Have you ever done wasteful prep like this for your own game? Thank you so much to OnlyCrits for sponsoring this video! Check out their new Kickstarter: www.kickstarter.com/projects/onlycrits/fuck-me-sharp-edge-dice-sets?ref=148y8r The first 150 backers who pledge at least the 1 - 8 piece dice set level will receive an extra free d20. Sign up fast to get this bonus! www.kickstarter.com/projects/onlycrits/fuck-me-sharp-edge-dice-sets?ref=148y8r
Technically ...? I have about 3 binders of 1e prep stuff, but to be fair pen and paper was my *only* option back then ( I had a teleprinter, but bringing scrolls of printout, not fan-fold, while on theme, was so impractical). I did print out my whole LMoP/DoIP prep from openoffice docs, but only because my laptop died. These days it's TiddlyWiki for me: my Candlekeep prep is a single file (about 12mb to date) that can go on a thumb drive, opens in any browser, and in addition to the modules ( I have only done the first four so far, plus a bunch of extras I added, my own notes and changes) has the Baldur's Gate gazetter, SRD, PHB, DMG, MM, MoM, and about 80% of Tasha's and 70% of Xanathar's - all linked and searchable - and with metric equivalents. The only paper I use now is my "encounter sheet" (printed from that doc) - a per room table of monster with AC, Initiative (pre-rolled), HP, and a big space for totalling up damage. Besides being practical in use I personally find transcribing stuff makes it stick in my head *much more* than just reading does. If I had a binder like yours I know I wouldn't have absorbed it.
My very first adventure I ran, I adapted Keep on the Shadowfell from 4e into 5e. I spent so much time and effort doing this, with so much extra information that I didn't need (though at the time I didn't know that I didn't need it--I was definitely finding my footing), when it could (and should) have been super straightforward. I probably spent 2 hours prepping for every hour of gameplay. But I'm better now.
“Somebody else in the party has an idea for a game they want to run for us” is the forever GM equivalent of stumbling across a unicorn that hands you a winning lottery ticket.
That immediate gut jerk reaction of "Don't throw it out, put it in the Recycling bin!!!" 😂 Curse of Strahd was the first game I ever ran as a GM, I ran it on roll 20 and had bought the pack on there so 90% of my notes were on Roll 20 itself, and I would keep the book nearby. I didn't end up looking up any of these additional resources at the time because I didn't know they existed, only discovered a lot of them after the game was well and truly done. I did listen to two audio books, about Strahd, "I, Strahd" and "I, Strahd: The War Against Azalin" which coloured how I ran the game. Anything new I did I kept in an COMPLETLY UNORGANIZED Google drive folder and I can't decipher how I kept it all straight now. I ended up adding a lot of my own just ...stuff that ended up stuffed somewhere in that google drive. My Copy of the module now has stickers in the front of it that one of my players made, one for each of the characters drawn in the style of the Tarokka card they pulled at Madam Eva's. Now for my current Pathfinder 2e campaign I keep all my notes in an Obsidian Notes file, I find it way easier to navigate haha. I think, actually, I've only ran a game in person ONCE. It was a One off, and I had brought three books and a whole binder full of like 20 pages of stuff and I think I only ended up using a fraction of it haha. But I did stuff my handouts in there and I made a couple of them for puzzles and notes.
Ooof, "my binder could have been an email." I had the exact same thing with a CoS game I ran, even with some of the same stuff. I was *also* running a Ghost of Saltmarsh campaign at the same time so I had two gargantuan binders trying to cover every possible thing I need. I printed the chase rules, complications, magic item charts, and...the whole basic rules to have as a reference. Twice.
My "favourite D&Dtuber" is most likely Matt Colville, because I immediately devour anything he uploads, but Mike, you're definitely the one that is the comfiest and my mood always improves when I get a notification from your channel. There are a lot of other cool D&D people that I follow, no shade on them, but I respect you on a personal level, and I'm sure there's some parasocial bond involved, even - which is rare for me. Your channel is quite the safe space, and I feel welcomed here.
3:41 ...This is a Mean Girls character in D&D and I love it. Siege equipment? To be fair, laying siege to a vampire's castle sounds insanely cool, but I doubt it's something iseaki'd kids would do. (Though wait, that's kinda Narnia...)
This was cathartic, very much so. Reminds me of when I reviewed my old setting, made a video I never posted anywhere of it, just to talk out my feelings about all those mistakes of mine. Fun times!
What I learned from my 1E running of I6 twice. Don’t give the Strahd a wand of fireballs. Don’t get too involved with my DMPC that I throw the game in the Count’s Favor. What I learned from my 5E campaign. Cross reference the page numbers to various quests. Make sure the players are a good fit with each other even if it is an AL group. Keep the AL adaption guides handy. Print handouts in plain text. Not needed was a unique calendar. On running published adventures. Do hit the Reddit, and other media for suggestions/corrections to the story line. This has help me with Spelljammer, Planescape, Shattered, and Golden Keys.
Man, this is too real. Mike's binder is how I used to do things - to much the same results. Now I use carefully organized word docs and pdfs and only print them for a map, character sheet, or setting list that is best in hand.
I think it may be interesting to see you retroactively take one of the things you had in that binder and go back to see what you could have changed about your game. See how it might have improved a scene or if it had just not been worth it. You said some of the changes would have been to be made early on, and couldn’t be implemented easily during session prep, but maybe look at what you still could have used with the hindsight of how those scenes already went in your game.
Great takeaways in the debrief from Editing Mike. I lean towards the philosophical style of someone like Professor Dungeon Master when it comes to what notes to bring to the table. He preaches the one-page approach, and while I don't stick to that strictly, I design all of my notes to be used "at a glance". Everything is condensed into bullet points, and there's nothing on the page that isn't immediately actionable at the table. I always figure there's no time for reading at the table, because any time I spend reading is time that I'm not paying attention to my players, interacting with them, or otherwise being present in the moment. To me, that's what playing the game is. Anything that needs prepped (and not everything does) can be broken down to bullet points written by me for me. Even the sorts of descriptions that go into box text can be turned into a series of bullet points, and as illustrated in one of your videos, they come out as more organic this way. It looked cathartic for you getting rid of all those pages. Good for the mental health.
I definitely agree with your points, PDF are just going to be the better idea in the long run, even if you also print them. To me, there is a valid reason to print them, IF you are the kind of human who sits down and reads physical objects (I personally am not, tablets and e-readers for me). But you nailed it at the end, this is not useful mid-session it should be brainstorm time material, between sessions, and anything from there should be condensed into a sort of Quick Reference note page. That's what should be in your bring-to-game binder. Something you can use at a glance. Good video, Mike!
This is making me feel a lot better about the time I waste looking up archival weather reports for the real world city my game is set in for the time it's set which often feels like I'm wasting my time (But I've started doing it now so by gods...) (It does sometimes come up, but mostly it just gives a more realistic vibe to the progression of the weather over the days and weeks of the campaign. Maybe?) One thing I disagree with that crept in a couple of times is about having physical stuff in front of you isn't useful for a digital game - I like to use the quick reference for the system I'm running from the book, and then an accessory for the system I run most often - Animon Story's Card Deck which has a bunch of monster stat blocks printed out - which saves rifling and reduces the number of files I'm jumping between on my computer. I just wouldn't, you know, go as far as to print digital resources out. It's quicker and easier for me to glance down at my desk than to make sure I have the right file up in front of me. And maybe this means I should start using my tablet while playing a game more often, at least for notes that I'm not going to want to modify during the game.
I have done a similar thing recently now that I am running COS again after 3-4 years. I do a lot more digital, but I still like having paper and pen at the table. I copy and paste location descriptions into a word document and edit it, shorten it and bold and highlight stuff. I use manila folders for each location and in each one, I keep stat blocks, maps and descriptions for the location. I find this works well for me, even though I have a laptop or two as my dm screen. I use the laptop for a digital map with my tv layed flat on the table. We have a weird mix of digital and analog tools at my table. I feel more prepared if I have hard copies. Also, there was that one-day during a game where my internet was really bad and we were having trouble pulling up things we needed. I need redundancy to feel prepared.
Very similar story here, CoS was my first campaign I ever DM'd, we almost got to Strahd but fizzled, currently running essentially an "all bosses" run, where the original characters have come back in years later to a slightly different Barovia (which has been burned to the ground out of grief by Strahd, guess who's dead), and so they mostly can move between certain major fights. In an early episode of Dropout's podcast adventuring academy, Brennan interviewed his friend Jack Covell, and they talk about how Jack ran a long term campaign that stemmed from him basically setting up the premise that he didn't have time to prep, so he was running a sandbox game with encounter tables etc, and it became a huge hit with their group. That's my current plan for a new campaign in DnD 2024, since my ability to prep has drastically reduced, while I feel like my improv and "connecting the dots after" are my strong points.
CoS was hands down the best campaign I’ve ever gotten to be in. I can’t wait to hopefully play in it again someday!! Loved the vid, excellent as always, Mike!! :D
The more I run and produce stuff for dnd and dnd adjacent games. I’ve moved away from a traditional prep because it lent me to over prepping, stress, and railroading even if it just subconscious. Now I spend time prepping tools to inprov and let my players have more agency and fleshing out the baddies motivations and time tables so it’s easier to react to the players based of what the villain would do instead of what is written as the next scene or act that has to happen that ends up railroading my group instead of rewarding their interest and what they want to interact with
Thank you again for your captions ❤ I know writing captions for less-scripted videos is much more annoying than when you already have a script, and I really appreciate you taking the time to make the captions accurate instead of relying on youtube trying its best.
Just a few quick comments. 1) recycle, please. 2) Computers at the table are not available to everybody (if in person...space, cost, data network, etc.). 3) If going VTT, multiple monitors are really helpful if you do PDF/OneNote/etc..
More context: I bought a pdf + hard copy of Dread with the intention of running it at my local games club in the before times. Printed the whole thing out on A4 paper and popped it in a binder with all the pages in plastic wallets. It's still on the shelf gathering dust next to the book and looking at it makes me sad.
Even when I run online, I like note pages and statblocks printed. O even hace my live DM screen off to the side just for the quick reference. Between the battlemap and the web conference I only have so much screen real estate. I have all my ancillary notes and magic items to copy/paste to players, summoned creature stats, etc, in tabs online, but most of the stuff I know ahead of time I'll need, I want on the desk in front of me. In the case of a major outage, I could technically run my online game as a conference call in a pinch. And have done once.
I DM pick-up one shots, so the only over-preparing that I've done so far is making a paper scale model of the exterior of the house the players would be breaking into, so they could see access points. I even taped on a paper roof. Still kinda sad I recycled it without making a scan for future use.
I always seem to over prep for the sessions I run, but I've found that it helps me prep less later. Sometimes I can go 2 or 3 sessions before I need to prepare more :)
Sometimes the more you put in the more you gain but there a curve where that time investment does not equal the return. Each DM has to pay attention what helpful to them. I say I over prep in the beginning of the campaign, but I found when I get to that moment I don't reference that work all the time. I do know that that work was needed to help me in that moment so I have something in my memory to work from that more fully fleshed out then the random thought.
I think you are showing quite a bit of respect to the players by preparing this much. It would make me come come back as a player and also pay for you as a DM.
so excited to watch your curse of strahd video! currently wrapping up death house and so keen to get insights going in to the main campaign 🥰 and i relate so much to what you're saying about balancing needing basically a full day to prep a session vs wanting to maintain life balance 😂
Dangit I clicked on this without reading the title and at 3:16 you brought me to my senses. Im still holding out hope that somehow I can play in curse of straude...even though my group doesn't even play D&D (we use other systems) and my DM doesn't run modules...I think Im hoping to use the paid group thing at some point, maybe even yours. Its just seems so much like a thing I would like. I'll 'finish' the video on mute but I hope SOMEDAY I'll get to be in this one and be able to come back
I think to your point about being able to more easily prep for a game, maybe with only an hour lead time ( 25:50 ) it's partly because of the style of game being run. I know I don't have a ton of experience GM'ing, I've got two single games that failed, one due to what may have been poor communication of expectations that led to a player meltdown and the other to my inability in the moment to improv my way past the player taking a hook that I hadn't intended to be a hook. There was one slightly longer game but I barely remember anything about it other than that it was Star Wars and that we were thinking what if Anakin hadn't killed the younglings and there was instead kind of a dark Temple with Sith and turn-coat Jedi, either too disillusioned to care or so scared they were just trying to survive. Anyway, my real point is that I think if you are planning games as part of a long term, story driven, developed campaign then its going to always take longer. As the game master you have to start considering random NPCs, recurring NPCs, world building connections to the location the party is in, which major factions in the world might be present or take notice of an area when the players are there, etc. etc. etc. If on the other hand you run a rather story-lite game where it's a bit more serial or pulp fiction, where it's less important to maintain a driving narrative or a cohesive world, then you probably can just throw together a dungeon or ruins map, grab a handful of monsters out of the manual, and let the players have at it.
Ive been DMing Curse of Strahd for my friends who mostly have never played D&D before. So many helpful forums out there to help me but I haven't printed out/saved a single one, outside of maps. I read a few forums, found them interesting, and kept it in mind for my sessions, but I would make it my own style of content. It has been easier for me and my players. And with forums for D&D mechanic fixes as a whole, I've just kept the basic D&D rules and mechanics. It has been interesting enough for my players to just play D&D as written than having to keep of different complicated rules.
I was also incredibly fucking wasteful with my initial curse of strahd prep. Went from (poorly made) homebrew to a module and quickly learned that i had to do things differently initially! It’s actually been interesting how I went from Canva plot mapping, to initiative sheets google doc notes, then back to Canva plot mapping when I had to start improvising stuff that wasn’t explicitly laid out in the module. Now I’m about to run the actual Ravenloft dungeon in person for the first time and reverted to full physical prep by printing out the module and annotating it
As someone who took obsessive binders full of notes in grade school, all of my D&D notes have always been in a microsoft word / excel doc. I'm sure there's better tools than that, but it's still alot better than physical paper.
I have so, so many files of wasteful campaign prep. Usually far less useful than your binder - my biggest flaw early on was doing a ton of worldbuilding for homebrew games that... just wasn't the information players needed to make a town or city feel real. I still do that a little bit, but these days I'm much better at "represent those big ideas in small ways that the players will encounter on a personal level - an npc, a festival, a mural or statue showing the history of the area".
I keep the improvised damage table as a part of my DM screen, it partially replaces the block of conditions because I use condition cards as reference.
I don't print stuff out but I do have so many PDFs I will probably never read. I even paid for some of them in Kickstarters but some - after reading were so good I HAD to buy the hardcover. Drakkenheim was one.
My overprep moment was definitely when I created a custom 380 day calendar, with 16 months (all with custom names), and two moons with full lunar cycles. I mentioned the calendar in session one, tried to use the terminology I created but due to player pushback abandoned it after session two. I don't know if this was a good or bad move considering that campaign fizzled out shortly after that.
They really need to go back and re do curse of strahd without all the extra shit that’s unlikely to get used or better way to use them. Doubt they will cause… Wizards.
Why did you throw out things you would use again? I admit my DM notebook for "B10 Night's Dark Terror" is fatter than I'd prefer but it's because I printed out a booklet of hexcrawl tables, a gazetteer of the setting, a couple brief urban scenarios to use in emergencies, and a copy of the adventure, in addition to my session notes. I like to keep my session notes as a record of campaigns. That probably isn't necessary, and I read them rarely or never, but after losing everything in a disaster a few years back any reminder of personal history is precious. And if at any time I want to revisit something for a creative project or to recall why something turned out to be so memorable, I'll have what I need.
Mike, I have a 'Dinner With Strahd document. I'm not if it's the same one you had but I do have it and it's digital. I'll gladly share if you have a method you'd prefer me to use to get it to you.
Mike did talk about the CoS binder in another video, I think it might have the the 'what's behind my GM screen' video but I can't remember, but I don't think the binder had it's own video til now.
To counter your "I should have saved this as pdfs and NOT print them out", do you know how much digital information I have lost on dead computers? If something is really worth saving, doing both saving as pdf and print it out on paper is a good idea. And when you first mention Fuck dice, I was like "nope, don't want those". Then you said the 1s have Fuck me and the 20s have Fuck you.... Damnit, I told myself no more kickstarter campaigns, I've been burned too many times. No more...why am I clicking on that link!
Have you ever done wasteful prep like this for your own game?
Thank you so much to OnlyCrits for sponsoring this video! Check out their new Kickstarter: www.kickstarter.com/projects/onlycrits/fuck-me-sharp-edge-dice-sets?ref=148y8r
The first 150 backers who pledge at least the 1 - 8 piece dice set level will receive an extra free d20. Sign up fast to get this bonus!
www.kickstarter.com/projects/onlycrits/fuck-me-sharp-edge-dice-sets?ref=148y8r
It’s not wasteful if you enjoyed doing it!
Technically ...? I have about 3 binders of 1e prep stuff, but to be fair pen and paper was my *only* option back then ( I had a teleprinter, but bringing scrolls of printout, not fan-fold, while on theme, was so impractical). I did print out my whole LMoP/DoIP prep from openoffice docs, but only because my laptop died. These days it's TiddlyWiki for me: my Candlekeep prep is a single file (about 12mb to date) that can go on a thumb drive, opens in any browser, and in addition to the modules ( I have only done the first four so far, plus a bunch of extras I added, my own notes and changes) has the Baldur's Gate gazetter, SRD, PHB, DMG, MM, MoM, and about 80% of Tasha's and 70% of Xanathar's - all linked and searchable - and with metric equivalents. The only paper I use now is my "encounter sheet" (printed from that doc) - a per room table of monster with AC, Initiative (pre-rolled), HP, and a big space for totalling up damage.
Besides being practical in use I personally find transcribing stuff makes it stick in my head *much more* than just reading does. If I had a binder like yours I know I wouldn't have absorbed it.
Ahahahahaha!!
My very first adventure I ran, I adapted Keep on the Shadowfell from 4e into 5e. I spent so much time and effort doing this, with so much extra information that I didn't need (though at the time I didn't know that I didn't need it--I was definitely finding my footing), when it could (and should) have been super straightforward. I probably spent 2 hours prepping for every hour of gameplay. But I'm better now.
I made a homebrew monster that used a lot of d4s... ordered a bunch of d4s... then only used that monster one time
Alternative title: Does This Campaign Prep Spark Joy?
Exactly. I love my worldbuilding.
😂😂😂
“Somebody else in the party has an idea for a game they want to run for us” is the forever GM equivalent of stumbling across a unicorn that hands you a winning lottery ticket.
That immediate gut jerk reaction of "Don't throw it out, put it in the Recycling bin!!!" 😂
Curse of Strahd was the first game I ever ran as a GM, I ran it on roll 20 and had bought the pack on there so 90% of my notes were on Roll 20 itself, and I would keep the book nearby. I didn't end up looking up any of these additional resources at the time because I didn't know they existed, only discovered a lot of them after the game was well and truly done. I did listen to two audio books, about Strahd, "I, Strahd" and "I, Strahd: The War Against Azalin" which coloured how I ran the game. Anything new I did I kept in an COMPLETLY UNORGANIZED Google drive folder and I can't decipher how I kept it all straight now. I ended up adding a lot of my own just ...stuff that ended up stuffed somewhere in that google drive. My Copy of the module now has stickers in the front of it that one of my players made, one for each of the characters drawn in the style of the Tarokka card they pulled at Madam Eva's.
Now for my current Pathfinder 2e campaign I keep all my notes in an Obsidian Notes file, I find it way easier to navigate haha.
I think, actually, I've only ran a game in person ONCE. It was a One off, and I had brought three books and a whole binder full of like 20 pages of stuff and I think I only ended up using a fraction of it haha. But I did stuff my handouts in there and I made a couple of them for puzzles and notes.
Ooof, "my binder could have been an email." I had the exact same thing with a CoS game I ran, even with some of the same stuff. I was *also* running a Ghost of Saltmarsh campaign at the same time so I had two gargantuan binders trying to cover every possible thing I need. I printed the chase rules, complications, magic item charts, and...the whole basic rules to have as a reference. Twice.
My "favourite D&Dtuber" is most likely Matt Colville, because I immediately devour anything he uploads, but Mike, you're definitely the one that is the comfiest and my mood always improves when I get a notification from your channel. There are a lot of other cool D&D people that I follow, no shade on them, but I respect you on a personal level, and I'm sure there's some parasocial bond involved, even - which is rare for me. Your channel is quite the safe space, and I feel welcomed here.
Oh God! CURSE OF STRAHD IS AN ISEKAI!
I'm playing with fire watching this right now. Just started playing a Curse of Strahd game last week.
i would LOVE that deep dive on prepping for The Wild Beyond the Witchlight!
3:41 ...This is a Mean Girls character in D&D and I love it.
Siege equipment? To be fair, laying siege to a vampire's castle sounds insanely cool, but I doubt it's something iseaki'd kids would do. (Though wait, that's kinda Narnia...)
This was cathartic, very much so. Reminds me of when I reviewed my old setting, made a video I never posted anywhere of it, just to talk out my feelings about all those mistakes of mine. Fun times!
Great video as always, but I wanted you to know I immediately went and backed that kickstarter. I neeeed those dice!
What I learned from my 1E running of I6 twice. Don’t give the Strahd a wand of fireballs. Don’t get too involved with my DMPC that I throw the game in the Count’s Favor.
What I learned from my 5E campaign. Cross reference the page numbers to various quests. Make sure the players are a good fit with each other even if it is an AL group. Keep the AL adaption guides handy. Print handouts in plain text.
Not needed was a unique calendar.
On running published adventures. Do hit the Reddit, and other media for suggestions/corrections to the story line. This has help me with Spelljammer, Planescape, Shattered, and Golden Keys.
Man, this is too real. Mike's binder is how I used to do things - to much the same results. Now I use carefully organized word docs and pdfs and only print them for a map, character sheet, or setting list that is best in hand.
I'm just dropping the comment for the algorithm. Please recycle it. I'll come back to this because i really do want to play CoS one day.
I think it may be interesting to see you retroactively take one of the things you had in that binder and go back to see what you could have changed about your game. See how it might have improved a scene or if it had just not been worth it. You said some of the changes would have been to be made early on, and couldn’t be implemented easily during session prep, but maybe look at what you still could have used with the hindsight of how those scenes already went in your game.
Great takeaways in the debrief from Editing Mike. I lean towards the philosophical style of someone like Professor Dungeon Master when it comes to what notes to bring to the table. He preaches the one-page approach, and while I don't stick to that strictly, I design all of my notes to be used "at a glance". Everything is condensed into bullet points, and there's nothing on the page that isn't immediately actionable at the table.
I always figure there's no time for reading at the table, because any time I spend reading is time that I'm not paying attention to my players, interacting with them, or otherwise being present in the moment. To me, that's what playing the game is. Anything that needs prepped (and not everything does) can be broken down to bullet points written by me for me. Even the sorts of descriptions that go into box text can be turned into a series of bullet points, and as illustrated in one of your videos, they come out as more organic this way.
It looked cathartic for you getting rid of all those pages. Good for the mental health.
I definitely agree with your points, PDF are just going to be the better idea in the long run, even if you also print them. To me, there is a valid reason to print them, IF you are the kind of human who sits down and reads physical objects (I personally am not, tablets and e-readers for me). But you nailed it at the end, this is not useful mid-session it should be brainstorm time material, between sessions, and anything from there should be condensed into a sort of Quick Reference note page. That's what should be in your bring-to-game binder. Something you can use at a glance.
Good video, Mike!
This is making me feel a lot better about the time I waste looking up archival weather reports for the real world city my game is set in for the time it's set which often feels like I'm wasting my time (But I've started doing it now so by gods...) (It does sometimes come up, but mostly it just gives a more realistic vibe to the progression of the weather over the days and weeks of the campaign. Maybe?)
One thing I disagree with that crept in a couple of times is about having physical stuff in front of you isn't useful for a digital game - I like to use the quick reference for the system I'm running from the book, and then an accessory for the system I run most often - Animon Story's Card Deck which has a bunch of monster stat blocks printed out - which saves rifling and reduces the number of files I'm jumping between on my computer. I just wouldn't, you know, go as far as to print digital resources out. It's quicker and easier for me to glance down at my desk than to make sure I have the right file up in front of me. And maybe this means I should start using my tablet while playing a game more often, at least for notes that I'm not going to want to modify during the game.
I have done a similar thing recently now that I am running COS again after 3-4 years. I do a lot more digital, but I still like having paper and pen at the table. I copy and paste location descriptions into a word document and edit it, shorten it and bold and highlight stuff. I use manila folders for each location and in each one, I keep stat blocks, maps and descriptions for the location. I find this works well for me, even though I have a laptop or two as my dm screen. I use the laptop for a digital map with my tv layed flat on the table. We have a weird mix of digital and analog tools at my table. I feel more prepared if I have hard copies. Also, there was that one-day during a game where my internet was really bad and we were having trouble pulling up things we needed. I need redundancy to feel prepared.
Very similar story here, CoS was my first campaign I ever DM'd, we almost got to Strahd but fizzled, currently running essentially an "all bosses" run, where the original characters have come back in years later to a slightly different Barovia (which has been burned to the ground out of grief by Strahd, guess who's dead), and so they mostly can move between certain major fights.
In an early episode of Dropout's podcast adventuring academy, Brennan interviewed his friend Jack Covell, and they talk about how Jack ran a long term campaign that stemmed from him basically setting up the premise that he didn't have time to prep, so he was running a sandbox game with encounter tables etc, and it became a huge hit with their group. That's my current plan for a new campaign in DnD 2024, since my ability to prep has drastically reduced, while I feel like my improv and "connecting the dots after" are my strong points.
CoS was hands down the best campaign I’ve ever gotten to be in. I can’t wait to hopefully play in it again someday!! Loved the vid, excellent as always, Mike!! :D
The more I run and produce stuff for dnd and dnd adjacent games. I’ve moved away from a traditional prep because it lent me to over prepping, stress, and railroading even if it just subconscious. Now I spend time prepping tools to inprov and let my players have more agency and fleshing out the baddies motivations and time tables so it’s easier to react to the players based of what the villain would do instead of what is written as the next scene or act that has to happen that ends up railroading my group instead of rewarding their interest and what they want to interact with
"everything from this- ... PROBABLY everything is going in the trash" 😂😂
I am *sooooo* tempted by those dice holy shit 👀👀👀
I ran Curse of Strahd out of Google Doc. That went pretty well, though by the end the doc was some 90pgs long and a little unwieldy.
Thank you again for your captions ❤ I know writing captions for less-scripted videos is much more annoying than when you already have a script, and I really appreciate you taking the time to make the captions accurate instead of relying on youtube trying its best.
I’m so glad they help!
Binder full of regrets? 😂(Been there, done that)
Mike, to Mike: "It's not that I'm angry at you. I'm just disappointed."
Just a few quick comments. 1) recycle, please. 2) Computers at the table are not available to everybody (if in person...space, cost, data network, etc.). 3) If going VTT, multiple monitors are really helpful if you do PDF/OneNote/etc..
More context:
I bought a pdf + hard copy of Dread with the intention of running it at my local games club in the before times. Printed the whole thing out on A4 paper and popped it in a binder with all the pages in plastic wallets.
It's still on the shelf gathering dust next to the book and looking at it makes me sad.
Even when I run online, I like note pages and statblocks printed. O even hace my live DM screen off to the side just for the quick reference. Between the battlemap and the web conference I only have so much screen real estate.
I have all my ancillary notes and magic items to copy/paste to players, summoned creature stats, etc, in tabs online, but most of the stuff I know ahead of time I'll need, I want on the desk in front of me.
In the case of a major outage, I could technically run my online game as a conference call in a pinch. And have done once.
I DM pick-up one shots, so the only over-preparing that I've done so far is making a paper scale model of the exterior of the house the players would be breaking into, so they could see access points. I even taped on a paper roof. Still kinda sad I recycled it without making a scan for future use.
I always seem to over prep for the sessions I run, but I've found that it helps me prep less later.
Sometimes I can go 2 or 3 sessions before I need to prepare more :)
Sometimes the more you put in the more you gain but there a curve where that time investment does not equal the return. Each DM has to pay attention what helpful to them. I say I over prep in the beginning of the campaign, but I found when I get to that moment I don't reference that work all the time. I do know that that work was needed to help me in that moment so I have something in my memory to work from that more fully fleshed out then the random thought.
I think you are showing quite a bit of respect to the players by preparing this much. It would make me come come back as a player and also pay for you as a DM.
so excited to watch your curse of strahd video! currently wrapping up death house and so keen to get insights going in to the main campaign 🥰 and i relate so much to what you're saying about balancing needing basically a full day to prep a session vs wanting to maintain life balance 😂
Dangit I clicked on this without reading the title and at 3:16 you brought me to my senses.
Im still holding out hope that somehow I can play in curse of straude...even though my group doesn't even play D&D (we use other systems) and my DM doesn't run modules...I think Im hoping to use the paid group thing at some point, maybe even yours. Its just seems so much like a thing I would like.
I'll 'finish' the video on mute but I hope SOMEDAY I'll get to be in this one and be able to come back
I think to your point about being able to more easily prep for a game, maybe with only an hour lead time ( 25:50 ) it's partly because of the style of game being run. I know I don't have a ton of experience GM'ing, I've got two single games that failed, one due to what may have been poor communication of expectations that led to a player meltdown and the other to my inability in the moment to improv my way past the player taking a hook that I hadn't intended to be a hook. There was one slightly longer game but I barely remember anything about it other than that it was Star Wars and that we were thinking what if Anakin hadn't killed the younglings and there was instead kind of a dark Temple with Sith and turn-coat Jedi, either too disillusioned to care or so scared they were just trying to survive.
Anyway, my real point is that I think if you are planning games as part of a long term, story driven, developed campaign then its going to always take longer. As the game master you have to start considering random NPCs, recurring NPCs, world building connections to the location the party is in, which major factions in the world might be present or take notice of an area when the players are there, etc. etc. etc.
If on the other hand you run a rather story-lite game where it's a bit more serial or pulp fiction, where it's less important to maintain a driving narrative or a cohesive world, then you probably can just throw together a dungeon or ruins map, grab a handful of monsters out of the manual, and let the players have at it.
more like a companion than just notes
I'd be interested in more campaign prepping videos! I've been interested in dming but intimidated by the prep of it all.
Ive been DMing Curse of Strahd for my friends who mostly have never played D&D before. So many helpful forums out there to help me but I haven't printed out/saved a single one, outside of maps. I read a few forums, found them interesting, and kept it in mind for my sessions, but I would make it my own style of content. It has been easier for me and my players. And with forums for D&D mechanic fixes as a whole, I've just kept the basic D&D rules and mechanics. It has been interesting enough for my players to just play D&D as written than having to keep of different complicated rules.
i rly like the dives into your prep choices and mistakes and stuff! thanks
I was also incredibly fucking wasteful with my initial curse of strahd prep. Went from (poorly made) homebrew to a module and quickly learned that i had to do things differently initially! It’s actually been interesting how I went from Canva plot mapping, to initiative sheets google doc notes, then back to Canva plot mapping when I had to start improvising stuff that wasn’t explicitly laid out in the module. Now I’m about to run the actual Ravenloft dungeon in person for the first time and reverted to full physical prep by printing out the module and annotating it
was about to say using someone else's printer made it worse then you said "...at work" to which I responded "based and correct"
I'd be interested to see whatever prep for the last session of this campaign you do.
I'm looking forward to seeing your "The Best of Game Prep" video.
Mike! Mike! Mike! Mike! 🎉🎉🎉
As someone who took obsessive binders full of notes in grade school, all of my D&D notes have always been in a microsoft word / excel doc. I'm sure there's better tools than that, but it's still alot better than physical paper.
Something like WorldAnvil or Campfire could be useful to you.
I have so, so many files of wasteful campaign prep. Usually far less useful than your binder - my biggest flaw early on was doing a ton of worldbuilding for homebrew games that... just wasn't the information players needed to make a town or city feel real.
I still do that a little bit, but these days I'm much better at "represent those big ideas in small ways that the players will encounter on a personal level - an npc, a festival, a mural or statue showing the history of the area".
I keep the improvised damage table as a part of my DM screen, it partially replaces the block of conditions because I use condition cards as reference.
Recently got the wilderness DM screen which does this.
I don't print stuff out but I do have so many PDFs I will probably never read. I even paid for some of them in Kickstarters but some - after reading were so good I HAD to buy the hardcover. Drakkenheim was one.
It sounds like your experiment failed forward and that's the best DM advice around
My overprep moment was definitely when I created a custom 380 day calendar, with 16 months (all with custom names), and two moons with full lunar cycles.
I mentioned the calendar in session one, tried to use the terminology I created but due to player pushback abandoned it after session two. I don't know if this was a good or bad move considering that campaign fizzled out shortly after that.
Normally, you need to buy fuck dice at a store like Spencer's
They really need to go back and re do curse of strahd without all the extra shit that’s unlikely to get used or better way to use them. Doubt they will cause… Wizards.
But you can if it gives you enjoyment!
Why did you throw out things you would use again? I admit my DM notebook for "B10 Night's Dark Terror" is fatter than I'd prefer but it's because I printed out a booklet of hexcrawl tables, a gazetteer of the setting, a couple brief urban scenarios to use in emergencies, and a copy of the adventure, in addition to my session notes. I like to keep my session notes as a record of campaigns. That probably isn't necessary, and I read them rarely or never, but after losing everything in a disaster a few years back any reminder of personal history is precious. And if at any time I want to revisit something for a creative project or to recall why something turned out to be so memorable, I'll have what I need.
Mike, I have a 'Dinner With Strahd document. I'm not if it's the same one you had but I do have it and it's digital. I'll gladly share if you have a method you'd prefer me to use to get it to you.
Just got past the ad read, but is this a re-post? I thought you already did a video on the giant Curse of Strahd binder?
Mike did talk about the CoS binder in another video, I think it might have the the 'what's behind my GM screen' video but I can't remember, but I don't think the binder had it's own video til now.
All the prep I've ever done has been wasted. Now I basically just improv the entire game every game.
This is a good channel. I like Mike.
To counter your "I should have saved this as pdfs and NOT print them out", do you know how much digital information I have lost on dead computers? If something is really worth saving, doing both saving as pdf and print it out on paper is a good idea.
And when you first mention Fuck dice, I was like "nope, don't want those". Then you said the 1s have Fuck me and the 20s have Fuck you.... Damnit, I told myself no more kickstarter campaigns, I've been burned too many times. No more...why am I clicking on that link!
There is also the option of backing up stuff on your computer's hard drive to the cloud.
I haven't prepped for a session ever. Everything I do is improvised. I don't even keep notes.
Trash or recycling??