Recent HS Graduate and work is a bitch, especially considering im taking the bus. Does anyone here have any tips for effectively planning for sessions? Or maybe some ways i can improvise better?
>>47834474
Please provide us with additional information.
>Setting
>System
Improv.
Write up a d100 random encounter table.
Put anything you want on it. (Weather conditions, Race templates, random pages in the Monster Manual, quirky NPCs, instant death, whatever you want.)
If you ever need an idea roll 2-3 times and the encounter writes itself
>>47834481
>setting
The players are permanently stuck in a dungeon, because the dungeon is a giant demon monster named Balmar.
>System
DnD 3.5
>>47834495
how can i get better at that? Tips? Roll Sheets? Something more percise?
>>47834474
Plan a couple things to happen, and improve the session around those and the player reactions. They can literally be as short as 'man with a gun enters', and then just work through the whys and hows during the session.
For a dungeon delve you can use pre-made map, there's ton of those available, and cut it down to just a couple of rooms where you put a significant encounter to challenge the players. None of that "it's yet another empty room" stuff, condense!
Does anyone have random encounter tables for any of the D&D editions? I want some to draw reference from so I can whip up some quick ones for a game I'm running.
>>47834556
This isn't a bad idea actually, and my dungeons are generally pretty condensed as it is.
>>47834572
http://www.afistfulofdice.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/DungeonMasterAdventureBinder.pdf
Use the links from this list
Also here is acustom roll table i made for my campaign.
>>47834540
Read monster manuel, link monsters together, place over a resource, ie living monsters need water and food, undead don't but mix them up stick add shadows to any other undead encounter. Add terrian feature.
>>47834605
>add terrian feature
Like have some waters they must surpass in order to advance?
>>47834540
You get better at improv by doing improv, there's no way around that.
One thing that helps is to prepare generic challenges you can modify on the fly to suit the situation. Start with something simple (and frankly kinda boring) like 'characters encounter muggers on an alleyway' and then give it a spin depending on what's going on in the game - like '...and they're villagers buried last week' or '...and one of them is the character's baby brother'. That makes the players want to ask questions, and answering those questions is the story you're playing.
>>47834495 has the short and long of it. Get better at thinking on your toes and making shit up. Let the players drive the story and throw the rails out the window. Do as little prep as possible, never anything more than a few lines you jot down when you get a burst of inspiration.
The only way to get better, as with most things, is to practice. Let go of your preconceptions of how much prep you have to do for a given session and go with the flow.
>>47834540
Alright, let's see here.
I'd suggest keeping a theme going for a session or two. Either start with an aesthetic idea, or a "main villain" idea. Like this:
>Aesthetic
I want to make a huge maze. That sounds fun. It's probably very old. It's inhabited by timeless golems, the eternal servants of Oln, the first man. He who is trapped in the maze. What Oln doesn't know, is that the servants are actually trying to keep him in the maze, and as long as they remain, the maze will be impossible to escape.
Since things might get boring if you only fight golems and traps. Try adding something else. Someone is invading the maze - Slime people, goblins, heretical dwarves. Who knows.
3 minutes of thinking, now you've got a cool setting with potential for reoccuring characters. A main villain / potential ally (Oln). And it has a very strong theme, so the players will be able to remember it.
>Villain
Let's go for a classic. A lich. Well, this guy is stuck in Balmar just like the players. He wants to get out of this shithole. Sadly, he can't. Thus, he has carved a huge room in the dungeon, and planted a seed of life there - decades or centuries ago. Now, we have a huge expanse of forest.
In this forest, there's two forces of power. The lich, with his undead servants, legions of illusionists all trying to fool the lich into believing he's on the surface. They've erected a giant artifact which creates the illusion of a sun and a sky above.
On the other hand, there's dryads and woodland creatures who were created after the lich planted the seed of life. But this place is not their natual home. It is in the bowel of a giant demon. Thus they are furious. They want to tear down the illusions as a mockery of their real home - and they want to kill Balmar. (Of course they can't).
This time, we have a whole other feel, but we maintain a strong theme which will be memorable for the players. There's many ways things could go, here.
Good luck.
>>47834540
3.pf is almost impossible to DM even with a good understanding of the rules and knowing monsters by heart. The best advice I can give is to play Pathfinder where you at least have a complete online SRD so as you improvise you can use a laptop to access a massive amount of information quickly. My real advice would be to use a different system that more naturally facilitates on the fly rolls.
If you are struggling to come up with ideas for stories and interactions, then you need to adjust your setting to something you have ideas for. If you are bored at work and think of a fun thing for the party to encounter but ever have the thought "that doesn't make sense in the setting" your setting is probably too restrictive. Given that it's players trapped in a dungeon because of a demon, I know I would struggle with how to make it interesting because the setting only has one type of location and I'm not sure how many NPCs they can really encounter unless you are basically using something like the entire Underdark as a dungeon.
If you want good dungeon inspiration you can relatively easily read a manga like Dungeon Meshi online and bang the entire series out in an evening. Or you can use some other media that you know, or dig around the OSR/5e/Pathfinder general troves to dig up modules you can steal for your setting.
