Session 2: Preparing for the Long Haul and the Next Session

GM preparation! Probably one of the most important and key requirements to any successful ttrpg. I am a big supporter of constant preparation. Sometimes that means heavy prep that will carry me the next 2 - 3 sessions, sometimes it's for a session in the next twenty minutes. No matter what, though, I prepare.

I do not believe you can have a successful campaign without proper preparation.

Why do i feel that way? Well, for one, I think that's kind of the whole point of being a GM: to be prepared. You're playing against people with free will that may go right when you want them to go left. Being prepared ensures that no matter which direction they chose, you're ready to react to it. I have a much longer rant regarding GM preparedness that I'll get into in a future post, but that's not what I'm focusing on today.

Today, I want to talk to you all about how I prepare and the tools I use to feel ready for my next session. Obviously, this is what works for me but I hope some of you can find it useful if you're looking for a place to start.

Part 1: How to start

I have had a diagnosed learning disability and ADHD since I was a child. Some of my greatest struggles with my neurodivergence comes in the form of difficulty with reading, object permanence problems, and auditory processing. For those of you fortunate to not know what those are, let me give a quick blurb on each:

• .Difficulty Reading: This is not an inability to read, but instead an inability to process what I'm reading, especially when in large chunks of paragraphs. It can sometimes take me 3 separate tries of reading a page before my brain finally interprets what I'm looking at.

• Object Permanence: If it's not in front of me, I forget it's there. Think playing peak-a-boo with a baby. This is probably my least favorite and I think it's only gotten worse over time.

• Auditory Processing: Have you ever heard the way Animal Crossing characters or Peanuts adults talk? Imagine that being your every day life. You could be staring at someone, trying to understand them and hear nothing but "Wah, Wah, Wah."

So, those are my hurdles when it comes to GMing. Fortunately, for me, I've had a lot of support in my life to learn how to manage them and find solutions to. I'm hoping if any of you have these same sort of struggles or are just looking for a different way to take notes, this can help you.

I use a web and app-based software call Notion.io to take all of my GMing notes. For one: it's free, which is always great. But what I like the most about it is the ease at which it's able to be organized and reorganized to both help me find information and read it.

My favorite thing about it is its use of toggle lists. It seems so simple but for my reading difficulties, a lot of information can feel overwhelming and hard to compartmentalize. Here's an example from my ongoing homebrew campaign. Are all of these sections filled out now that the campaign is underway? Hardly. But what it helps me with is the ability to tuck away important and fun pieces of information to reference and use later as I please.

Within some of these pages are even more toggle lists. Here's an example of my session preparation:

Here's the elements of what you're looking at:

• I always like to give a fun "summary" at the beginning of my sessions to get everyone back up to speed and pointed in a direction they can go (even if they inevitably don't).

• This current campaign I'm running is a sandbox so I always have a running list of quests and jobs that the characters could run into as well as reference information of important NPCs and locations they might come across.

• Random encounter tables based on possible exploration / travel areas they may go.

• In this particular session, I was preparing for them to enter a dungeon (The Crevasse), so I had written out the full exploration / combat side to be ready.

• Midsummer Day is a major holiday in the world that's upcoming so I have that planned out just in case they decided to ignore everything and chill out for a few days.

• I have a dream sequence ready to go for one of my players the next time she sleeps.

• Inevitably, we had a few players unavailable so instead of running the dungeon I prepped some intermediate one shots I had laying around my house.

• Then my session notes, which are very sparse. I am not a good note taker, even as a player. I have a bad habit of getting invested in the game and forgetting to write things down.

Generally, I use the above format to be able to plaster ALL information I could possibly need to remember for my players in front of me. That way I reduce the chance of forgetting to mention something because I didn't put it on my list of "to dos".

Part 2: How to prepare a campaign

So, you've got plans for a campaign but you can't figure out where to start. I feel you. It can be pretty overwhelming, especially if you're not using a premade campaign. Here's suggestions for each type (homebrew + premade) that I use to help feel ready to run a new campaign.

Premade Campaigns: This one is relatively "easy" as most of the information is written down already, you just need to put it into a format that's easiest for you to comprehend. Personally, I read 100% of the campaign before I start preparing my notes, highlighting as I go to differentiate between plot points, descriptions, combat and important NPCs. Once I've done that, I pick the first chapter / act / whatever is a good stopping point that covers 1 - 3 sessions of game play, and I start to write it out.

Below is a snippet taken from a section of "The Crooked Moon" campaign that I'm preparing. I have a major section that includes rough outline points, level information, campaign specific story points, and music I want to include.

Next we have the organization of the actual campaign. This includes sections on general information about this chapter of the campaign, important NPC information, and quest hooks to use to get my players interested. Finally, I have each of the locations listed out and within each of those locations is whatever pertinent information for that area of the map. The images and maps section is pretty self explanatory.

Here is one of the areas of the map and what I include in it. My descriptions to read aloud are always written in italics. Important sections or information for me, the GM, are in bold. I include possible encounters as well with reasonings as to why an encounter would happen and then I provide the creatures combat information (with their stat block) right in the section for easy access. This format works best for me as it lets me skim the information quickly and my brain is able to read this information better based on how it's broken up below.

Homebrew Campaign: The importance to a homebrew campaign is knowing how you want to start, where you want to start, and where you want to go first. As long as you know those three things, the rest will fall into place as you play with your players and plot out new ideas.

1. How you want to start: this could mean do you want this to be a story about being in a war-torn world or peaceful fantasy? Is there a specific conflict to be aware of, specific history that is important for the characters to know? It can be rough as you'll be molding it into something more later.

2. Where you want to start: is it on the battlefield? In a tavern? Are you out at sea? Give yourself an anchor to build from. For my current homebrew campaign, I created the central hub of Cuanard - a massive kingdom - for the characters to start at. I have some general lore, a rough noble family, but a very highly rendered harbor-based tavern and barkeeper NPC. The players are only level 2, they have no business meeting the Queen of the Seas now so I have no business spending my prep time on rendering her out.

3. Where you want to go first: plan out a "one shot" or send them to a nearby dungeon. Get the action going the first session and figure out what comes from that based on how your players interact with it.

The best advise I read about starting any campaign is that you just need to start. You can't write the entire plot of the campaign yet as no one has interacted with it. You need your players to help you, that's the whole point. You'd have better luck just writing a book rather than GM if you didn't want people to change how it all ended.

Part 3: Planning for the unexpected

The first few sessions have been prepped, everyone is starting in a quiet tavern at a pass-through town, your ready to hook your players in with an attack from a nearby party of goblins. Everything is going as planned and then, instead of charging after the goblins that have run off to regroup, your players call it a job well done and head off to the next town.

Now what?

Well, first off, welcome to GMing ttrpg. Improv and quick decisions are a GM's greatest weapon when it comes to dealing with your players. After all, you want them to have their own agency, right? But that goblin battle at their base was going to be so cool! They can't have just ignored it like it was nothing. I have a few recommendations for you and these are things I've had to learn myself over the years.

1. Use their change in direction to move your quest hook from over there, to over here. Simple as that. Surprise! There's a goblin ambush and they're planning on overwhelming you all and taking you back to their base whether you like it or not.

2. Show them the "consequences" of their actions or inactions. While they walk they continue to find ruined carriages and dead victims from the goblin party. If only they could be stopped!

3. You let it go and move onto the next quest hook. Sometimes, it's best to just call it a loss. They don't have to like everything and do everything you set up.

It's examples above that make being prepared 1 - 2 sessions ahead important. If the players choose to skip something but you've still got another full session to pluck plot points from, let them skip it!

So, I hope what I've listed above doesn't make me look too crazy and I hope you all have found some of it helpful to use in your own campaigns. Generally, note taking is dependent on the person and how they best see and ingest the information. No one else is going to read how you put your thoughts together so if it makes sense to you and it works for you, more power to you.

Beyond Notion.io there are a couple of other notetaking applications I would recommend if you want to try something else. Most of these are advertised from fellow GMs and don't work well for me, but maybe they will for you!

• WorldAnvil.com

• Obsidian.md

• GoogleDocs

What sort of note taking apps do you like to use for your campaigns? How much time to do you take to prepare? Do you do post session prep? Let me know!

Looking forward to your sentiments.

I'll see you next session.

Julia