DM Prep Questionnaire: Andy’s Answers

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andyslack

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Just for a laugh, here is the Dungeon Master Preparation Questionnaire from The Lazy Dungeon Master, as I would have filled it in had I been asked…

What game preparation activities have the most positive effect on your game?

Deciding what the key factions or organisations are trying to achieve. A lot flows from that. Organisations are better than individual NPCs because lone NPCs have a poor life expectancy once the PCs bump into them.

What game preparation activities have the least positive effect on the game?

Designing new monsters, starships, and equipment – it’s very rare you can’t do what you want with something already in the core rules. Crafting detailed NPCs – the most entertaining ones grow organically at the table.

Thinking back on your most memorable and enjoyable moments at the table, how often were they pre-planned? How often were they spontaneous?

They are invariably spontaneous and unplanned. They grow out of either the interactions between the players at the table, or extreme dice rolls at dramatically appropriate points.

Thinking back on a game that went poorly, how much of the outcome was due to a lack of preparation? What could have you prepared to avoid the poor outcome?

Games go poorly when I break the flow of the game to look things up, usually in a published adventure. There are two solutions: Know the published adventure inside and out, and have detailed notes on it to hand – or stop using published adventures. I’m drifting towards the second option.

If you had only 30 minutes to prepare for a game, how would you prepare?

Read through my notes from the last session and the PCs’ character sheets. That tells me what would be appropriate for them to meet. Riffle through my collection of maps and find a couple of suitable ones. Scribble a few notes on what the PCs encounter where and why it’s there.

Where do you come up with your ideas for your game? What influences you as you prepare to run a game?

Ideas: The usual – real-life history, books, movies, TV, videogames, other games. Influences: What have the players enjoyed in the past? What have they asked for? What open plot threads are there? What cool parts of the setting have we not explored yet?

What are your most useful tips, tricks, and tools when preparing for your game?

Tips and tricks: Handle PC information gathering, shopping, etc. offline by email – this stops it taking up valuable session time and generates more ideas you can weave into current and future sessions. Don’t design if you can reskin. Hold nothing back – game as if you will never get another chance to use all those cool ideas.

Tools: Quick reference sheets for your rules and setting in a display book you can share with players. One or two copies of the character improvement rules, whether that’s a cheatsheet or a second copy of the rulebook; what players want to know most is how their PCs will improve, and when. Pictures of locations, monsters, NPCs that you can share with the players – keeping these in a picture gallery on a tablet works well.



What about you, dear readers?

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