The Gamemaster's Apprentice is the single tool you need for this scenario. Add in a playing card oracle and you can basically randomly generate a session on the fly.
If it's a new game, I start off with a basic adventure I always have tucked away. A good starter adventure is a lifesaver sometimes.
If it's an ongoing game, then we probably have stuff we were still doing? Just recycle the prep from last time wherever possible and play for time. "Oh, yes, you have the treasure from the depths of the dungeon, but now your rivals have seized the place and you need to fight your way back out! Totally not just doing this to reuse the dungeon map."
If it's an ongoing game and we just had a good cutoff point? Thank god that player just arrived. Ask them what they're expecting will happen this session, nod sagely at their guesses and work from that. "Oh, you're hoping you'll fight that cult sometime soon? You never know, it might come up sooner than you think!"
Everything else is just good prep advice. Keep generic NPC templates and tokens you can use for anything. Use a whiteboard for any maps you need. Give your players control of the plot so you don't have to come up with it.
My players stumble upon an abandoned version of one of my Dwarf Fortress cities.
I already know the whole layout backwards and forwards without needing to work with a map, and it has traps, epic architecture, purpose to every room, little random stuff scattered through, and I can usually come up with some kind of theme or ending to the dungeon for if they get that far into it. Easy peasy.
If I'm truly unprepared I'll just recommend we play a board game instead. With that said, if we are playing in a larger campaign I've often prepared lots of things that haven't been used with because they seemed like a likely path at some point that went untaken, and I might just nudge players in one of those directions and balance any numbers on the fly if it was prepped a couple levels before.
I recommend you give the players a Bag of Beans. Its a chaos machine and a great method to get your players to do something fun without completely derailing the campaign. We all really enjoy the pink toads (random monsters) since you can just roll up something crazy and do a combat.
We had the mummy lord come up which ended up being a huge plot point after they let it sit for a while. It changed the course of what we wanted to play in a fun way.
It helps I'm playing Fate, so it doesn't require a lot of prep. My 2nd favorite system, CofD, also doesn't require a lot of prep. Dnd's math is so wonky it needs more prep.
In both of those systems stats are pretty constrained. A dude has like 5 health levels on average and you don't need to scale things to player level like that.
I usually have a couple factions in the game that are up to no good. They can always start some shit by kidnapping NPCs or advancing their plots. Maybe today's the day they dig too deep and a balrog awakens in Central Park.
Indeed, for C/W oD you can easily have some "standard stats" in mind to build NPC quickly ? Something like 3/5/7 dices depending whether it's beginner/intermediate/master (I haven't GM-it for a while so the formula may-be different) works very well at turning a one sentence description in NPC skill
My favorite go to, one I've used twice in the same campaign and no one was the wiser, is to throw some ridiculous fight at the party out of nowhere, let them sweat it out for a round or two, and start dropping hints it isn't what it seems.
I had them stumble across a black dragon in a cave as a lvl 1 party once. After scaring the shit out of them, for a round or two, someone "finally noticed" that the wings seemed to be made of tar covered cloth. Druid did a nature check and realized that's not what a black dragon roar sounds like at all. Literally 5 kobolds in a dragon coat.
One time, I thought we had canceled but everyone pinged me about why I wasn't logged in to roll20 yet (got my weeks mixed up). Luckily one other person did too, so I told the party I was going to puppet their character so they would level up too. I had that character betray the party by leading them to a trap. They defeated the player character (I used their actual character sheet to fight the party), for them to discover it was a doppelganger, and the trap was the diopleganger's lair. they solved through a bunch of traps and random creatures from the diopleganger's managerie of tortured -to-the-point-of-insanity minor monsters until they found the actual player character that (as they discovered) had been kidnapped the night before.
One other time l, over lockdowns, I had a friend miss a few months of sessions due to some serious and very depressing circumstances. He still wanted to continue once life had calmed down. We were doing an Avernus campaign, and I had been NPCing his character, but I told him to fast forward to his character to the current party level (about 6 levels) and not tell anyone he was going to rejoin the play sessions or log into roll20 until I gave him the go ahead. About 15 minutes in, the party is sailing down the river Styx when they see a damaged flying fortress crash landing, streaking by overhead. They hear a hellish scream and see a buck naked tiefling jumping out of the ship directly for their raft. At this point my friend logs into discord and yells "I WANT MY SHIT BACK YOU IMPOSTER BASTARD!". combat began immediately whereupon he fought himself and regained all the loot the imposter had been carrying. The party had a hell of a good time that night, and he never did explain (in character) what hell actually happened to him.
Grab any two factions with competing interests, loosely define some scenario where they're narrowly deadlocked, hook the group in via a scheming interloper who has mysterious (TBD) motives. Hash out all details by yes-anding. If ever there's a lull, or I need a climax, the current underdog makes an unexpected power play.
This mostly happens to me when it is very clear that the session is going to be about resolving something about player X's backstory, and their work schedule changes.
I might not fully use the suggestion of
"A minor executive named Jasper Catlow needs a crew to frame a rival named Porter Gammon for corporate espionage. However, the client hires a team of assassins to eliminate them after the job.", but it's easy enough to change some nouns to make an interesting one-shot.
So, here is my approach, in the context of a campaign. On my campaign, I tend to have a short list of NPC/Faction/Place and enjoy keeping the campaign on a shorter space rather than a whole multiverse.
So my technique would involve.
Ask the players to give me a summary of latest session, that I'll crosscheck with my notes.
Ask the player what they want to do, following these events. having reccuring NPC/Places/factions mean that I can improvise how these person react to the event (if they do). This will easily burn a hour.
While all of that happen, I have time to think about how to relaunch the story, either there is an event which absolutely makes sense in the context The local mafia isn't happy that you dismounted their drug production lab, when you come home you find a miniature coffin with a bullet inside in front of your door or, even though it's a bad practice, I throw a "randomish encounter" A big etheral cloud forms over the magic equipement store, and you can see some ethereal creature leaving that cloud and ear screams of bypasser being attacked The latter adds a combat buying me an extra hour to find-out why this shop exploded.
Then, I can let the player investigate these events, it may-not be the most complicated investigation I ran, and kinda linear, However, it's enough to keep going to the end of the session, and have new elements to develop for next time
For a one shot ?
In general, I organize them when they're ready, and I have a lot of one-shot scenario ready on my computer, alternative would be pulling a zero prep game.
Assuming a D&D 5e game, I load Kobold Fight Club and click until I find monsters I can build a little story around.
A while back (including enemies from Tome of Beasts) I got Spawn of Akyishigal and Giant Ants, and after a few overland battles they found a beleaguered anthill.
By the next session I had my dungeon made and some lore surrounding it.
The giant anthill had carved its way into an ancient tomb of an orcish warlord who had managed to seal the Demon Lord of Cockroaches with her in an attempt at everlasting life. The actions the players take can result in her rising as a Mummy Lord or in Akyishigal being freed.
All from going "Hey, these enemies work well together."
A shopping trip can kill half a session if it's been a while. Then maybe one of the shopkeepers has a problem that would be worth one of the nicer items in their shop if it were taken care of for them.
I think a lot of it is the dopamine of getting to upgrade your character.
Also, I have observed that people LOVE getting everything together to get kitted out for a mission. If there’s some special equipment they’re going to need to go into the temple, and they’re trying to think what they would need once they get there and running around town putting it all together, they just get super excited and it gets them amped up for the adventure. It is fun in my experience, although yes YMMV.
In their defence, Blades in the Dark, set a trend of having a formal downtime phase which is about upgrading team, healing physical and mental wound, and advancing your side project, and I heard player telling me that they've spend 2 (short) sessions on it.
Even on more classic games, having the player looking what to buy in the books, then finding a shop having it, negotiation with the shopkeeper and so on, can take a lot of time.
s a DM, I’ve always found it boring as hell.
👍Maximum Derek👍
English4•
I don’t really like running them, but my players enjoy it from time to time and it always seems to take half a session.
Super cool. I love the idea of exploring Indian culture and stories through high fantasy in the west. We get so little exposure besides some Bollywood films.
Looks like that link doesn't go external. It might need to be edited.
Sounds like an interesting project. Can you give us more detail? What are the new races? What effect does the karma mechanic have? Will dungeon delving be your game loop?
Hi, there was a syntax error in the text. I've updated the post and also attached a link here. (We just went live on kickstarter btw).
Our kickstarter page has more details, but I can answer some of your questions here. Our new races include Apsaras (heavenly dancers), Half-Asuras (underworld-dwelling demons), Nagas (half-cobra, half-human), Vaanars (intelligent monkey-kin), and the last 2 are a surprise ;).
The karma mechanic will have subtle but noticeable effects that the players may not be able to place their finger on. It is a behind-the-screen system that subtlety influences events.
Dungeon delving is an aspect of this campaign setting, but we offer detailed lore allowing for interesting roleplay and exploration opportunities.
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