Loose Game Prep

Not a self-portrait, but close.

I ran my Fellport D&D game yesterday for the first time since September. Before that, I did some game prep, but I don't know that my game prep is the same as your game prep. So let's talk about it.

I don't like to do "strict" game prep. I think of "strict prep" like prepping for a dungeon. "Room 1 is 30 foot square with 10 foot ceilings, and it contains an orc and a pie." The description is stated as hard facts, and there's very little the characters or the GM can add in the moment. You can bake in some surprises and leave the furnishings vague, but generally the play experience is stiff and not very memorable. It's not great for the party splitting up and wandering an urban landscape, getting into trouble wherever they go.

As a general rule, I do "loose" game prep.

Caveat: This method of prep works well for longer, multi-session campaign style play. If you have a 2-hour one-shot game, you'd better prep some rails or the time slot will end before the characters even figure out there's a job to do.

I wrote up eight little situations for the party to encounter. Each could happen in a variety of locations, depending on where the characters decided to go. They could get involved or not, as they decided in the moment. Each had a nugget of something interesting, but it was loose enough to allow the players to color the events and draw their own conclusions. Let's take a look at one sample of what I prepped.

(A pathological liar illusionist) will run from an illusion of mind flayers that he created, cause panic, engage the party to help, and then disappear into the crowd, changing his appearance as needed to evade capture.

That's the whole entry, cut-and-pasted from my single sheet of game notes into this post, with the name filed off in case my players read this. No stats. No ties to any specific locations. Very broad strokes and nebulous details. Loose as loose can be.

The party had registered to run the pole, incidentally running into a character from their past hanging out with her best friend (Oya and Vadym, if you must know), and they were on the way to The Red Rudder to check out the casino and hopefully gather some information about anyone planning an attack on tomorrow's Gostra Festival. And then a waifish apprentice ran out of an alleyway crying "Help me!" as two mind flayers pursued her. They hauled the apprentice behind them and squared off with the squid-heads.

I kept dropping hints that they were illusions ("You did a pile of damage, but you notice some sort of lag between the attack landing and the mind flayer registering the damage"), and after 2 rounds the illusionist escaped up the ramp as the mind flayers faded from sight. The party (including the hasted rogue) tried to pursue the apprentice, but they lost the trail immediately (a stealth roll of 23 plus disguise self will do that).

Why did the illusionist do this? Pathological liar is a good start, but I had no solid explanation in mind beyond that. Is it a curse? Maybe he was just bored? Maybe he wanted to cause panic? A few citizens ran, but they were already pretty far away. I'm sure another story about mind flayers appearing near the harbor will raise some eyebrows.

I don't prepare detailed structures much any more, except for the Trials of Dragon Peak, and even then I was a little loose with some of the elemental environments during play. I tend to sketch out situations or potential hooks to see what my players will do, then expand on half-formed ideas as needed (or, preferably, steal my players' ideas about what's happening) to keep up with whatever they want to try next. It's worked pretty well for me so far.

I really enjoyed last night's game. The party had a taste of (illusory) combat, gambled away some money for a bit of information (a red herring that I completely winged on the spot once I named the ship the San Esteban - the captain returned a hefty bribe and turned the party away), infiltrated the Pirate's Spire to steal a journal, then read it to find the person who rented it out in its entirety (Duncan McKinsey), found him dancing at the club he used to own (the Steinkellar Bar), rolled a natural 20 Performance check to sweep his girlfriend off her feet, and secured a spot on the guest list for tomorrow's private party. Oh, and the bouncer that Duncan hired for the Pirate's Spire exposed himself as a Bad Guy who's apparently also a warlock instead of just a brutish half-elf skullbreaker.

Hang Loose, My Friends

I used 4 of my 8 prepped snippets last night, so I've got a few in the hopper for next game. The larger story moved forward, and every character had a chance to shine. I'll call that a win. And I wouldn't have the flexibility to keep up with my players if I needed to juggle stat blocks and worry about exact measurements of rooms.

So yeah, loose prep for the win.

Does this even make sense? Does this resonate with you, or am I the odd duck here? Do you do the same thing, or is your prep a little more strict?