Spontaneous Preparation
Started playing Dungeons & Dragons again and Im easing back into being a dungeon master, something I enjoyed as a child.
There are two big challenges: Preparation time and wielding narrative tension
The reality of playing DnD as an adult is that time is scarce. And preping for a game as a Dungeon master takes up a lot of it.
Robert Peake, over at https://www.spontaneousdm.com came up with a great one-page one-shot concept.The major arc of the story broken into three acts all on one page.
The specifics of each act are discovered during game play using tables. Rolling the dice against the tables lets me that the mysterious InnKeeper has one dead eye, is poorly dressed and used to be a former prostitute...and wants to help the party because he has a gambling debt to pay off.
I discover this with the players in the game.
Less preparation. More fun.
Separately, Justin Alexander's writing on game mastery are endlessly entertaining.
The 3 Clue Rule:
https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1118/roleplaying-games/three-clue-rule
The importance of not prepping plots:
https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/4147/roleplaying-games/dont-prep-plots
Both great places to start.
Bought his book and I'm halfway through. Got Sly's 'Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master' and Sclander's 'Practical Guide to Becoming a Great GM ' lined up to read next.
I've gone from spending days reading through a campaign's manual, scrambling to figure out how to prepare for the game.
Now it's down to about an hour of prep for a one-shot.
Here's a 33 minutes video of exactly how Robert Peake use the one-page system and the tables to prep for a game
https://youtu.be/kg6igBm_Lik?si=EE8W57bpwbbtKmnD
The best bit is that I'm looking forward to discovering what happens in the game, rather than rehearsing a script.
Still figuring out how to wield narrative tension so I'll have to explore that in a different thread.