I run three sessions a week and I hardly prepare for them, I mostly make up the story in session. Well that's the secret sauce, thanks for reading. Now that isn't really useful to you other than me just bragging, so this is the real secret sauce to my prep. I set up the scene and characters that will take place in the session. let me get into the detail. ## Set up the Scene >[!summary] >Set up the stage where overall objective is clear for you to set future stages and what kind of characters would be involved in the upcoming session. The players don't need to have the clear picture of what is going on, the fun will be in piecing them together as the session progresses and solving them. My Saturday group is island hopping with each of the island having a story of their own and it can last anywhere between 1 session to 6 sessions or more depending how much they want to stay in the island or in depth we are playing in that island. The premise of the campaign is they accidently released something from a ruin they were exploring, spouting cycle of flame will begin. Shortly after its release, the island's dead volcano erupts and the weather pattern around the island chains starts to change drastically. The party heads to Lunar Island in search for more clues on what is going on... They encountered a monster named Lehir the Sneaky and miraculously recruited them to their roster of NPCs by threatening they can seal the monster whenever they want because they had the magical jar, not the spell, that used to seal Lehir. Ironically they did not keep the jar and left it in the ruins where they learned about Lehir's imprisonment but the monster still believes they have the jar and has the means to seal him away. Previously, the party noticed the island has monsters that are alike Lehir and they bulled him to interact with one of them, the interaction between Lehir and the monster went poorly and Lehir fled the scene. Now the party is looking for him and bring him back to their ship, they fear what it would do in the island if left alone, also they like Lehir. The party fails to find Lehir but hears a rumor about people going missing in the coast cave, when investigated they run into Lehir and a legless tabaxi named Clamshell. Lehir have removed Clamshell's legs and threatened to call out for help to lure someone else to be Lehir's food or he will eat the rest of Clamshell. ## Set up the Actors >[!summary] >Set up actor's behavior and goals first before setting up the mechanical stats unless this is purely combat. behavior and goals would give you the guidelines how they would react to the party's actions. > >Reskin from the monster manuals you already own to suit the need and tweak them if needed to save prep time. This is highly contained situation in a cave where there's only Clamshell and Lehir the Sneaky with each of their goals and stances on the situation. > [!example] Lehir > - is trying to lure food into the cave with no intention of keeping Clamshell alive > - isn't all that happy to see the party as he is still afraid of being sealed away. > - is content with the party as they let him eat humanoids they designate to be edible. > [!example] Clamshell > - traumatized by Lehir and is in pain. > - does not want to die. The simplest way to generate stats for these actors is to reskin the monsters you have from the manuals and tweak its flavor and bits of mechanics and balance them if you need them to be balanced. I also wrote a short piece on [[Creating Custom Monsters, Base Stats|creating monsters]]. There are so many good monster resources out there I think it's easier to pick from various sources and reskin them to your liking is easiest way to prep. ## Running the Session Once the scene and the actors are set, then you are ready to run the session, the fun element is the story you build with your players at the table, keep the background of the npcs brief so you can focus on the players more. There are ways to fill in the gaps by using some oracle and let the players to roll them to find out some missing information together to detail them. You can do so by using random tables or GMemulators which I will list them at the bottom. As for the session I planned with Lehir and Clamshell? well two players had stark views on how to handle the situation and they argued for 45 minutes taking sides between for and against Lehir and what to do with Clamshell. We explored and found out his family was already eaten by Lehir and has nowhere else to go. One player suggested they don't leave any evidence and let Lehir eat Clamshell while the other protected Clamshell he is innocent and shouldn't be considered on Lehir's menu and it was the party's fault for bullying Lehir in the first place to run off in the previous session. The party recruited Clamshell to their armada (yes by this point they had three ships under their control and needed more npcs to man them) and assigned Clamshell in a different ship as Lehir. and this is how I am able to run 3 sessions a week without getting burned out, I let most of the plot to happen in session with the guideline. Some combat encounters might be inevitable but some doesn't even happen because they found some other way to get around the problem. ## Record, record! This style of running session requires good note taking skills or summarize the details that happened in the session. I have a pen and paper on the side to take note of the names used, and quick summary to prepare for the next scene, npc responses and overarching direction of the campaign. ### GMemulators These are products that emulates the role of the GM but also can provide GMs with some prompts that would inspire them to generate responses. What I do is I look up the table and ask one of the player to roll me a dice. 1. [CRGE, Conjectural Roleplaying GM Emulator](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/145426/crge-conjectural-roleplaying-gm-emulator): This is the one I use for GM emulation 2. [Mythic Game Master Emulator Second Edition](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/422929/mythic-game-master-emulator-second-edition) : I do not have this book but is the most popular one on the Drivethrough RPG.