blargerer ,

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.

dumples ,
@dumples@kbin.social avatar

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.

jjjalljs ,

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.

Ziggurat OP ,

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

nxdefiant ,

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.

pezmaker ,
@pezmaker@programming.dev avatar

Literally 5 kobolds in a dragon coat.

Hahaha, this is so brilliantly funny. Well done. If I were in your party I certainly would have approved.

Ziggurat OP ,

The idea of the Dragon which is just 5 kobolds in a dragon coat is amazing :)

Gradually_Adjusting ,
@Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world avatar

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.

DerisionConsulting ,

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.

The easiest way, is to use a generator, like https://donjon.bin.sh/scifi/random/.

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.

Ziggurat OP ,

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.

Pronell , (edited )

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."

Here's a link to it:

The Mirrored Tomb of Yeskarra

Bishma ,
@Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

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.

corcaroli ,

A shopping trip can kill half a session if it’s been a while.
Do you really have fun running a session like that? Me and my players would die of boredom.

Bishma ,
@Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

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.

They get itchy when they have too much gold. And a couple of them have taken to collecting t-shirts from the places they visit.

Shyfer ,

For some reason, my players tend to like it, but as a DM, I've always found it boring as hell.

mozz Admin ,
mozz avatar

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.

Ziggurat OP ,

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.

corcaroli ,

I was both a player and a GM in a lot of FitD games, and its downtime is not just a D&D shopping session, it's another phase of the game covered by the rules.

D&D-like shopping sessions, in contrast, are just table talk.

Nighed ,
@Nighed@sffa.community avatar

Depends how well you can roleplay it. Don't let them just buy the longsword they want... Or if you do, have there also be a super duper double ended longsword of doom™ that's not actually for sale, but could be if you could just do the shopkeeper a favour....

Fashtas ,

I stufferd a store in for my players to shop (Foundry) because it had been a while, and just grabbed a pre-built one and tossed it in...

they spent the night planning and implementing a massive heist because one item cost too much for them to afford and they wanted it..... I had NOTHING for this (half the players beliefs on the shopkeeper, how they worked and how they could be robbed was based on some crappy random generated name and they had made "assumptions"...)

Found out later they thought I planned it all

timgrant ,

While my players will easily kill 30 minutes collaborating on what to buy, a session like this is definitely more fun if there are NPC's involved.

We had a memorable session when the PC's found the Emporium of Evil, where they tried to find the magic items that weren't TOO cursed, speaking to all manner of morally questionable merchant. (They bought a lot, actually.)

You can also brainstorm the next quest this way. Whether or not the party wants to take a quest from a one of these merchants, they can certainly hear rumors. You can see what they take interest in, and build your next plot arc off of that base.

Some trouble can always pop up when the shopping is winding down, requiring decisive action by the party.

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