Prep is a Four Letter Word: Intro (Almost a Four Letter Word)

If anyone finds this picture in error you've clearly never GMed for 3.5 DnD

Prep can be a task I truly dread. It's like doing my taxes; I have to do it on time or else. But fortunately that's not really what prepping is. Prep is setting basic things up so that way you can adapt more easily to the players. You're not doing prep to control what happens in the session but to make sure that you can improv more easily, which helps you have more fun.

First, ask what needs to be prepped in your game. Most games are good at telling you what must be prepped for each session, but at a bare minimum you must prepare your setting (even if you bought one), your overarching theme (which is based upon your setting), and the major NPCs of your game (who get their goals from deficiencies in your setting). And that's before you even start prepping your sessions!

Actual session prep can vary widely from game to game. You  might have to do anything from prepping set pieces and monsters, compiling a list of things to challenge the players, compiling charts, to nothing at all (that's rare).

But the real question is why prep at all? If you're good at improvising you may find yourself asking why in the world you'd waste your time with such things. It's possible to make all this stuff up on the fly, so why bother? The answer isn't that you should be making up what's going to happen in the session, that's the job of you and the players to figure out as play progresses.

Think of it as making a meal. Take spaghetti, for instance. It's relatively easy to make, even for cooking illiterate. The ingredients are easy to prep and put together. But y'know what's gonna make it hard to put this meal together? If you had to go to the store every time you needed an ingredient instead of just spending the time to get everything at once. Yes, you could do this, particularly if you're rich, fit, or crazy, but how many people would prefer to get their trips to the store down into as few as possible? That's prep: you're getting everything together so you don't have to constantly come up with new stuff on the fly. No, you're not going to see every contingency; somehow the players will find a way to surprise you, just like sometimes you find that you're all out of Italian seasoning for that spaghetti. But you can have a good amount of the environment, NPCS, and the general area done so that way you can be prepared. That way you can go with whatever the players come up with only using a minimal amount of effort.

Prep isn't about making everything up before hand to throw at your players, it's about making sure that enough of your general bases are covered so that way you can adapt to the majority of player craziness. Rather than having to make up stuff on the fly, it's much better to come to the session with a few things to fall back on, that way you can focus on what's most important: having fun

Stay tuned for next week as we talk about your setting, the container that holds it all!

Supplements

If you're around RPGs for any suitable amount of time you'll run into game supplements. They're expansions of the main game, add-ons that the writers of the game thought would be possibly good for your game and hopefully good for their wallet. As a beginning GM it can be really easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff out there! Take a look at any gamestore with 4th edition DnD or Pathfinder and you'll find dozens of supplements with a variety of subjects, from making your fighters more interesting to adding in entirely new aspects of the game. But before we get started, I have to define my terms. There are two different types of supplements available:

1. Add-Ons: Add-ons are essentially taking an incomplete system and filling in the gaps a little bit more; you get more options to tinker with. Most popular RPGs over the last...however long... have taken this route. They give you a few options in the core game and then keep trucking out more and more extra stuff that they've playtested. These supplements vary in length, price, and quality. Read reviews heavily before purchasing. Adventures also fall into this category: you don't truly need them, but they certainly add to the game. While they're tempting it's really not a good idea to purchase these unless they truly do something for the people at your table and yourself.

2. Game-Changers: It's exactly as it sounds: these change your game in significant ways. Campaign settings and add-ons are the usual fare, but you could make a case that the World of Darkness game line has a central core with each "monster type" being a game-changing supplement. While add-ons can be dropped in and taken out almost at-will, game-changers must be looked at carefully if they're to be included. Running straight 4th edition DnD is one thing, but if you decide to run the Dark Sun Campaign Setting you'll find that entire swaths of rules have been altered or dropped. That and the cannibal halflings might ruin your players' day. Generally game-changers aren't mixed, but there's nothing stopping it besides your own imagination.

What's my basic philosophy on supplements? Approach with caution. Add-ons at their best introduce new ideas about the game that can be a lot of fun to try without changing the core rules all that much, but that's only at their best. At their worst add-ons can bog a game down with unnecessary cruft and even produce combinations that hurt your ability to prep well for your players! Game-changers are interesting, but you'll find that you need them less than you'd think. In the four years I ran 4th edition DnD I only used my setting supplements once, and didn't touch the other two entire worlds I'd bought. It wasn't that I wasn't interested in doing so, I just ran out of time and could only execute so many ideas. You can only get so much.

But, of course, that assumes that the game you're playing has supplements at all! Many indie RPGs are one-and-dones, complete after one entry. Games,like Misspent Youth, Lacuna Part One Second Attempt, and Dogs in the Vineyard are kitchen sinks, where you are given the tools to construct your experience rather than having pre-fabbed tools. If you're going for a game that gives you pre-fab that's fine. I've got a very impressive set of 4th edition books sitting on an entire shelf in my parents' home and I really don't regret sinking all that cash into them. Just realize that what you don't sink into on the time-end of things could hit your wallet.