Turtle's Minimal Prep

Prep is infamously one of the most anxiety-inducing aspects of being a new game master. In the past, I’ve had issues with my thoughts on the right amount of prep preventing me from having fun and cancelling campaigns. Since then, I think I’ve learned a lot of lessons about how to run games.

This writeup covers two things: First my general philosophy on prep and second, the typical system that I use for most games.

Rules

1. You already prepped
2. Prep serves the game
3. Only prep what you can’t do at the table
4. Prep is about the characters
5. Remove all unpleasant prep

You Already Prepped

Much of preparedness for RPGs involves having a lot of genre-appropriate information loaded into your head, ready to apply to the game table. That means that watching movies, thinking about past books you’ve read or reading blog posts is probably prep. Embrace the fact that you’re probably already mentally doing the work to be ready for a game. Your cache of genre information and the ideas in your head are better and more unique that you think.

Prep Serves the Game

The prep that you do should be designed to be used at the table and make it easier to run the game in the moment. Consider what prep aids your game’s story, genre and themes. Fill the gaps that you personally don’t feel capable of doing during the game session.

This doesn’t mean that the prep you do must all be used. In fact, not using all your prep is a good sign. It means that you’re willing to sacrifice your own ideas in favor of your table’s personal story. You’re respecting your player’s choices. Just doing some prep can get you in the right mindset to run your game and that is valuable in itself. And of course, all prep that hasn’t been used yet can be repurposed, reskinned and recycled later in the game. Be inventive with what you’ve done.

Only Prep What You Can’t Do at the Table

Time is precious, so spend the moments that you prepare to focus on the things that are hard for you to do in the heat of the moment. Review the things that you consider yourself weak on as an improviser and make sure that you're ready for those.

For mandatory pre-game prep: Consider name lists, fight premises, combatant stat blocks, battle maps, villain monologues or pictures of NPCs. Depending on your game system and GMing style, many of these things are totally optional but knowing you and your game system is part of being better as a GM.

If your prep is optional and enjoyable, don’t let me stop you from doing it, but I think a healthy and essential part of learning to improve as a GM is asking what aspects of your prep is truly necessary.

Prep is About the Characters

When you prep a game, you’re prepping for the players’ characters. You’re not writing a novel or building a world. You’re helping your players build a story specific to their characters. While it’s invariably true that part of your desire as a GM is to portray a complex, living world, ask yourself if what you’re doing is helping your players experience a more interesting game or if it’s extraneous work. It’s often true that the further you get from your player characters and their goals, the more your game world gets out of focus, and that’s fine.

Remove All Unpleasant Prep

There is a common adage in the RPG space that “the GM is a player, too.” There are many ways that this can be interpreted, but in this case it’s important to highlight that everyone is coming to the table to have fun, including the GM. Prep is often a necessary part of the game and because it is part of that game, it should be as fun as possible. Find ways to minimize or remove the aspects of prep that you don’t enjoy. Consider what is making you bored or why. Speed up, abbreviate and work to become better at improvisation to avoid the stuff you don’t enjoy.

This might mean buying modules or using random dungeon generators, asking your players to come up with PC names or use theater of the mind play to avoid maps. Determining the best way to prep is personal and iterative. Seek the parts that make you happy. Respect your own time and needs at the table.

How I Prep

Firstly, I think it’s important to highlight that I don’t necessarily play a lot of grid-based, combat heavy games. I tend to play short campaigns that end before they go far afield in scope. Still, these are the things that work for me.

A Backbone of Tools Before The Game Starts

I use random name generators for NPCs that I create during the session. There are many name generators that exist online for all sorts of fantasy heritages, game genres and more. Before I start my game, I seek out lists of name generators or write down names that work for me.

• https://donjon.bin.sh
• https://behindthename.com/random
• The Story Games Name Project book by Jason Morningstar

I use random map generators or draw maps by hand at the moment. There are many high-quality generators today that can keep you from having to prepare maps in detail that your players won’t necessarily even see.

• https://watabou.itch.io/one-page-dungeon
• https://watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator

Custom random tables written for your game or sourced from other game books online can help you get a sense for the things your players might see, operate as worldbuilding tools and help you improvise scenarios at random. Even if you don’t use these, it can be interesting to think of what’s probable, interesting or both.

I keep note cards for recording NPCs, distributing items and recording player-facing information. I often struggle to use disposable supplies if I don’t absolutely need to but it helps turn abstract information concrete and the more exposure that players have to these things, the easier it is to interact.

One Notebook Page Per Session

For me, the process of populating one page per session in a notebook helps me review what happened last time, prepare for the next session and mentally enter the space that I need to be in to run a game. I do my single page per session in the hour leading up to the game itself. I often listen to genre-appropriate music while I do this.

Last Time

Even if I did a good job of writing up what happened during the session on the previous page, I summarize it with bullet points at the top of the next page. Taking the time to rewrite it helps me get my mind in sync for the rest of my prep.

Questions, Opinions and Other Prep

The main form of prep that I have involves writing down questions that I have for the table. I ask questions about what important NPCs will do in response to past player actions. I ask what players will do in response to new events I’m planning. I tend not to write these things down in any form other than the questions. The process of thinking of questions to ask means that I have to both look back to the previous session and focus on the interesting parts and look forward to what could happen this time.

I never plan more than a session or two in the future. I want my players to lead the way.

Example questions

• What will Tohm do when they discover that their family has left town?
• How will the crew retaliate when they find out that their trade agreement has been violated by the halflings?
• How will the Templars respond to the theft of the artifact?

Example opinions

• Boz feels endangered by the characters’ reckless actions and is unsure if he’ll stick around.
• Jurgon has seen his allies fall and is trying to find out how to act defensively.

Example Actions

• If the players do not act, Loen will complete the ritual and consume the souls of the rest of the island ishabitants.
• If the players do not act, the residents of Lawnfall will starve as Kohbar finishes feeding his pet demon.
• If the players do not act, Kohbar and his soldiers will retreat to the Kingdom of Sails and reinforce Loen’s defenses.

Situations

If it’s appropriate to the game, I try to think of interesting scenes and situations that could come up. I never try to prepare for a specific plot to happen, but I try to make situations that are interesting and call my players to act. If the game has combat-related prep, this is where I do it, but I try to be brief.

Example Situations

• A security check at the town gate is clearly looking for the players
• An immoral alchemist is interrupted by the players mid creation
• An undead dragon emerges from a volcano as the players stand by
• The players’ allies act out while taking a rest in town, possibly causing trouble for everyone.
• The villain of the campaign begins to hunt out opponents with secret police throughout the land.

Combat Game Stat Block collages

In games that require me to engage in combat, I try to build sheets of all of the stat blocks that might be interesting to me on one screen. These are messy blobs of places to record hitpoints, write out clocks and mismatched portions of mechanics that could easily be recombined. I try to combine my need to improvise with a desire to honor the game mechanics.

I have another writeup on how I do combat encounters in games where it matters so I won’t cover that here.