Hallo! Ich heiße Gaia. As you can tell, foxes are my favorite animals. I love art, video games, Victuuri (guilty), corgis, friends, and my boo <3 Auf Wiedersehen!
Out of curiosity, how do my fellow DMs prepare their campaigns?
Do you open up a word doc at type out your story hook and make little bullet points from there?
Do you wing it completely?
What’s your notes system like?
I’m simply looking for new ways to plan for my d&d games!
The Over-Prepared GM
I can’t help myself. I love all the work that goes into prepping for a campaign, and I keep all of my crazy notes and papers, so today I’m gonna try and share with you my process for the latest DnD session I prepped for/ran!
Rough Notes
I always start by hand writing a full page or two of just random thoughts/story bits. I’m gonna give examples from the latest session I ran (BACKSTORY - this setting has frequent time travel moments and so every location I make also needs a past version and present version)
Writing Stonevale began with me rambling on about any vague ideas I had for the scene setting. I also find it’s useful to get the secrets and mysteries all clear and laid out straight away, and work backwards from them to slot in clues for players. “Stonevale Past” begins with me deciding that the ancestors of an important NPC live here - maybe the players never get far enough to discover that, but having the secrets and info at the heart of my process helps me keep things focussed, and it’s easy/fun to build walls around the secrets this way :)
I also generally get a feel for any creatures/NPCs that populate the area, and give them vague roles. And I try to note down key details/props/locations/events that will help the players navigate and investigate.
Session Summary
Now’s the time to check what happened last session just to make sure you know how the party characters will likely be feeling/acting at the start of the session, and to remind yourself of any items they picked up, or active statuses going on. Also a good moment to check what the party planned to do next, what their expectations could be and so on.
It’s hard to make myself fill this in at the end of every session, but the session summary page in this kit really helps me note down what’s most important.
Above are the images I used to inspire me, and below is the finished Stonevale map! It’s come out a bit rough/childlike but was definitely a fun way to explore more ways of making maps!
Later on, I realised I’d got too into making this and forgotten about some sort of depiction of the INSIDE of the manor… Since I didn’t have any time to make more maps by this point, I went to where I always go when I need a DnD map in a pinch - @2minutetabletop ! I picked up Castle Keep, which is free (like so many of his maps are!) and faffed with some colours and levels in photoshop until I was happy. Printed them out on A3 card and they were good to go! I can’t recommend this resource enough, it’s saved my GM butt a lot when I run out of time to make a map of my own!
Adding in Detail
So next I need to flesh out those vague ideas to make sure I’ve covered what’s likely to be important for the party. I love using the town builder here as it gives me a bit of mental breathing room and asks the questions for me. I find having questions ready means the answers come a lot easier than if I was trying to pluck this out of my head, if that makes sense?
It was at this point I realised I’d likely need a family tree, even just so I could keep track of the time travel/ancestral stuff. I roughed one out, then made a slightly bigger, still very rough, version that I thought might be a handy clue for players. If they make it inside the castle, they’ll notice a framed family tree on the wall, and this will be it!
NPCS
Our story involved one of the players having worked at Stonevale before the adventure, so I made a staff list for that player’s reference. This way they had some basic information on their old co-workers and the residents of the manor. I also filled in an NPC list from the people & society kit to make sure I had enough NPCs to generate about the property.
Then I used the map to mark some likely locations of the important NPCs. I made sure to spread them out so that no matter how the party approached the grounds, they’d likely hit a plot hook somehow.
Quest Hooks
Time to shove as many clues as possible in here! My experience has been that players need a lot more help picking up clues and reaching conclusions than you expect (myself included!) so I make a point of writing a bunch of quest hooks to inspire both the players and myself during play. I use the quest hooks page from the session kit to note down basically little story bites and clues that I can drop in as and when I need to. It’s a useful sheet to glance at real quick during the game!
Loot
Gotta make sure there’s some loot somewhere! There’s always at least one player who ransacks every location they visit :) I hadn’t set up Stonevale to be a particularly loot-filled place but knew the manor in the centre could do with holding some of the resident’s belongings that could be steal-able. Again, I realised this quite late in my planning, and so dashed off to the @rpgtoonsPatreon to grab all the free item cards I could find! Then I picked out which ones could be appropriate for certain family members and residents, and stashed ‘em in the pile ready to hand out.
Ambience
This is one of the last things I come to, as it’s fairly easy to set up, but so important if you want your players to be focussed and engaged. Every time I use music or scents its palpable how much more invested in events players are. For ambient backgrounds, youtube is a gold mine. I like to have two playing simultaneously - one for music and one for background noise. For example:
As for scents, I use these a little more sparingly, but @cantripcandles does some exceptionally convincing aromas that really work for setting the mood, and taking your prep that lil extra step. My favourite is Goldwheat Bakery - the only way to get a more accurate smell would be to visit a bakery!
Finishing Up
At this point I’m almost good to go. I take one last look over everything I’ve prepped to see if there are any gaping plot holes or parts I’ve missed. For this particular session, it occurred to me there could be an opportunity for eavesdropping on an important conversation, so I wrote out a one page script for what the players might overhear should they choose to snoop.
Play!
I guess you wanna know how the session went down after all this prep? Did the players enjoy it, did they find what I’d laid out for them?
OF COURSE NOT! They made their very best effort to skirt the entire property, clinging to the edges of the map and hiding any time an NPC interaction looked likely. Predictably, I didn’t anticipate that they would attempt to avoid everything, but the Quest Hooks page kept things flexible. That, and the fact that one player’s rat companion decided to jump down a hole and became “irretrievable until further notice”…. ahem.
Hope you find this useful, I’ve tried to link to as many resources as possible because there are just so many good ones out there right now! Thanks to all DnD creators! I think it’s really cool everyone’s helping each others’ games become even more fun to play! :)
Set the names to all dogs or all people in our variations section and make this key chain/leash hanger truly yours or as an extra thoughtful gift this holiday season. Because remembering pets names is as important the human half for real dog lovers.**his, Hers and painted dog paw default if none chosen.**
Idea: Nat 1s, don’t have to be a fail, (I mean they are, but lemme explain)
So like let’s say your rolling to intimidate, you roll a one, as a dm, you can say “well, they are so unintimidted in the slightest, that they let you pass” or “they’re so unintimidted, they don’t even wanna fight you”, just something to add some spice to your life
you roll a nat 1 on intimidate and the enemy goes
‘‘oh, actually… are you alright? i don’t really want to hurt you, you… you need a lift home or something?‘‘
LMAO
There’s a concept in DMing called ‘failing up.’* In essence, its about making NAt 1s more than just about ‘well you failed’ in such a way as the momentum of the story stops dead. Let’s say a thief, with proficency and levels and lots of skills, fails to pick a lock - a nat 1. The lock cannot be picked, the door cannot be opened, the narrative and momentum stops dead as the aprty has to stand around and discuss what happens next. In failing up, however, the DM changes the parametres so that a nat 1 becomes less about failure and more ‘success with consequences’ (similar to what Monster Of The Week has as a built-in mechanic’). The thief rolls a nat 1 - he picks the lock, but the lock breaks loudly enough to alert the guards, and sudden this stealth mission is turning pear-shaped. The fighter rolls a nat 1: he moves the heavy boulder, but he throws his back out, and the party has no time to stop and rest - for the next while he’s going to be disadvantaged on a lot of checks. The wizard rolls a nat 1 on their arcana - they know enough to read the spell, but not enough to pick-up the curse built into the text, and so on.
Failure should not be dead-end, narratively.
*Okay, the exact name escapes me for the moment and I’m having a damned hard time figuring out if my source was Matt Coville or The Angry GM or someone else, but failing up works just as well.
“Imagine having a child that refuses to hug you or even look you in the eyes”
Imagine being shamed, as a child, for not showing affection in a way that is unnatural or even painful for you. Imagine being forced, as a child, to show affection in a way that is unnatural or even painful for you. Imagine being told, as a child, that your ways of expressing affection weren’t good enough. Imagine being taught, as a child, to associate physical affection with pain and coercion.
As a preschool special ed para, this is very important to me. All my kids have their own ways of showing affection that are just as meaningful to them as a hug or eye contact is to you or me.
One gently squeezes my hand between both of his palms as he says “squish.” I reciprocate. When he looks like he’s feeling sad or lost, I ask if I can squish him, and he will show me where I can squish him. Sometimes it’s almost like a hug, but most of the time, it’s just a hand or an arm I press between my palms. Then he squishes my hand in return, says “squish,” and moves on. He will come ask for squishes now, when he recognizes that he needs them.
Another boy smiles and sticks his chin out at me, and if he’s really excited, he’ll lean his whole body toward me. The first time he finally won a game at circle time, he got so excited he even ran over and bumped chins with me. He now does it when he sees me outside of school too. I stick out my chin to acknowledge him, and he grins and runs over and I lean down for a chin bump.
Yet another child swings my hand really fast. At a time when another child would be seeking a hug, she stands beside me and holds my hand, and swings it back and forth, with a smile if I’m lucky. The look on her face when I initiate the hand swinging is priceless.
Another one bumps his hip against mine when he walks by in the hallway or on the playground, or when he gets up after I’m done working with him. No eye contact, no words, but he goes out of his way to “crash” into me, and I tell him that it’s good to see him. He now loves to crash into me when I’m least expecting it. He doesn’t want anything, really. Just a bump to say “Hi, I appreciate you’re here.” And when he’s upset and we have to take a break, I’ll bump him, ask if he needs to take a walk, and we just go wander for a bit and discuss whatever’s wrong, and he’s practically glued to my side. Then one more bump before we go back into the room to face the problem.
Moral of the story is, alternative affection is just as valid and vitally important as traditional affection. Reciprocating alternative affection is just as valid and vitally important as returning a hug. That is how you build connections with these children.
This is so goddamn important.
I verbally express affection. A LOT.
My husband… doesn’t. I don’t know why. For the longest time part of me wondered if it meant he loved me less.
At some point I told him about a thing I had done as a kid. Holding hands, three squeezes means ‘I Love You’.
Suddenly he’s telling me I Love You all the time.
Holding my hand, obviously, but also randomly.
taptaptap
on my hand, my shoulder, my butt, my knee, whatever body part is closest to him, with whatever part of him is closest to me
All the time.
More often than I ever verbally said it.
It’s an ingrained signal now, I can tap three times on whatever part of him, and get three taps back in his sleep. Apparently I do the same.
It’s made a huge difference for us.
People say things differently.
My fiance and I have many different ways that we show affection and tell each other “I love you.”
We do the standards of hugs, kisses, and just smiling. We also boop each others noses, cheek nuzzles, sticking our tongues out, and even meowing at each other.
It’s different, maybe even weird, but it’s us and it’s how we know we love each other.
I have a theory that the valued quality of each of the four Houses isn’t really about the personality of its students.
The valued quality of each of the four Houses has to do with how they perceive magic.
Stick with me a second: Hogwarts is a school to study magic. Magic as Hogwarts teaches it can be seen as many things: a natural talent, a gift, a weapon, etc.
So how you believe magic should be used will both reflect your personality and change how you handle that power.
“Their daring, nerve, and chivalry set Gryffindors apart,” Gryffindors perceive magic as a weapon. Gryffindors tend to excel in aggressive forms of magic, like offensive and defensive spells, and they are good at dueling. But a true Gryffindor knows that the power is a responsibility, and so they must always use their powers to stand up for what’s right. They are the sword of the righteous, which makes them as good at Defense Against the Dark Arts as they are at combat magic.
Hufflepuffs believe that magic is a gift and that the best gifts are to be given away. Hufflepuffs, “loyal and just,” would naturally abhor the idea of jealously guarding magic or using it to hurt someone else. So Hufflepuffs share their magic to benefit of Muggles, like the Fat Friar, to protect the overlooked, like Newt Scamander with his creatures, or to oppose those who would use magic to torment and bully, like the Hufflepuffs who stood with the DA and the battle of Hogwarts.
Slytherins are the opposite: they believe their magic is a treasure that they have been entrusted to protect. The Slytherin fascination with purity, with advantage, with cunning and secrecy–all of which were perverted by the Death Eaters–comes from the idea that people with magic in their veins have been given something special that it is their duty to protect at all costs. And perhaps they aren’t entirely wrong: power in the wrong hands can be dangerous. And power interfering at will with Muggle affairs is a gross presumption that could turn the course of history. Though the series shows some of the worst that Slytherin can be, “evil,” is not a natural Slytherin tendency. “Cautious,” is.
Ravenclaws believe that magic is an art form, one that is beautiful and should be appreciated and studied for its own sake. If “wit beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure,” then asking what magic is for is useless. It’s more important to immerse oneself in magic for its own sake. Ravenclaws push the boundaries of magic to see if they can, hence Hermione’s spell experiment on the DA coins being dubbed a Ravenclaw quality, but like Luna Lovegood in the pursuit of extraordinary creatures: they can also be content to plumb the depths of what already exists.
So while you can see where personalities will overlap over Houses, perhaps in Sorting we should be asking ourselves less what we think we are and more what we think we believe.
that’s much more interesting and substantive than “brave, smart, evil, miscellaneous”
