Welcome to dm TGM. This is the place where we answer your questions to help you feel more comfortable around the game table. I'm your dm from Dungeons and Dragons Rushmore,
Sean Howard:and I'm your GM from the end of time and other bothers Sean Howard.
Russ D. More:Now, Sean, this is something you're very familiar with. We got a question in here. So you might take the lead on it. But you've got 30 minutes till everyone shows up at your house and you haven't prepped a single thing. What do you do?
Sean Howard:I feel attacked. I'm okay. This may be modus operandi for me. I normally have an hour, but then I like often record a video to procrastinate further about, you know, because I do these prepping videos. So it ends up being 30 minutes. I think it's okay. So it happens. Unless you're like Rushmore, and you've completely. Have you ever had it happen to us, like you organise everything. Like you were just saying, before we started recording, how many episodes are you dropping over the next two weeks?
Russ D. More:16 or 17? Yeah.
Sean Howard:So like you have and you have a schedule, right? That's booked out for an entire year.
Russ D. More:Yeah, into February 2022.
Sean Howard:So Russ, have you ever had this happen where your people are showing up and you haven't prepped? I know. I know. It's happened one time when you prep the wrong thing?
Russ D. More:Oh, absolutely. I've definitely prepped the wrong thing and then had to scramble. So yes, it has happened to me. Where I have, you know, or had just had a really busy day. No, it's on the calendar and not had time to sit down and dive into it. But yes, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Sean Howard:Okay, cool. For me, it's basically every restaurant rested. I recently, it's gonna be releasing sued recently co created, basically mechanics for a game system for a one shot. And yeah, I think Ross, you put in 1416 hours. And I think I put in two hours the day before.
Russ D. More:Yeah, the day before. Yeah, it's a very clear divide on who preps ahead in how this game that we both were like, yeah, I'll take this part. You take this part.
Sean Howard:I did my part. You did your part.
Russ D. More:Absolutely, you did. But because it was two hours before we didn't get to jive. That's not the problem. That's not the problem we're talking about here. The problem is now we're just ranting at each other about each
Sean Howard:now I'm procrastinating answering the question so that I you know, how I work best under pressure. Okay, so you have 30 minutes, the tables gonna be coming together. This is gonna sound crazy. But the first thing I do is just start organising. So it's really worth it. Because it's critical that you don't start to panic. Yeah, I sit down at the table. And I literally just take a few deep breaths and I start pulling out any notes I have from my session. I like to use note cards because I've had to embrace the way I work with lack of planning. So I started to pull out no cards, like I have a no card for every player character, I have some note cards with what I call outstanding offers, I highly recommend that as a tool, I'll explain what that is the the next thing I do is I start to pull out things that are might be relevant to where the players left off. So I have a list of like, a bunch of cards for everybody. Or you might have the monster manual, or you might have a book of you know, creatures or bad, bad dudes are dudettes or whatever. And then I look over the outstanding offer card. So the outstanding offer card is a list of things. I saw no card one line at a time I write really small and I don't go into too much detail, but anything that's come up in a previous session that never got resolved. And it is a just a treasure trove of awesome ideas to pick back up again. So it might be something that happened six months ago in the first or second session where they met some crazy dude and sort of defeated him and he ran away. That's an outstanding offer. You just write down crazy dude escaped, you know, and put his name. What's he been doing all this time? Like, is he angry at the party? And so I just find a starting point. It might be the outstanding offers, it might be from my notes of last session. It'll be like, oh, and then I look up at the clock and realise at this point, I probably have less than 15 minutes. Then I panic a little and I just say okay, well What are the minimum things I'm going to need at hand? Now that I have a starting point to help make this session?
Russ D. More:Yeah, I think, Well, I mean, for me, whether it's two hours or whether it's 30 minutes, like I do kind of similar, like you look at the notes from the last time or listen to the last session, how, I mean, we have the we have the luxury of having all of our sessions recorded. The average player does not, I mean, you might, you might record your sessions, that'd be cool. But you have your note cards. So
Unknown:you look
Russ D. More:and the things how I break down my stories, is I have like the end goal. What are they trying to do here? They're trying to get out of this maze. They're trying to beat this bad person. Have they done that yet? When I've sit back back down? If the answer's no, then I'm just then it's for me an easier time because I'm building off of what they've done. I don't have to necessarily introduce anything new at that moment. It's those times when I sit down and read my notes 30 minutes before and I'm like, Oh, we finished that thing. Oh, no,
Sean Howard:I haven't I haven't I have a thing about that. Yeah. So I was just gonna say one of the most common times you end up in the 30 minute crunch is when you've completed the big campaign, you brought someone on and made one of your players cry and killed their character. It's all and did big. Just making something up there. Right? Yeah, just off the top of your top my head, right? And then you're like, you sit down again, the next session? And you're like, Oh, I don't have any more notes like you think because you've had it all planned out, right? You've been following a maybe a book or you've been following a module. And suddenly, you've cliffhanger in it right at a big moment. And then it's like, what do you do the next session? My favourite thing in the world, is if you've cliffhanger, like, let's say a character, like let's say you end it on a character dying, like getting a death blow, and they collapse to the ground. And everyone's like, Am I really dead? And you're like, I think so You failed your death, save. And everyone's like, oh, and you just end it? You do? Not ever. It's like, this is like storytelling one on one. You do not start the next session off in that moment. No, because that's what everyone wants to know what happened to my character. You just do a flashback, you go back in time you, you you jump ahead, everyone's alive. They don't know how or what's going on. Or you literally can just start anywhere. And then the idea being that you're gonna play a whole session when you try and come back to that moment. Right. But they're one of the easiest sessions to run because you could I love doing the flashbacks. Anyways. Yeah. cliffhangers are often the point where you're like, what do I do now? Don't answer it right away.
Russ D. More:Well, that's it right? Because you you there's this expectation of a big payoff, which you don't always need to need to have right away, like you said, like, whether they live or die. You can play that out in the in the year that flashed ahead, and then come back. And then there's the resolution, right. And then the players in that point, are helping you resolve it because you're now presenting them with something that's already happened. So there's a little bit of safety and security in them playing with you along in that flashback story.
Sean Howard:Yep. So another thing you do is if you come to a complete climax is let's say they won like, like they conquer. They're supposed to be big Heroes for the kingdom, throw them behind deaths, like in a castle, just getting reports of all the things that are now wrong, because of all this shit. You can basically go back through the story you played it be like, this village was demolished, like, you know, these cities were overrun, because of stuff the characters did to try and save the world. And now they're just dealing with all the paperwork, and you know, you could just, and then they can have little mini adventures. Right? I love that.
Russ D. More:Or, this, this would be good. You get through the maze in 18 years. And now they're sitting down with their big boss being like, Look, this was really an easy thing. And it outlines the exact path they needed to take.
Sean Howard:Yeah, yeah, you can have fun little scenes. And the cool thing is all of that you can just reframe all the things they did in the journey from the other perspective. Right right. What happened to that now that there's no now that there's no orc chieftain or or a dragon what forces are now on unleashed that no one can touch right that the dragon was keeping in check and and so you can have people upset at them? Right anyways, yeah, see, you can just you can have fun with the what I call it like the minutia, right like the the stuff we don't go into. Right We because it's because it's an it's a fantasy, but and it just gives you a breather episode where you can everyone can have fun at the table reliving the other side of these things in the paperwork or the angry King. And then you'll building your way up to finding a new like a new adventure.
Russ D. More:Yeah, hopefully along the way throughout that session. Yeah, you find one that they they're getting, you can see in their eyes that they get really excited about and then you know that okay, that that Dragon or orc chieftain who was protecting that that's the next thing that they've got to try and help now put something else back in place to fix what they've done wrong and build from there. So 30 minutes until people showed up, organise your notes from last time. Like Sean said, start taking note cards, outstanding offers, things that happen in your game that are often just thought of as like, throw away, the guy runs away, the city gets lit on fire, there's something you can always come back to those things, you know, quick, you know, monster stat blocks, just to have ready at the go. And then just a rough idea of where you need to where you want to be at the end, then that might change throughout the session, but just a Yeah, ballpark of where you want to go. And then trust your players. Trust your players to have fun in the space that you're going to present to them and, and just go for it.
Sean Howard:Something really magical happens when you start to experiment with leaving space. Yeah. Right. So rather than have everything written out, and all the descriptions, you start to just be like, Well, I think there's three fun things we can play with. And then you just leave space in between Yeah, right? For whatever pops into your head for whatever the players decide to do. That seems insane. Like you, you know, you, you're just having them sit behind a desk, someone brings them a report and they shout to the field like you can, you can start a little mission, right? Like, you just leaving space can be a lot of fun. It takes it takes getting used to doing so you just have to try it, you have to try not having it all planned and see where the fun is for your table. Because it's, I think it'd be a little scary, right? If you're starting GM or you haven't done that before, absolutely can feel a little scary to not have it all planned out. And it can take a little while for your table to realise they have agency in this story. There's gaps that they can push into. Yeah,
Russ D. More:I mean, if you look at it from the way I like to look at it from the from the DM sides, like I have all of the information the quote unquote bad characters have. I should, in theory, have no information about what the good characters have your players or you know, other way around if you're playing an evil campaign what however that is, so let them present them the options. And then like life, they're gonna walk through it and decide, well, we're gonna rent a carriage there's a now a kitten, you know, you gotta go talk to the rental guy Larry down at the rental place, he's got a horse for you, you got a new character that you can establish, that you didn't have previously and how they get to that point where now the the the layer actions start coming into into play, then you can start getting into your plant stuff. And give them time to get to and from all of these missions and objectives. Yeah, like it.
Sean Howard:And don't worry if you don't have any plans stuff. Yeah, that's modus operandi for me. But so for example, what another idea? Oh, sighs Yeah, but it's another fun idea. Let's say you can't come up with anything that's happened to me. You're just sitting there, the clock's ticking down. They're gonna be here in 10 minutes. Take the most irritating minor character that the party loves hating, they just love it. Like it's a they don't like your voice you do for them drives them nuts, but they just you can tell they love hating this character. So one time, it wasn't the recording, it was one of the sessions I was running. There was a kept running across this merchant that was like a wine merchant that just kept stealing shit from them when like, he kept having them come with them. And then he had them he paid them to guard He's like, I don't know what happened. Why I'm so sorry, someone so it took them a while to realise this guy's just robbing them blind every time they interact with him. He everything he set them up for went badly. And I just took that character and I just because then they basically got him arrested, right at some point or gotten in trouble. And then I was like, What if he's the king's nephew. And that was a whole session. Because now the king is pissed off at these characters that right? So like, you can just take anything and just but if you take a fun character that the table knows. And you know, you sort of know how to interact. You don't need a lot of planning, right? You you sort of know that character's motivations. And now you can give him a stat like a like a big step up and status. And power.
Russ D. More:Yeah, it is. Sorry, I wasn't trying to see, you know, turn this 30 minutes into Well, now you need to have a big big boss battle plan. But yeah, just an idea of that character or that encounter or something.
Sean Howard:Yeah, I agree, Russ. I think I'd say if you're starting out. It's really good idea to pan out like a front like to say, like rest is saying to have some idea of where you're trying to drive things to. I'm insane. So I don't have that. But I'm not saying be me. Don't. It's not fun. every session that I'm in. Be Shawn, don't be shot. It's not fun. It's a little stressful. Awesome.
Russ D. More:I think that's pretty much gets, you know, at least into the mindset of us. Have fun with it.
Sean Howard:It's okay.
Russ D. More:Yeah. Your players will enjoy it, you will enjoy it. Try not to stress it, there will be we can't say don't stress, but try not to stress it. Because at the end of the end of the day, everybody's coming to play a game and have a fun time. And as long as everybody's open to new ideas and just going with it, you're gonna have a blast. And then it'll give you new ideas that you can start to prep on for the next time. And build out a bigger campaign or world from there
Sean Howard:and start creating an outstanding offers list could be in a notebook could be anything that's unresolved.
Russ D. More:Definitely, if that helps you let us know send us an email dm to gm cast@gmail.com. Join us on Twitter or in our discord links are down at the description. And if you have questions for us that aren't about this, but about something else about your game, send them to us to and we'll answer them for you. We will but in the meantime, we hope you How do we end this? get your game on and play more games? No.
Sean Howard:Yeah, good. I think it was something like get started.
Russ D. More:Get your game started. Yeah, yeah. For the meantime, get your game started.
Unknown:We'll talk to y'all later.