

unprepared and am at my most comortable when I have done my research beoreany signicant event.

I have been a gamer since 1982 and have been a GM or nearly all o those years.I cut my teeth on the Moldvay D&D Basic Set and crated my rst dungeons ongraph paper rom the stationery store. Over the years I have run numerous cam-paigns under a variety o systems, and Ive written out my session notes in many

Artist: Christopher Reach


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diferent ways. I have written and run thousands o sessions, and have been un-derprepared, over-prepared, and sometimes just prepared enough. In the course orunning those games, Ive developed a good eel or what common elements appearin the prep or any game.

When I am not in my basement gaming (yes, I game in my basement), writing gam-ing books (I was one o the authors and designers, as well as the project manager,o Engine Publishings two rst books, eUreka: 501 Adventure Plots to Inspire GameMastersand Masks: 1,000 Memorable NPCs for Any Roleplaying Game), or writingarticles or the GMing blog Gnome Stew (gnomestew.com), which Ive done since2008, I am a project manager by proession. As a project manager I have experiencein time estimates, scheduling, and planning. I have an understanding o how to takesomething complicated, break it up in to manageable parts, and then tackle them

over time in order to achieve a goal.Te culmination o all o this has been a journey, undertaken over the past 10 years,to understand session prep and how to hack it or best efect. It is through trial anderror that I have assembled the concepts and elements presented in this book, withthe hope that the things that I have learned can benet other GMs.

The Breakdown

Heres what youll nd in each section oNever Unprepared. Each section buildsupon the others.

Understanding Prep

o really dive into how to build your own system or prep, we have to understandthe nature o prep. First well look at the role o prep and its phases, and then wellbreak down those phases and look at each step and its importance. In this sectionyou will come to understand your own prep cycle and to identiy the phases where

youre strongest, and those where you need to develop your skills.

Prep Toolbox

In the next section well look at some o the components that go into creating yournotes. Well look at various tools to create prep notes; well also talk about creativecycles and energies, and how to do the right things at the right time. Ten we willaddress creating a personal prep template that complements your style.

Evolving Your Style

In the nal section, well talk about how to evolve and adapt your style as you gainexperience. We will also address how to re-evaluate your tools when you switchgames and as technology changes.

How to Use this Book


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Understanding Prep


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Chapter 2:The Phases of Prep

A common misconception is that prep is the thing you do when you write your notes

or draw the maps or your upcoming game. Prep begins beore that, and it goesthrough a series o phases that can eventually yield a stack o notes and maps. Di-erent people place emphasis on dierent phases, and people have varying skill levelsin each phase. Mastery o each o the phases o prep will make you very good at thiscritical aspect o GMing.

When we talk about the prep process we are talking about starting with nothingand progressing to a set o notes, maps, and other useul tools that we need or anupcoming game. Tis is not only the written material we require or the game, but

also the mental preparation that allows us to run the material in a session. How weget rom nothing to notes is a process that can be broken down into a number odiscrete phases. At each phase we move closer to being prepared to run the game.

How This Came AboutI did not set out to dene the phases o prep; I came across them naturally as I beganto take an interest in productivity and lie hacking (the latter being the practice o

using tricks, shortcuts, and various other methods to increase efciency in dierent



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areas o ones liesee lifehacker.com or more). I began to read a lot o articles aboutthe creative process and how people in various creative endeavors, rom artists anddesigners to those in advertising, actually worked. At the time, I was a sotware de-veloper; this too is a creative endeavor, even i the medium you work in is somewhatmore structured.

I began to take things that I read and apply them to my gaming, specically thecreative process o coming up with an adventure (or story or plot, i you preer). Temore I did this the more I began to see that the overall process o prep was muchmore than just writing my notes. I began to notice the early phases, the intangiblestage o the creative process where ideas are born. As this introspection continued Istarted to see the boundaries between one process and the next. I explored the mean-ing o each one, and looked or how each phase contributed to the whole process.

Te outcome o this process o observation was a more ull understanding o a par-ticular creative process or prep. Based on talking to riends and ellow GMs, Ibelieve that this is a natural process that many o us ollow, in most cases withoutreally understanding it.

The PhasesPrep has ve phases. Collectively, these take the roughest o ideas and hone it into a

scene or story. Your brain naturally goes through these phases, and its possible thatyou might not always be aware that they are occurring. Te phases o prep are:

1. Brainstorming

2. Selection

3. Conceptualization

4. Documentation

5. Review

BrainstormingTis phase is when ideas are spawned. At this stage they are rough, unrenedthoughts about the story or a given scene, or sometimes even just a line o dialogwithin a scene. Ideas are just that: small and incomplete. Tey lack the renement oa ully ormed thought. Tey dont always make sense; they can be silly, serious, oreven inappropriate. Teir power comes rom their nearly limitless potential. Becauseo their imperection and incomplete nature, they dont have to conorm to any rules.Tey are what they are: possibility in its rawest orm.

Brainstorming can happen nearly anywhere and under a wide variety o conditions.It can happen spontaneously while driving to work, talking to a riend, or evensitting in a meeting. Some people rely on ideas appearing randomly, calling themashes o insight or strokes o genius. Others learn to rene this exercise and are ableto enter a highly creative state in which they generate lots o ideas about a given topic

(or many topics). Te best example o this is in the eld o advertising, which

Chapter 2


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combines a highly creative process with crushing deadlines and competition; i youdont churn out a lot o ideas, and quickly, you lose.

When we brainstorm we generate a host o unrened ideas, each o which has achance o being something that we may use in an upcoming game. Not every idea

can be used as soon as it springs to mind, though, and thats where the process oselection comes in.

SelectionTis is the phase where we select the ideas that we want to use in our upcominggame. Every idea generated during brainstorming has the potential to be a goodidea. In this phase, we apply a dose o reality to that pool o ideas and narrow theeld to one ideaor a handul o ideasthat we will then rene.

In this way you become like the gem cutter who examines several rough stones, ana-lyzes them, looks or characteristics that make or a avorable stone, and selects thebest candidates to cut. Some stones will be so obviously high-quality that you knowthey should be cut immediately, others youll hold onto to cut another day, and someyoull discard because they will never yield a worthy gem.

How you sort your ideas and select the best ones will have a lot to do with under-standing the kind o game you are running and the players who are participating

in the game. You will need to understand what ts within the campaign world andwhat breaks the ourth wall. You need to be aware o what kinds o stories interestyour players and what stories will disengage or even upset them. You will also needto understand your own abilities as a GM and determine i a given idea is somethingthat you think you can pull o in a game.

At the end o the sorting, your idea isnt really any more ully ormed than it waswhen it was conceived during brainstorming, but now it has passed through a ew

logical lters and been ound worthy o additional thought and consideration. Youthen need to build out this idea into something more usable in a process called con-ceptualization, the next phase o prep.

ConceptualizationIn the conceptualization phase we now take each idea and expand upon it; we applylogic, give it a description, and t it into the overall game. Where the brainstormingphase was about limitless possibly, conceptualization is about making your idea work

within the reality o your game.

For an idea to be useable within a game, you need to make sure that it ts into thelogic o the story. What characters or groups are involved in this idea and what arethey doing? Do those things make sense based on what you already know about yourgame? How will you mechanically express some o the actions or elements o theworld? Do those t within the rules o the game?

The Phases of Prep


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Prep Toolbox


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Chapter 9: MasteringYour Creative Cycle

Tere is never quite enough time to get done all the things you want to do, be it in a

day, a week, or even a lietime. We are creatures o obligations and responsibilities,and our lives are ramed by a series o commitments that are made to ourselves andto other people. Its a condition that only increases in both volume and complexity aswe get older and more responsibilities are given to us in our careers and the amilieswe build.

In a sea o responsibilities, its hard to nd the time to work on a game. Ater all,many non-gamers will say, Its just a game... I we listen to those people too closelywe might start to believe them. What we need to remember is that our games are

our hobby; theyre an outlet or the stresses in our lives, and a reward or the hardwork we do. Hobbies, in general, are necessary or people to have ull lives, and needto be treated not as a throwaway activity, but rather as a key element o what makesus who we are.

Its equally important to remember that gaming isa hobby, and that we do have allthose other obligations and responsibilities. So while we must carve out a place inour lives or our hobby, we must also be realistic, give it a reasonable amount o timein our daily lives, and not overindulge in it at the expense o our other obligations.

Getting Prep Doneo adapt and paraphrase David Allen: Prep has to get done. From the moment younish your session until your next session starts, the clock is ticking. All the phaseso prepbrainstorming, selection, conceptualization, documentation, and reviewhave to happen beore the next time you sit down behind the screen. It can be a loto work.

You know what happens when prep doesnt get done: You arrive at the game unpre-pared. Some GMs will run what they have ready, and just play a short gameaterall, some gaming is better than none. Others will run what they have and wing therest; this can be hit and miss or everyone involved. And some will balk and cancelthe game; do this too oten, and you wont have a game to cancel.

As a GM, then, you want to be able to get your prep done in a timely manner with-out being stressed. Lets break those two elements down a bit.

In a timely manner means you want to have enough time to get your prep donebetween sessions, along with meeting all the other obligations and commitmentsyou have as a partner, parent, proessional, and/or riend. You want to have enoughtime so that i something unexpected comes up, and it always does, you can adaptand still complete your prep.


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Chapter 10: YourPersonal Prep Templates

Up to now Ive avoided talking about what actually goes into your session notes. Ive

discussed the creative process, the tools required or prep, and understanding andmanaging your creative process, all o which has built up to this moment. Its timeto talk about what makes up your session notes.

Most GMs have developed some method o prep through trial and error using in-stinct as a guide. When GMs tell me that their prep is tedious and takes too long, itsoten because theyre putting too much material into it. Te design o their approachto prep was not a conscious process. Tey dont have a eel or what needs to be intheir prep and what could be removed, because they havent designed their prep sys-

tem. Teir uncertainty orces them to include more and more material in their prep,until it becomes a chore to prepare.

Tis chapter takes a very deliberate and ocused approach to determining whatshould be included in your prep. Te end product will be written templates or ses-sions, scenes, and special cases that you can use to prep more efectively and e-ciently, because theyre built around your specic strengths and weaknesses as aGM.

The Purpose of PrepA quick review: Your prepthat is, whats in your head and what you have writtendownis everything you need to eel comortable running your session. When yourprep ails you, whether that ailure is related to whats in your memory or on the pageor screen, your ability to run your session smoothly is compromised.

In Its Simplest FormYour documentation is the notes which detail the adventure that youre running oryour players. Your notes are most likely going to be in chronological order, with theadventure starting at the beginning and concluding at the end.

Your adventure is likely to be broken up into smaller partsscenes or encounters.Each o these elements encapsulates a part o the story: a dialog with the king, abattle with the rat men, or a chase through an asteroid eld. Scenes also have a be-ginning and an end. Your documentation should also be broken down into scenes

or encounters.

In addition to your scenes there will be supplemental material which supports youradventure. Most oten this takes the orm o NPC stats and maps, but depending onthe game you run you might have some other material as well. Tis material is otentied to one or more o the scenes, and thus exists outside o their chronological struc-

ture; that oten means its at the end or on separate pages rom your main notes.


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Tere are three levels to your documentation, and at each level there are multipleelements you need to document and prep. Te highest level is your session notestaken as a whole. What elements need to be included when you start your sessionnotes? Te next level down is the scene. What kinds o elements should you includein your scenes? At the lowest level are the needs o individual scenes: a combat scene

will have diferent needs than a social scene. What elements are important to thosescenes?

In order to account or all three levels and all o the necessary elements, you need toset yoursel up to succeed.

Setting Up for SuccessYour prep needs to be designed to set you up or success. Yes, designed. By thinkingabout what should be included in your notes, youll be undertaking a design process;your personal prep template is the outcome o that process. Te design o your preptemplate hinges on several actors:

What are your strengths as a GM?

What are your weaknesses as aGM?

What kind of game are yourunning?

What type of campaign are yourunning?

By understanding and then answering the questions above, you can then determinewhat elements should be included in your prep. Once you know that, you can builda template around those needs. Te template will be a tool or your documentation,one thats designed to set you up or success by highlighting the elements you needto dene at each level. By ocusing on those elements youll create better adventuresand your documentation will be more helpul to you when you are running yourgame.

Te rest o this chapter will highlight things that should be included in your prep,and show you how to assemble your personal prep template. Using that advice, youwill be able to design a prep template that ts you.

Your Strengths as a GM

Every GM is stronger at some aspects o running a game and weaker in other areas.When youre strong in a specic area, you dont need to look at your notes that oten

during the session. Tat strength means that youre in command o that particularGMing skill.

What are your strengths as a GM? During which parts o a scene or a session doyou eel most comortable behind the screen? Do you deliver great dialog? Or maybe

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awesome room descriptions? Do you excel at clever NPC tactics during combat, orknow the duration o every spell in the game? ake a ew moments to jot down theareas where you eel most comortable.

Personally, Im most comortable describing locations. I can generally see the area

in my mind and describe it to my players in an evocative way through words andgestures. Im also comortable with NPC dialog. When a PC engages an NPC indiscussion, Im good at playing of that character and going back and orth with theplayer. Im not a master in either area, and I always strive to improve at those skills,but I am comortable with both activities.

Your template should include the least documentation in the areas where yourestrongest as a GM. I you include these elements in your template, they should beminimal; just a ew bullet points or words as reminders. Ater all, these are your

strengthswhy waste time writing them down when you dont need to reerencethem when you run the session?

As an example, because Im comortable improvising descriptions, I dont include asection or descriptions in my template. Rather, I usually include just a small notewith some tags to remind me o what I want to describe. For instance, i I were todocument the description o a orest clearing it might look like this in my notes:Forest clearing: mist, moss on trees, dense canopy, light breeze. Tat would be all

Id need to describe this location to my players during the game.

Chapter 10


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