Campaign prep is my usual struggle. As long as the larger structure of the world and campaign is worked out, I can prep or improvise a session that's satisfying, but tying everything together into a longer plot (or other structure, e.g. episodic) is tricky.
Same, I can improvise one shots or single sessions without issue but I have a hard time juggling the interests of all my players for satisfying campaign level progression
Honestly, I've never actually done campaign prep in a way which i would call it such, but all three of the mentioned options are of interest to me, so Im game for all of it :)
Do you have a process for breaking down modules? I find that my ADHD sometimes disrupts my ability to digest content that I use to seed adventures in my sandbox, or combine the pre-written content with that of my home-brewed arc. I don’t think a lot of adventures are written in an easy-to-assimilate way… but I’m curious to see read if anyone has found a good process to make that exercise faster or less painful. Also, I’m interested in what you (or anyone here with ADHD, for that matter) does to help with setting boundaries on their time with regards to prep so that their life doesn’t fall to shambles when they’ve forgotten to unclench their jaw (literally or figuratively) for, say, a week or so and been hyper fixated on creating a cool place for their friends to explore. Do folks use timers or apps on their phones? Do you have a friend or partner hold you accountable to a specific period of time? I could spend the entirety of my free time in my worlds but that hedonistic urge always carries consequences.
Personally session prep is my biggest struggle as someone with severe adhd. I rely mostly on my memory (which can be faulty) for prepping a session, and like you mentioned its hard for me to get mundane things like stats and items out of the way. That being said I see a lot of people have problems with campaign prep. My approach to it is to first figure out what story i want to tell, what themes i want it to have, and after i have enough info about my player characters, how their stories will eventually tie into those themes. Makes everything feel while improvised, somehow secretly planned from the beginning, even though I did no such thing!
It's such a basic think, but as someone with ADHD who does Game Prep, I cannot overstate how thankful I am that your videos are only about 10 minutes long. It's such a small thing, but it makes a HUGE difference, and I really appreciate it.
This is perhaps the best advice for prep that I've EVER seen. I'm almost 2 years into a campaign that's been feeling the growing pains of my bad prep for more than half of it. Thank you so much for this, I'm on my way to execute on this.
Your channel is a godsend among all these other youtubers that focus on all the embellishments and not enough time on the real meat and potatoes of tabletop rpgs, thank you!
I haven't seen prep dissected like this before. It was a good watch for me as a semi-experienced GM, but also answered a lot of the questions I see new GMs asking. A future video on content improvisation techniques would complement this video well. It's the other side of the coin IMO. I use randomly generated NPCs heavily, most of them on the spot. It helps me have better variety in NPCs and avoid unconscious biases.
In hindsight, did I as a brand new baby gm spend all my prep time on the Underwater Ghost Cities until the last 2 hours before the session when I realize I didn't put anything on the Docks, cue Panic? yes. yes I did. I've gotten better at redirecting my focus over time, but as always you distill it perfectly & I like the framework of separating out worldbuilding & campaign prep & asking oneself "what am I working on right now, is this what I should be working on right now?" that'll be a good way to check myself so I don't wreck myself with cool-yet-useless Underwater Ghost Cities. also, I love the summary of campaign prep as: "conflict, romantic sub-plot, random pet they picked up somewhere, dubious heists, sidequests" because RELATABLE especially the 'random pet they picked up somewhere,' is that just universal??
And now I'm realizing why the Alexandrian speaks to me so much, he writes about systems and that's something I badly need. Thanks for helping me make that connection!
This is far and away the most helpful kind of content for me. Thank you for making content on being a GM with ADHD, I am grateful for your existence! Easiest subscribe in my LIFE
Listening to your players' interests really can't be overstated, it's so vital to the whole idea of having fun together. And it helps building a session/campaign/world core, after which I'm free to fall down rabbit holes for my own satisfaction 😅 It may very well even worth an episode. An episode on session 0, maybe? Also, gimme all your campaign prep ideas. I've seen so much variance to campaign prep in particular, I'd love to hear your take on it (and on the rest, but especially on this)
Good stuff! I'd love to hear another gm's system for session prep specifically, as i havent yet managed to find or create one that I'm fully happy with. Also my jaw says thanks.
Your video makes a lot of sense! I've struggled with ADD my whole life. When i was a kid, I don't think anyone knew what ADD and ADHD was. I was called slow and lazy so often that i started to belive it. I know the truth now, but it was a real struggle. I am about to run my first campaign as a DM and I've never even played D&D before. What should I prep? Thanks for the insight and help!
I have recorded a one-on-one session where my player was running 4 PCs, and afterward I was able to use Whisper SpeechToText to turn it into text, and it did a really good job. I was even able to then have chatgpt summarize and itemize stuff for me. Sometimes playing with those tools is enough to get me excited to do book-keeping.
Hey so I recently found your channel and I want to thank you for your hyperspecificity. I'm an ADHD GM and I felt incredibly seen and supported by the 3 videos I've watched so far. If you're still working on videos, I'd love for you to address overwhelm and second-guessing, and from this video I'd love if you dove deeper into Campaign prep, as that's the part I struggle with. Again, thank you so much!
Thank YOU for watching, and for being so supportive. I am absolutely still making videos and overwhelm/second guessing is a great topic. Campaign prep is on my list, but it'll be a longer video so it's a little while down the road. Stay tuned though because it's definitely coming. And thanks again for the comment!
My prep is a little different because I'm not interested in crafting courses that I expect the players to take, but rather hooks, starting conditions, and areas populated by detail. At the start of a session the players might decide to head into the swamp, the hills, the forest, the farmland out west, any of the mountainous areas nearby, a town thing, or down into the undercity dungeon beneath the town. They might enter an area with a specific goal in mind that they know about because it's been sufficiently advertised earlier, and then their approach could be the usual fight-n-crawl, a stealth sneak, disguise, or a frontal parley - with or without some scouting effort or divination beforehand - or anything else they come up with. They might find a bunch of secrets, miss a bunch of obvious stuff, fail their original goal, succeed, triumph weirdly, realize they were on the wrong track the whole time, alert the enemy who dogpile them or just clean out the treasure and flee, etc. Or maybe some or all of them die trying. While I have added content as we go to tie into what players are interested in, I don't try to twist the world in service to them. I feel like doing that tends to make them feel like they're the main characters in a story, when I'm shooting for more of a "we're folks in a place and time, crazy stuff happens" and it ends up making sense because we're humans who invent narrative when we can't discover it. The former novelistic approach, again just my opinion, isn't conducive to PCs dying or losing heavily, and I consider the risk of loss to be fundamental to the game part of the gameplay. Without stakes, there's nothing to "make it interesting" in terms of tension. Like playing poker with bottle caps instead of money. That said, if the world and sessions have elements that tie into the PCs, and they end up dying, the continued existence of those elements can remain poignant. So, I do it, but I don't feel that it's necessary. A dwarf can be really into fighting with a pick without me needing to specifically include more magical picks in the game, for example. If someone decides to play a really rare type of wizard, they know it's going to be harder to find support from NPCs, because a whole culture of their wizardry doesn't exist just because they do. You don't read a lot of novels where halfway through the protagonist falls into a pit and dies, and the next chapter is about some new rando. Gaming tastes vary!
As an interesting video idea. Taking the sly flourish 8 steps of the lazy dm. A decent prep system.. And breaking down how the adhd brain responds to it and works with it could be interesting? I find it rather helpful as a basic guide. + As a new/ beginning dm. Im drawn to the structure+ malleability+ flexible bits in the system. But im my own enemy with constantly over preparing+ Wanting things to be the best they can instead of just going for it.
6:04 I did the whole build up from plate tectonics thing. However. I found a way to use the plate lines to bring a living bit to underdark areas. Setting up the idea that in the underdark the plate boundaries are Locations with. Higher food / energy resources+ life. Then out from that would be the deserts / wastelands of the underdark. Yes mostly a complete waste of time. However it helped me build in a greater degree of verisimilitude for my worlds. ..... If I'm gonna present it to players I want it to be real in my head.
That's real. Something I wanna talk about more is choosing when you're going to do something that's ultimately non-essential to the game but offers YOU something as a GM. That's a perfect example; no, you didn't strictly need it, but yes, it added value to your game and, importantly, to your experience as a GM too. We're also here to have fun, and if it's fun for me to spend entirely too much time making a map that'll get used for 20 minutes and then never again, then maybe that's something I shouldn't feel bad about. The real art is knowing what the basics are so you can make sure you got those covered first. From there, follow your joy.
These tips sound great, but I still don't understand why game masters are promoting Justin Alexander or "The Alexandrian" after he plagiarized work from Jennelle Jaquays while she was on her death bed. If you're unaware of the issue, Dungeons & Discourse made a comprehensive video on the topic, although I feel like she gave him more of a pass than he deserved.
What kind of prep do you need the most help with?
Campaign prep is my usual struggle. As long as the larger structure of the world and campaign is worked out, I can prep or improvise a session that's satisfying, but tying everything together into a longer plot (or other structure, e.g. episodic) is tricky.
Same, I can improvise one shots or single sessions without issue but I have a hard time juggling the interests of all my players for satisfying campaign level progression
Honestly, I've never actually done campaign prep in a way which i would call it such, but all three of the mentioned options are of interest to me, so Im game for all of it :)
Do you have a process for breaking down modules? I find that my ADHD sometimes disrupts my ability to digest content that I use to seed adventures in my sandbox, or combine the pre-written content with that of my home-brewed arc. I don’t think a lot of adventures are written in an easy-to-assimilate way… but I’m curious to see read if anyone has found a good process to make that exercise faster or less painful.
Also, I’m interested in what you (or anyone here with ADHD, for that matter) does to help with setting boundaries on their time with regards to prep so that their life doesn’t fall to shambles when they’ve forgotten to unclench their jaw (literally or figuratively) for, say, a week or so and been hyper fixated on creating a cool place for their friends to explore. Do folks use timers or apps on their phones? Do you have a friend or partner hold you accountable to a specific period of time? I could spend the entirety of my free time in my worlds but that hedonistic urge always carries consequences.
Personally session prep is my biggest struggle as someone with severe adhd. I rely mostly on my memory (which can be faulty) for prepping a session, and like you mentioned its hard for me to get mundane things like stats and items out of the way. That being said I see a lot of people have problems with campaign prep. My approach to it is to first figure out what story i want to tell, what themes i want it to have, and after i have enough info about my player characters, how their stories will eventually tie into those themes. Makes everything feel while improvised, somehow secretly planned from the beginning, even though I did no such thing!
It's such a basic think, but as someone with ADHD who does Game Prep, I cannot overstate how thankful I am that your videos are only about 10 minutes long.
It's such a small thing, but it makes a HUGE difference, and I really appreciate it.
This is perhaps the best advice for prep that I've EVER seen. I'm almost 2 years into a campaign that's been feeling the growing pains of my bad prep for more than half of it. Thank you so much for this, I'm on my way to execute on this.
Your channel is a godsend among all these other youtubers that focus on all the embellishments and not enough time on the real meat and potatoes of tabletop rpgs, thank you!
Justice for Fish Satan!
Fantastic and hilarious video! I'd say that you hit it out of the park but there was a distinct lack of baseball jokes
I haven't seen prep dissected like this before. It was a good watch for me as a semi-experienced GM, but also answered a lot of the questions I see new GMs asking.
A future video on content improvisation techniques would complement this video well. It's the other side of the coin IMO. I use randomly generated NPCs heavily, most of them on the spot. It helps me have better variety in NPCs and avoid unconscious biases.
This is one the best tutorial/tips video I’ve seen in this space. Thank you for this resource.
Thank you for saying that! It means a ton to me to know someone is getting value from this. I hope your games are fun, frequent, and full of joy.
Yeah agreed, it's like a whole category of advice that I didn't know I needed but holy crap did I need it. Excited to see more!
In hindsight, did I as a brand new baby gm spend all my prep time on the Underwater Ghost Cities until the last 2 hours before the session when I realize I didn't put anything on the Docks, cue Panic? yes. yes I did. I've gotten better at redirecting my focus over time, but as always you distill it perfectly & I like the framework of separating out worldbuilding & campaign prep & asking oneself "what am I working on right now, is this what I should be working on right now?" that'll be a good way to check myself so I don't wreck myself with cool-yet-useless Underwater Ghost Cities.
also, I love the summary of campaign prep as: "conflict, romantic sub-plot, random pet they picked up somewhere, dubious heists, sidequests" because RELATABLE especially the 'random pet they picked up somewhere,' is that just universal??
And now I'm realizing why the Alexandrian speaks to me so much, he writes about systems and that's something I badly need. Thanks for helping me make that connection!
This is far and away the most helpful kind of content for me. Thank you for making content on being a GM with ADHD, I am grateful for your existence! Easiest subscribe in my LIFE
Listening to your players' interests really can't be overstated, it's so vital to the whole idea of having fun together. And it helps building a session/campaign/world core, after which I'm free to fall down rabbit holes for my own satisfaction 😅 It may very well even worth an episode. An episode on session 0, maybe?
Also, gimme all your campaign prep ideas. I've seen so much variance to campaign prep in particular, I'd love to hear your take on it (and on the rest, but especially on this)
I appreciate this. Thank you very much. Have a sub.
Good video, I liked the parts on the "Three Clue Rule" and on trying to focus on what the players find interesting.
Good stuff!
I'd love to hear another gm's system for session prep specifically, as i havent yet managed to find or create one that I'm fully happy with.
Also my jaw says thanks.
You might have saved me, am running session 0 soon
Good luck! I'd love to hear how it goes
Good luck and have fun!
It went OK! Ended a bit early though
Your video makes a lot of sense! I've struggled with ADD my whole life. When i was a kid, I don't think anyone knew what ADD and ADHD was. I was called slow and lazy so often that i started to belive it. I know the truth now, but it was a real struggle.
I am about to run my first campaign as a DM and I've never even played D&D before. What should I prep? Thanks for the insight and help!
Session prep is where I need the help.
I do not have ADHD (I think) but when I see a channel called "AstralMarmot" talking about TTRPG, I subscribe.
You are clearly a person of taste and class
I have recorded a one-on-one session where my player was running 4 PCs, and afterward I was able to use Whisper SpeechToText to turn it into text, and it did a really good job. I was even able to then have chatgpt summarize and itemize stuff for me. Sometimes playing with those tools is enough to get me excited to do book-keeping.
Hey so I recently found your channel and I want to thank you for your hyperspecificity. I'm an ADHD GM and I felt incredibly seen and supported by the 3 videos I've watched so far.
If you're still working on videos, I'd love for you to address overwhelm and second-guessing, and from this video I'd love if you dove deeper into Campaign prep, as that's the part I struggle with.
Again, thank you so much!
Thank YOU for watching, and for being so supportive. I am absolutely still making videos and overwhelm/second guessing is a great topic. Campaign prep is on my list, but it'll be a longer video so it's a little while down the road. Stay tuned though because it's definitely coming. And thanks again for the comment!
Just wanted to say thank you for breaking this down so accurately. Big help.
My prep is a little different because I'm not interested in crafting courses that I expect the players to take, but rather hooks, starting conditions, and areas populated by detail. At the start of a session the players might decide to head into the swamp, the hills, the forest, the farmland out west, any of the mountainous areas nearby, a town thing, or down into the undercity dungeon beneath the town.
They might enter an area with a specific goal in mind that they know about because it's been sufficiently advertised earlier, and then their approach could be the usual fight-n-crawl, a stealth sneak, disguise, or a frontal parley - with or without some scouting effort or divination beforehand - or anything else they come up with. They might find a bunch of secrets, miss a bunch of obvious stuff, fail their original goal, succeed, triumph weirdly, realize they were on the wrong track the whole time, alert the enemy who dogpile them or just clean out the treasure and flee, etc. Or maybe some or all of them die trying.
While I have added content as we go to tie into what players are interested in, I don't try to twist the world in service to them. I feel like doing that tends to make them feel like they're the main characters in a story, when I'm shooting for more of a "we're folks in a place and time, crazy stuff happens" and it ends up making sense because we're humans who invent narrative when we can't discover it. The former novelistic approach, again just my opinion, isn't conducive to PCs dying or losing heavily, and I consider the risk of loss to be fundamental to the game part of the gameplay. Without stakes, there's nothing to "make it interesting" in terms of tension. Like playing poker with bottle caps instead of money. That said, if the world and sessions have elements that tie into the PCs, and they end up dying, the continued existence of those elements can remain poignant. So, I do it, but I don't feel that it's necessary. A dwarf can be really into fighting with a pick without me needing to specifically include more magical picks in the game, for example. If someone decides to play a really rare type of wizard, they know it's going to be harder to find support from NPCs, because a whole culture of their wizardry doesn't exist just because they do. You don't read a lot of novels where halfway through the protagonist falls into a pit and dies, and the next chapter is about some new rando. Gaming tastes vary!
I regret, i have but one thumbs up to give to this article.
Bravo. This is an amazing walk-through the thought processes involved. Thank you so much! :)
I’m so happy I found your videos!
This is so f-king helpful I didn't know I needed this so much. Thank you from Argentina
You're very welcome! I hope it adds value to your game.
Thank you for these videos. This is going to help me so much.
You are so welcome!
This is the best video ever
As an interesting video idea.
Taking the sly flourish
8 steps of the lazy dm.
A decent prep system..
And breaking down how the adhd brain responds to it and works with it could be interesting?
I find it rather helpful as a basic guide.
+
As a new/ beginning dm.
Im drawn to the structure+ malleability+ flexible bits in the system.
But im my own enemy with constantly over preparing+
Wanting things to be the best they can instead of just going for it.
6:04
I did the whole build up from plate tectonics thing.
However.
I found a way to use the plate lines to bring a living bit to underdark areas.
Setting up the idea that in the underdark the plate boundaries are
Locations with.
Higher food / energy resources+ life.
Then out from that would be the deserts / wastelands of the underdark.
Yes mostly a complete waste of time.
However it helped me build in a greater degree of verisimilitude for my worlds.
.....
If I'm gonna present it to players I want it to be real in my head.
That's real. Something I wanna talk about more is choosing when you're going to do something that's ultimately non-essential to the game but offers YOU something as a GM. That's a perfect example; no, you didn't strictly need it, but yes, it added value to your game and, importantly, to your experience as a GM too. We're also here to have fun, and if it's fun for me to spend entirely too much time making a map that'll get used for 20 minutes and then never again, then maybe that's something I shouldn't feel bad about. The real art is knowing what the basics are so you can make sure you got those covered first. From there, follow your joy.
Thank you
Just feel the need to comment. Great video.
Glad you enjoyed it!
yuoer mekenig moer voides, am hapi 😊
How did you know about my jaw?
Make my game all about fish, got it!
Finally, someone who really gets it!
These tips sound great, but I still don't understand why game masters are promoting Justin Alexander or "The Alexandrian" after he plagiarized work from Jennelle Jaquays while she was on her death bed. If you're unaware of the issue, Dungeons & Discourse made a comprehensive video on the topic, although I feel like she gave him more of a pass than he deserved.