Adventures in Prepping

Lately I've found myself struggling to stay motivated on some of the nitty-gritty bits of running an ongoing campaign. I need a system for taking notes, staying organized, and making effective use of prep time. Often when I sit down to prep for a game, I hit writers block. Rather than being worried about the game being 'good', I suspect it's really about feeling overwhelmed and directionless about what I should be working on.

To correct this problem I've decided I should sit down and pick my own brain for answers.

To help myself and others sift through this rambling I'll notate each section with "$ Philosophical:" for when I'm rambling about things you think, and "+ Applicable:" for when I'm suggesting an practical thing you do. Then, at the bottom of the post I'll distill down the essence for ease of reference.

$ Philosophical: Why Prep?

My playstyle is typically improv-heavy but rather than throwing on tables and making stuff up as I go I find it helps to have something a little more structured to riff on. The continuum from prep-heavy to full-improv is a gradient, and I think I'm only slightly more towards the improv side than in the middle. What I really need is a cohesive head-canon of ideas to draw on, so I'm not just grasping at straws.

Another element that's important is having well-structured, concise play reference. Traditionally this is tabbed DM folder. The older I get the more I find that routine and structure is very important for my well-being. This is something I think is innate to all humans, but how it's best expressed is a learned behavior. It's going to be slightly different for everyone according to acculturation, experience, and temperament. Having a sensible structure takes a huge mental burden off, as a lot of your thinking is done ahead of time. When you don't have structure your brain is required to work double-time at solving problems over and over again. Without fitting those solutions into a framework you end up treading old ground, coming up with novel solutions each time. Routine and structure reduces mental load and stress, freeing up brain space to focus on newer, more interesting and meaningful tasks. This extra bandwidth increases enjoyment, flow, and satisfaction by allowing you to be more mentally present.

In the same vein, taking notes during game is a huge boon. That way you have a record of previous games to refer to when doing prep, and to jog your memory of past actions. DMs have a lot of hats to wear and jobs to juggle, in and out of the game. A simplified, planned system of note taking expediates this process.

My current system is an unstructured pile of notebooks, a jumble of half-finished dungeons, important prep, in-game notes, asides, doodles, and scratch. It's a headache to sift through.

...

+ Applicable: What do you need when you sit down to play?

World Map - a hexmap of the region play takes place in. Players generate their own version of this as they play. This gives you an overview of nearby locations and environments.

Maps of Expected Locations and Dungeons and Keys - All the nearby. locations you expect the players to visit this session, mapped out on graph paper and efficiently keyed

Encounter Tables - For said adventure locations and regions, including relevant wilderness and dungeon areas.

Relevant Generation Tables - Random tables, but just the most important and immediately useful ones.

Note-Taking System - Could be a spiral notebook with a planned system of how to take notes that you stick with. That way when the players defeat a monster or get a quest, it triggers a thing in your brain to write it down.

Adventure Hooks - A list of potential adventure hooks, and active quests, and where the players stand on them. Probably two sheets: active potential hooks (ones the player could trigger right now), and ones that have already been triggered with a sentence or two about where the players are with it. Update this each session, removing ones that are no longer important.

Notes on Current Adventure - Where the players are right now. You might keep a separate set of notes distilled from past adventures, just the key points. The current adventure notes are the insider view on what the players said they're working on, or what you expect them to be doing for the present session.

+ Philosophical: Two Kinds of Prep

There's two kinds of prep: Creation and Updating.

+ Applicable: Creation

This is what you do when you're making new stuff. If you're sitting down to start a fresh sandbox campaign, it's all creation. This is the fun joy part of the DM's job. 

Don't let it take over your life! I find that creativity happens better when you encourage yourself to do it at specific times. Daydreaming is unhealthy. If you train your brain to daydream it'll start throwing things at you when you're supposed to stay on task. Living a distracted life increases your mental load and stress.

Instead, train yourself to be creative when you sit down to be creative. Do this by shifting attention away from daydreaming when you notice it (I like to turn my attention to my breath for a moment). That way you save up that mental energy for when it's time to prep (DM solo play). Then you're less stressed in your daily life you'll have more energy and creativity when it comes time, because you haven't been squandering it all day. Mental energy is finite, like mana, use it well!

+ Applicable: Updating

This is when you add to, remove, or change things that you've created previously.

You refer to old notes, previous sessions, and change things in your current prep. You might keep a previous record of old, no-longer-important updates and retire them to the trash after a certain period. Maybe perform a routine housekeeping at the end of each month, only keeping the very most important beats for later reference.

Just forget about everything that goes in the trash or it'll continue taking up that precious brain space. The older I get the more useful I find it to be strict about stay trim and austere in this regard.

$ Philosophical: The Psychology of Writer's Block

This is where I hit that motivation wall. It's good to learn yourself well enough that you can identify why you hit a wall. There's a reason why for everything you do, and often we get stuck and frustrated when we don't let ourselves figure this out.

Often we hide the truth from ourselves by creating stories in our heads about "why", but the real answers are always Feeling and Needs. Here's a little bit of earned wisdom for you to take home. Frustration as a Feeling is always related to the need for Effectiveness. If you can connect with the Need for Effectiveness and create a Request for yourself of how to meet that Need, the Feeling gets dealt with. That's what I'm doing right now by writing this - I'm fulfilling my own Request.

It's obvious how to make a Request of others, but when it comes to DMing and writer's block, dealing with self, it can be a little sticky. You have to learn to empathize with and understand self effectively. If you're Anxious about prepping it's because you have a Need for Acceptance. Don't fall for the trick of thinking you want Acceptance from people who Aren't Right In Front Of You Actively Not Granting Acceptance!! You want the game to be good and your friends to like you, but YOU'RE the one not Accepting YOU! So rather than prep you procrastinate because you're unconsciously trying to avoid Accepting your own little self. Oh the webs we weave!

The only way to deal with this trap is to Give Yourself permission to be a regular, normal, flawed human. Really, being regular, normal, and flawed is the most beautiful, most perfect way you can be. Why? Because it's what you really, truly, actually are. The image you have in your head of being great, shining, and admired is a fantasy - it's really an inverted fear. People want to be Great because they don't want to be Alone. Luckily, there's plenty of middle ground and you have no choice but to Actually Live There. So just Live There.

The other form of writer's block is Frustration. Frustration, as I said, comes from the Need for Effectiveness. It's not that you Want to achieve your goal, it's that you think you're actively Not achieving it. If you stop to analyze the situation it becomes obviously absurd: Instead of actually Doing the Thing, you're sitting there stumped, frustrated, caught up in this fear of Not Doing The Thing. You're caught in another psychological feedback loop: I'm frustrated because I'm not doing the thing, and because of this frustration I feel stuck, and because I feel stuck, I can't do the thing, therefore I'm frustrated about not doing the thing...etc etc

The only way out is to switch gears and start doing something. You have to push through a wall of pain to do that. Therefore, make the wall of pain as small as you can. Get out some scratch paper and just start writing word-association style. ORC DRAGON CAKE SWORD COIN WITCH until you start getting momentum

Admittedly, my technique is often to get on Discord an complain about what I'm thinking. Someone inevitably chimes in to give me advice and it usually clears up immediately. Now I'm no longer stuck in a feedback loop of frustration problem, instead my brain is now working on the problem of criticizing their advice and thinking up better advice. Once I'm giving myself Better Advice I've broken the psychological chain and I'm free to start working, with the added benefit of having Better Advice. Human brains are weird.

Is that Chaotic Evil of me? Hell no, kill the demiurge!

+ Applicable: Okay But What Do I Actually Prep Though (Elements of Game Prep)

Below is a Food Chain ranked in order of data complexity. Things closer to the top are made out of things lower down.

Adventure Hooks - This is where you extract fragments of data from your keys and convert it into exciting tidbits that players want to investigate. Despite being extracts from lower levels of data, these are actually the most energetically complex element because they fractally compress a web of data in a small space. Hand these out like candy and keep the list updated. You might have different adventure hook lists for different regions, locations, or settlements. 

World Map - This is the highest level instrument. It correlates all data lower in the system in graphical form. This is your hexmap or gridmap or pointcrawl map or whatever map. It's a chart of symbols for orienteering imaginary space. It's the table of contents of your Shared Hallucination.

World Key - This is the Words that explain what the symbols mean.

Adventure / Dungeon Maps - A zoomed in graphical overlay of bits of your World.

Adventure / Dungeon Key - Corresponding Words that explain the Adventure / Dungeon Maps.

State of the World - This is the factsheet for over-arching adventures you have sort of planned out. This exists, though you might not use it at the table, because it can be hard to parse out "Fazlod the Mage wants the Silver Sword from the Lady of the Lake, but it was Stolen from Her by the Goblin King, Only 3 dudes in different places know how to get there, there are 4 other NPCs that also want the sword, oh and the Hobgoblin army is marching thru the Goblin Kings territory, oh and wyverns are attacking the Hobgoblins etc" based on information scattered across your prep material. This can be as simple as a list of headlines of current events happening outside the view of the players, maybe with details for how they connect so you know how to look up the information you need. Think: WHO WHAT WHERE WHY COMPLICATION

Random Tables - Tables for adding life and color to the world. These have varying levels of complexity somewhere between Null and Adventure Hook. They can be anything from bits of fluff, to Monsters, NPCs, or entire Adventure / Dungeons.

Faction Profiles - the egregore of a collective of NPCs. Includes similar data to an NPC, but from a corporate level.

NPC Profiles - Mobs, critters, denizens. This includes data sheets for NPCs as well as monster stat-blocks. A picture, name, statblock, profession/background, cute details/quirks, motivations, likes/dislikes, resources, allies/enemies, whatever. This could be as simple as a blackbook entry like "Orianna Flux, 24F,  Human, Gloaming Spire, Tinker's Guildmaster. Love: Technology, Hates: Orcs".

Treasure Tables - Shinies.

Background Lore - This is actually the lowest level of data because it's basically the white noise at the base of everything. These are the deranged scrivenings you make when you're dreaming up shit and writing it down. Later you go back and extract stuff, combine it with Structure, and add it to one of the higher-level data sets. Make sure you don't let this stuff stick around too long or you end up with reams of notebook you don't even want to look at.

So that's basically what you need to play the game. Maps, Keys, Hooks, Factions, NPCs, Random Tables, and something explaining How This Stuff Connects Together and What's Going On. Maybe a shame-inducing notebook of Ideas or Background Lore.

I like to use folders and notepad files or google docs to track all this stuff on a grand scale, and copy into a DM folder for using at play. It's nice to keep a digital archive so that updating is easier. Only pen and paper can be messy unless you're very disciplined.

+ Applicable: Taking Notes

It can be hard to know which game elements to trigger for a note. Often I just don't even take notes because I'm busy playing and I don't want to stop to write. I suppose this is a Need I should investigate. Maybe it's related to Acceptance: I want Acceptance that the game will be fun and my players won't be bored while I stop to take notes. My players can't give that to me, only I can give that to me. If they're not having fun because I stop for 5 seconds every so often to write something down maybe I need new players.

So what things trigger a note?

Meeting an NPC, PC / NPC Death, Monster Encounter, Monsters Slain, Adventure Hooks Received, Locations Visited, Treasure Obtained, Faction Moves, Important Events. What's an Important Event? Anything that conceivably be a headline or a diary entry. Keep each note under d12-ish words. Maybe shoot for a VERB NOUN format, like a MUD.

ENTERED GREEN VILLAGE

MET WIZARD MIKE

KILLED WIZARD MIKE

GOT 1000GP AND WIZARD MIKE HAT

RAN FROM GUARDS

RAGNAR DIED

NEW QUEST: REVIVE RAGNAR - LADY OBELISK HAS MAGIC DOODAD

+ Applicable: Organizing Reference Folder

Okay this post is getting long and I'm tired. Let's wrap this shit up. This where I'm gonna overview.

Reference Folder is a fancy way to say DM Folder.

It should have tabs and a ream of notebook paper and graph paper in the back.

Each tab should correlate to an Element of Game Prep. I think this might be a good arrangement:

1. Adventure Hooks

2. State of the World

3. World Map / Key

4. Adventure / Dungeon Maps / Key

5. Faction Profiles

6. NPC Profiles

7. Encounter Tables

8. Treasure Tables

9. Random Tables (d4caltrops.com)

10. Scratch Paper

- Notes in its own Notebook so you can keep it open in front of you while flipping thru DM folder

- Background Lore in its own Notebook so you're not wrestling with it while playing

Creation Work Flow:

- Draw Map

- Create Encounter Tables for Region

- Generate Starting Settlement

- Populate Settlement with NPCs

- Generate Starting Dungeon (1-3 floors if you do that thing)

- Populate Dungeon with Monsters and Treasure

- Generate d6 Adventure Locations close to the Starting Settlement

- Connect stuff, make Factions w Goals, allies/enemies

- Generate d6 Adventure Hooks

Update Work Flow:

- Refer to notes

- Update Adventure Hooks

- Fill out Area players are heading to

- If they discovered a new site, prep it out

- Populate new profiles (expanding on NPCs, factions, events you made up during game)

- Recall the hooks and Whispers and Lore you Spouted during the game and add those things to your World

- Drink water, get good sleep, meditate

- Comb through your stuff and cut out half of what you wrote. Try to condense things down. Music is made by the spaces between the notes. When there's room to breathe you also have room to imagine. Don't paint yourself into a corner. Only prep 1-2 games ahead of the players. 

- Update the State of the World factsheets so you don't get lost.

How to start adventuring

 Draw a map. Use whatever format inspires you the most. I like the freedom of a blank sheet of printer paper and a nice mechanical pencil, or thick sketchbook paper and micron pens. Let the ideas flow as you go. If you get stuck quit and go do something else.

Once you've got your map pick the place the players will start. Choose 4 nearby locations to be important.

Who lives there? What do they want/need? What are they afraid of? What's something that makes them different from their neighbors?

Write 3 sentences for 3 different settlements. They can be human trade down, elven bastions, evil war-barons, or a city of zombies leftover from the demon wars who are just trying their best to mimic their old way of life. 

Whatever you do, avoid the temptation to be good, to write something others would enjoy, or to make something that would bring you accolades. If you catch yourself thinking at any point "that's not good enough, so-and-so on that blog said ideas like this are stupid" or "if I bought this product on drivethru would I be disappointed?" just stop and go do something else. Take a shower, drink some water, go for a walk.

Throw a d6, make that many adventure locations. Every location needs:

- a physical thing marking the location

- something valuable

- something dangerous

- a trick

- a living or non-living being to befriend

- a connection to something else on the map

Draw a map if you feel inspired, or make a diarama out of clay, or make a playlist on Spotify.

At this point put everything down and go watch a movie like Secret of Nimh, the Bakshi LoTR movies, or Castle in the Sky. Go for a walk in the woods, or sit at the subway and people watch.

Come back, doodle more. Eventually work your way toward a dungeon. For inspiration go play NES Zelda, Castlevania, Metroid, or Dragon Warrior.

Make a dungeon of 20 rooms. It should have:

- 8 empty rooms

- 5 rooms with monsters

- 4 traps

- 8000 gp worth of treasure, broken up into chunks and scattered randomly (2000, 1000, 1000, 500, 500, 500, 500, 250, 250, 250, 250, and the last 1000 in small change tucked in little places or in the form of cutlery)

- 3 things that aren't traps that are obstacles and only potentially dangerous (if you can't imagine what that looks like go for a walk by the train tracks, sewers, river, docks, or junk yard)

Play some D&D. Start the players at the dungeon. Run them on it. Let them decide what they want to do. If they seem stuck give them two options. Don't be afraid to wait. Take notes.

Afterwards start making connections between everything seen, said, done, talked to, heard about. Go forth and prosper.

Thanatology in the Last Lands - part one

 Undead

Sleep thought from the other day: vampire native form is black mist. They possess bodies which decay at normal rate. Must suck blood to keep body fresh. More blood = younger and stronger

Some games have vampires possess living human bodies.

I like corpses because they have a shelf life, dissolve into goo, and have an excuse to force vamp to drink blood

Also image of vamp w/o fangs biting & sucking blood like a remora is fun

They can't cross running water because it'll wash their mist body out thru orifices

Also they have to return to grave soil at morning to refresh. Store your rotting meat suit in a coffin of vermicompost. Back up bodies in giant urns of fermented sludge.

Raising dead requires installing a new soul. There's different ways of doing this but jewels are compact and effective. The more valuable the jewel the stronger the soul it can contain. Djinn and Efreeti are basically incorporeal so they can be captured too by a sufficiently potent sorcerer.

Easiest source of souls is captured children, but they're the least competent. Thus skeletons sing nursery rhymes, play hopscotch, pelt PCs with stones (harmless but annoying), and run away cackling when they're caught.

Adult souls are more capable but they can be confused by death, especially if they died unexpectedly or in great anguish. Unless regularly subdued they eventually go mad and turn feral.

Unwilling souls lose their memories, will, and the majority of their prowess, though they may retain bits. Thus undead servants can be raised to perform menial tasks based on their living profession.

Souls of scholars can organize libraries, sort texts, and act as scribes, though they're mindless and incapable of understanding any of it, being basically automata, so they can't combine ideas or interpret materials.

Souls of warriors make okay fighters, but fall short of living warriors. The benefit is that they're fearless, never tire, and feel no pain.

Undead peasants, porters, sailors, and smiths can pull plows, tie down cargo, adjust sails, and produce works, but their quality is shoddy at best. They don't tire or require supervision though, although they don't know to switch tasks on their own so you're liable to return to the forge and find a thousand horse shoes and a bored skeleton counting ants in the corner.

Willing participants are best and rarest, they maintain their memories and capabilities in death but their personality is erased. Never possess a corpse with it's original soul. Just trust me on this.

Fragments of personality may occasionally bubble to the surface. Nothing important. They may start imitating past activities in a harmlessly mindless way, organizing snail shells by color and size, staring at stars, counting hair follicles on a scalp, staring uncomprehendingly at a page in a book, or playing a game of mock chess with themselves using rocks. All done totally silently. Without orders they'll wait around patiently until something triggers them.

Skeletons have the soul crystal imbedded in their skull, the cavity of which is filled with gelatinous ichor. The top of the skull is replaced with riveted steel. Many necromancers keep desiccated mummies around as backstock. They're nice because they don't fall apart or rot.

Shamblers are walking corpses and have soul crystals embedded in their exposed hearts which swell and pump black ichor through their veins, animating them. They decompose in time if not taken care of, albeit slowly. If kept in a cool dry environment they can last centuries.

All undead go feral if their master dies, if they aren't given orders for too long, or if the incantations subduing them aren't refreshed often enough.

Souls trapped in undead bodies suffer great agony. They don't know what's happening to them and they seem to be living in a hellish prison and tormented by terrible visions mixing their past and current unlife. The suffering caused generates serious karmic defilements in the caster, twisting their karmic alignment towards chaos. The rebirths of powerful necromancers are invariably in the worst hells.

Thus they are motivated by self preservation to find the secrets of eternal life, to cheat reincarnation, or to transmit their souls to demons or other necromancers on the promise of safe keeping or installing into a fresh body. The worst kinds of lich are a sorcerer and apprentice pair that pass their souls back and forth for eternity, cloning or capturing new bodies with each iteration, and growing forever in knowledge. 

Wraiths, ghosts, shades, shadows, specters, voidlings, etc are confused dead souls which, due to unsatisfactory burial, incompleted obsessions, or other types of clinging failed to successfully transfer into the Mouth of Death. Without realizing the nature of their state dead souls often fixate on their old life and become trapped on this plane when the Mouth of Death gate closes.

Thus they wander, trying to live their old life, slowly going insane with frustration. Often they become violent or vengeful. These spirits can be manipulated by evil sorcerers, used as slaves or guardians, or sent as agents to inflict disease and misfortune.

All undead feed on life essence, often in the form of spiritual essence, flesh, organs or bodily fluids.

For information on the nature of the afterlife, attachment, and rebirth, read "the Tibetan Book of the Dead". I recommend the Jung commentary. I'll do another segment on how that plays into my campaign world.

Orcs are Larva

 If you are working and cut your finger and instead of healing that small cut goes sour and you lose that finger we say it was the work of orcu. Barrow blighters. They are the counter part the mockery of men. Where men relish the sunshine and fresh air they only know cold and damp and dark and cruelty. They live in tribes like our peoples, but know neither chieftain nor council, instead 

they wrestle amongst each other perpetually, those who can't defend themselves die, they would rather leave their wounded sick and old. Occasionally one especially strong and cruel orcu is able to whip together a few tribes in to a bloodlust to raid settlements for food or slaves or iron, the on only thing they hate more than each other is creatures which go about in the day.

Speak an archaic version of black tongue which consists only of curses, orders, and words for constructing poisons and their cruel machines of war...they know only nothing of healing or agriculture, but are clever at building cruel machines that belch smoke and dig their slimy wormtunnels deep in the earth, building with stone, of diverting water and toppling fortress walls from below, and laying cruel traps that maim instead of kill, of chains and tools and black vicious blades, they make a crude pig iron, soft so that it bends, or hard as diamond so that it shatters leaving razors in the wound. They do nothing themselves but capture slaves to work for them, preferring to manage and oversee and devise and demand. Dwarves they make overseers, if they don't eat them instead, humans they like for drudge work, no elf has ever been taken a slave for they waste and die within days if placed in chains or locked away.

PLANETOID OF DESPOTISM

 Post-progress society

Three biomes: rocky desert, jungle, tundra.

Choose a planetoid as location. One like Ceres is good.

Planets orbit swings around wildly, with the weakened sun careening through the sky senselessly.

Seasons in chaos, asteroid rain, occasional blow-outs of transdimensional energy resulting from

AI government organized by nanobots keeps humanity from developing tools that could destroy life. Steel minds governed by invariable oath of ahimsa, their hubs spread about the world. Worshiped as wizard-gods in a number of fragmented religions and petty folklore, as the purpose of the millions of minute changes their ectoplasmic sentience effects upon the biome of the dwindling planet is beyond the rudimentary calculations of the human mind. The result of these changes is often in line with the ultimate beneficence to the remaining dregs of humanity as the terrible inhospitality of the barely terraformed micro-planet forces the AIs into an endless series of micro-corrections resembling mercurial inhumanity.

A certain allotment of food is provided from deposit cylinders and most menial labor is performed entirely by robots, nanobot liquiforms, mutants, or voluntarily by humans to have something to do

Shelterpods for living are mostly uncomfortable dumps but free

Free clothing is thermal skintight nano-webbing of various colors. Many wear it under flashier handmade clothes.

 carefully calibrated happiness-to-destruction quotient maintains karmic equilibrium to maximize free time and minimize suffering. nanobot web attempts to maintain its own neutral karma through minimum contamination and efficient use of resources

The basics are provided to all and work is unnecessary unless one chooses to do so. Some gather together in philosophical communes, or spend their lives playing complex social games. Most choose to live simple, minimalist lives tending pleasure-gardens, reading dusty tomes, developing skills, being quiet and contemplative.

A small number live as adventurers. These are the people who would be sociopaths, despots, politicians, capitalists, and generals of our world. Since nobody buys their shit they roam around fucking each other over, causing mayhem, and being chased from calm harmless villages.

An insignificant fraction dedicate them to uncovering the mysteries and histories of the planet. They live in far-flung reaches hiding from the wizard government.

'

Most acute wounds can be cured by healing machines, which reside in temples presided over by priests. Various geases on behalf of their philosophy are required for service. Sometimes they re-construct your body & put you into service as payment. Viral/bacterial disease infections are viewed as necessary for evolution and immune-system training is a common practice. people undertake diseases voluntarily in order to perpetuate evolution and reduce negative karma for others.

Advanced tech lies around everywhere, but the origin and understanding of it is non existent except by the wizards (AI government) or sorcerers (human scientists).

Micro-cults are everywhere, everybody believes something different. wars are fought as sport.

Humans tend to keep their population small. Childbirth is considered holy and women are respected as priestesses.

Style-guide:

How something works is never really explained, or there's a bunch of competing explanations. All this tech is seen from the eyes of an ignorant simpleton. No infodumps.

All paragraphs are 4 sentences or less.

No descriptions. Everything is in terms of verbs and adjectives.

Nothing is what it appears to be.

Weird cultures:

Sherpanthwe believe it is their goal to lead others across the lands, extremely great guides, goal is to die in an adventure

Orfichiums replace all parts of their body with live snakes

Zur-dir men beetle helmets, extremely buff, sexless, hosts for brains in jars

Haltzagog vicious little gray men with slight luck bending. Liver prized as immuno-builder, second brain prized for temporary esp and powerful hallucinations

Most animals are humans genetically modified beyond recognition to replace the desolate ecosystems.

 

Max Bedulenko