You don’t need a lot of prep time for a good game

It’s a fear that all GMs face at one time or another, you’re not prepped for the session that you’re running tonight – Justin over at Stuffer Shack shares one such recent experience in his post, Last Minute Cancellations of One Player – What Do you Do?

In Justin’s case he had a player cancel on him and he decided to hold off on his regular campaign and run something different so the player wouldn’t miss out. This is a far cry from the situation I found myself in, no prep time due to work, family, and procrastination, which leads to a different kind of moment when the doorbell rings.

Justin went about things in a much more calm and orderly approach and pulled together what appears to have been a great session thanks in no small part to a fairly recent issue of Roleplaying Tips published by Johnn Four which covered what to do when you only have 30 minutes of prep time. If you haven’t subscribed to his newsletter, you should.

Justin covers the decisions he made during his prep time, including the thought processes and resources he used – all good reading. One of the things I noticed is that Justin has quite a collection of material to pull from which no doubt made his prep time easier, along with the fact that many his choices included published (as opposed to home grown) material.

I have to admit it though, the inclusion of what happened during the session in the second half of the post was my favorite part. It’s nice to see how things played out in the session with so little prep time and prove the point that you don’t have to spend hours prepping for every session.

Of course, just picking a monster out of the book and having a four hour fight is another way to go but, speaking from experience, I wouldn’t recommend it.

Be sure to check out the post, it’s well worth the read.

May your dice roll well.

Last Minute Cancellations of One Player – What Do you Do? via Stuffer Shack.