Jim's Top Five Tips For Preparing Your Session (Curmudgeons and Dragons Replay)

0:20 Hello Adventurers, the podcast for role players and game masters to help level up your game. I'm your dungeon master, Jason Portiso, and today we are changing things up a little bit in a few ways. So first let's get some housekeeping. For reasons too many to name, we're going to be changing up the release schedule a bit, and starting today, we'll be releasing just one episode per week on Mondays. And this is going to give us some time to prepare a little more well thought out content and allow me a little more a weekly time to get some editing done. I am definitely behind. But speaking of preparing content and getting editing done, let's get to what's going on to today's episode. Our recording schedule got little funny for this session and we missed the date that I needed to get the episode out on time.

1:04 So instead of rushing out something that I'm not proud of, or we're skipping a week, I thought I thought it'd be fun if we did a little replay crossover type thing, and we replayed a past episode from our previous show, Curmudgeons and Dragons. So this is a later episode when the host roster was just me and Jim I'm our co host Josie as well, but this was recorded at a time when Josie wasn't available to record, so this episode is just going to feature of myself and Jim. Joe wasn't part of this podcast just yet, he was just a fan of the listener. But this is one of my favorite episodes from that show, and not because Josie wasn't there, but because it was so packed with actual helpful content and value. Like we say in the podcast world, but this felt like the direction of the show wanted to go in, but I didn't have the podcasting experience to steer us towards that, And it was episodes like this one that inspired the rebrand into the show that we now call Hello Adventurers. And fun fact, you'll see in the first few seconds where the name for this show came from.

2:04 So all one hundred and thirteen episodes of Courmergences and Dragons are still available on all podcast platforms, as well as Curmudgeons and Dragons dot com. So if you're looking for more just content from me and Jim and Josie and Jack and Justin and Greg and everyone else who would helped host that show, those are available out there. You can go check those out right now. But for now, I like to introduce you to our replay of episode one hundred and three, Jim's top five tips for preparing your session. Goodbye, Adventurers. Sometimes talking with friends feels like role playing, Sometimes it feels like combat. Join us at the roundtable and roll an initiative. This is Curmudgeons and Dragons. Hello adventurers, Welcome to the Curmudgins and Dragons. My name is Jason Portiso. Today I'm joined by mister Jim Crocker. Hey, how are we doing, Jim? How you doing, Bud? I'm doing pretty good, Pretty good. I start a brand new job next week. I got a library job, so coming out of retirement. Huh yes, yeah, keep you away using my bookstore skills in the service of the greater good.

3:20 That's what we're that's what we're looking to do, all right. Is it a library job. It is a library job. Yes, yeah, it's a library Okay, cool. Yeah, it's at the Montclair Public Library here in northern New Jersey. I'll be working like eighteen twenty hours a week something like that. Nice part time job to kind of fill in get me out of the house and on my feet, which is something that I am have been It is both something I need to do and something that has been requested of me. So yes, I was just gonna say that sounds like Shannon's idea, good man, So it's nice to have, I would I wonder it's what it's like to have a job. I have like seven. Still, I literally don't know. I don't know how to count my jobs. Let's put it that way, because technically a few of them all fall under one umbrella, but they all feel like very separate things. So would you feel better if I said I got another job? That would be that works?

4:09 Yeah? Okay, there, now you're up to well, you know one, well, one outside the house job. I do all of our inside the house stuff, so that that counts as we value. Also you, I keep you very busy writing our show notes, so there's that, so you know, thank you for your opinion though, But you know, well, I was gonna say this, this is a job I'm actually gonna get paid for. So yeah, oh is that how we count jobs? Okay? Then I have like one, I guess there's job gigs so yes, oh gigs at a problem agat But so today. So just does D M Boys here, Josie's in. You can tell when it's like the middle of a school season when Josie has to take a few episodes off. Yes, yes, I am recording with her tomorrow, so she's not gone.

4:53 She won't be gone for long, but she will be gone today and that's what matters. She's decent student, so she like actually studies and stuff. That's you know, I know it's weird. I wouldn't have skipped a podcast just to you know, study for a test or anything. No, God, no, that never. Yeah, she is the opposite as a student. She's a total opposite as she is as a player. So all the shenanigans of her in a D and D game, just like, she gets it all out there and then for the stuff then matter. Yeah, that's good. That firewall is important to being a functional human being. So which is the opposite of how I did school, and that's why I don't have a degree. But luckily I got good at things that don't need degrees.

5:40 So lucky me. Anyway, just as DM Boys today. So I had an idea to kind of take the show a little back to like before we took that little break over the winter when we were doing like, you know, actual substantial content and not just reading stories over and over again. Listen, I love doing the stories. I think they are as far as our listener engagement and stuff, they're there the most entertaining. I listened to them a couple of times just too well, I have to listen to them to make sure they sound good. But like I enjoy listening to them a couple of times to make sure they sound good. But you know, these are things we used to do a lot more of where we're trying to get into, you know, kind of teaching people something about the game. So I had us right up a few little BuzzFeed style like listical, you know, two thousand and seven Internet, just a little little things, a little little lists about the game. And so I got mine. We'll do that on the next episode. And Jim's got a couple here, So we're going to dive in. Jim, what is the listical we're going to do today?

6:33 Well, the first one we're going to do is one that you actually asked me about because you thought I might have an insider too that maybe might be helpful to you. And this is Top five Session prep steps excellent, yes, and if someone's going to learn something on the show, it might as well be me. Ideally hopefully you and maybe whoever else that that would be good. But I have ordered these in in terms of, in completely my opinion, worth exactly what you paid for it, order of if you only have time to do one, do this first one, if you only have time to do to do these first two, so kind of in order of what you've got time to do, in my opinion, and we can discuss about why I think they should be in this order, and you know, and that sort of thing. Once we get them out right, Well, that out of the way, let's get into uh, let's get into the lists. All right, here we go. So the first one that I have on the list, number one, Top five session prep steps. Go over your notes from last session. If you can only do one thing, this is the thing that I advise you to do. However, you're keeping track, whether it's a handwritten bullet list or a more thorough campaign diary that you keep or a player volunteer that is your scribe that you know or like, if you have a shared Google doc where everybody puts notes in and that's how you build your session notes. However, you do that a video or audio recording if you're keeping track of the transcript on zoom, and that's what

8:05 you use to build your notes. If you've got an online session, if you only have time for one thing, do that. I would say that you don't need more than like ten or fifteen minutes maximum. But going over notes from your last session is your first and best way to get ready for today's session. Even if you're running a one shot, which I know you do a lot in the store jay you run one shots, what you can do with that, you should still be taking notes for when you're doing your one shots, maybe not so much. Here's what the characters did, but here's what you did as a DM networked. Here's what you did as a DM that didn't and then you can go back over those. You can find pain points in your one shot where players had trouble or where they just bulldozed it, and maybe you need to toughen it up a little, especially if it's a repeat for a new audience. Going back over those notes most important thing you can do, I think before you do anything else, including any other kind of prep for the actual session, you're going to run. Yes, this seems like a bar for entry type of stuff and where you should at least be refreshing yourself on what happened last time. So but it is good to have it like like you like, yeah, of course I need to do that. I've used almost all of these methods for the for the couple of games that we've been playing. And of course our playing method has changed a lot in the past like year year and a half, not only going from like full lockdown mode into now we're playing in person at my house.

9:24 Yeah, but we went from playing over like we just kept trying things that just kept either working or not working, or things that might just work for our particular group better because we do know each other irl. So like we were using roll twenty for the for the map, and then we're using Albert Rodeo, and then we're using just going over Zoom and then just you know, Discord for a little while and using some bots in there. Then we landed on Zoom, back on Zoom for a while because I got one particular app for Zooms I'll talk about in a second. And then once our schedule started lining up a little bit, now we were back to playing in person, which means I gotta change how we do my notes again. But my handwriting is god awful, god awful. Josie's unbelievable, So she takes notes when we play. But I'm much more a Google doc type of guy.

10:11 Sure, just to just know a unfiltered, just mash up of notes that hopefully I know where important things are. Yeah, making good use of the highlight feature and trying to go over it when I'm done, because a lot of those notes didn't mean anything. Yes, yeah, I mean that's actual, Like when you're playing type stuff, how do you take notes and stuff like that? However you do that. I'm just kind of setting that aside. I'm ecumenical on that at the moment, other than to say you should have some kind of notes over what happens in every session. First thing you do to prep for the next session, go over what you did in the previous session. So that is the most important thing as far as I'm concerned. If you've only got ten minutes to prep for your session, devote it to going back over your notes from the last session. Number two is the obvious one, but it is a thing that folks don't necessarily do take a look at today's adventure, whether it's a published module or your homebrew adventure that you've written up yourself. The next best thing to do after going over last week is to read a few pages ahead to cover the areas the party might visit and the monsters they might encounter. You don't need to do a deep read. You don't have to, you know, sit down and very carefully go over it with a fine tooth comb. But knowing what roots they can take and what encounters they might run into will help keep you from being taken by surprise, and that's the important thing. Sometimes people will like read the module once at the beginning and then sit down and run it thinking that

11:43 they know it. And this is where you can run into problems where you're like, oh my god, I completely forgot that there's that encounter with the bandits on the road, and I did not plan for that tonight at all. So just making sure you go back over that and just to make sure, Oh what if they, like they said last time, they were going to go right, but what if in the intervening week they've decided no, maybe we should go left instead. You should kind of have an idea of the scope of what could happen in that evening and look ahead to make sure you know what's going on with it. The other side of that is like, well, I guess the bandits are campl on the left side today. I mean you can certainly do that. I mean tips about how to tweak your adventures on the fly is that's also useful DM advice that we certainly can get into. But just making sure but you can't do that unless you know what's going on if they go left instead of right. But you know, oh, those bandits are on the right, I can just switch that over.

12:35 That helps you deal with Not only does it help you deal when they do what you expect them to do, it's even more useful when they do what you don't. Did that make sense when they do what you don't? Yeah, I guess it did. Yeah, Yeah, I got it. I got it. Okay, we got there. It reminds me of somewhere posted it was you look off to the right, there's a castle in a distance. The players go, Okay, I guess we're gonna go left then, and then it's a cover of the Miyazaki film A House Moving Castle. Yeah, like, castle's over there. Now all right, yeah, but no choice thing we talk about, Yeah, yeah, exactly exactly, which depending on how short your game is going to be, you know, maybe maybe this is all we have today, but in a longer game it was a little more open story. Yeah, that's that's super important. And this is the part where I have gotten myself used to running one shots and now I'm being asked to run you know, quote unquote real games. And this is the part where I am where I need to start stepping up and like, no, take myself out of the other the five page print out and getting ready for day to day stuff where like, you know, it's I'm gonna be running games where I don't know everything that's gonna happen. And that's that's where I'm struggling now. And by struggling, I mean I haven't really tried yet. Yeah, but hopefully hopefully sooner than later. And there's some kind of indie games, more lucy goosey story games where you can sort of see to your pants it you can't really do that in five E. You got to have encounters ready to go. You got to have some rough idea of where people are going to go and looking ahead to make sure that you're

14:07 familiar with, especially if you're using a published module, what's going on. That's an important part of prep to make sure you're going to run a good game. So shall we move on to number three? What do you got? All? Right? Set up your play space in advance. And this is not this doesn't have to do with actual story stuff or reading the module. This is about the physical space that you're going to be having the game in. And I include your digital space with that. So if you're playing online definitely counts. Yeah, if you're playing online, you make sure that you have the graphics for maps that you're going to use. You make sure you have the tokens set aside in whatever tabletop you're going to use, that those are ready to go that you're not. I have been in games where in the middle of the game someone goes, oh shit, I need lizard men and they're you know, rooting around on their drive and making them into a token and stuff like that. Have all that stuff ready to go will be really helpful so that you're not spending time rooting around for them during the session. If you're playing in person, set up your battle matt, set up your dungeon tiles, set up your terrain, or at least have it off to the side so that when that encounter happens, you can boom, just drop it right on to the table and you're ready to go, rather than fishing through your big tackle box full of minis right to find some orcs.

15:20 Have those guys set aside and ready to go. They can be right there on the table as a preview, you know, to give the players a look at what's coming. Or you can have them behind the screen with you, or just you know, have a separate slot in your big mini's case that is stuff I'm using this week, and at some point during the week's sort of that all in there so you can just pluck them out and be ready to go. But basically, the less handling you need to do during the session, the quicker you can get right to a combat when it is time to do that, because all of that handling of that physical stuff is something that can actually take up a lot of time if you're not ready to go. I was looking at a couple of videos and the past like a week or so, looking looking for ways to have a more engaging tabletop experience because these these store games are going pretty well for me. And there's another DM there that's running stuff on like alternate weeks. Yeah, and I have to win. I have I know it's sounds super competitive game, but like I gotta wins. It's not a game as much as it's like a pageant, right you want to you know, like like you want to be the bell of the ball there. I get that, yes exactly. It's also a good ways on like how to spice up my game a little bit, and I found a couple of cool things. But prepping the minis was a big part of what these guys were doing. Most of them are playing at their home and they have a whole room dedicated for and as those kind of players that you know, you you really want to be part of their session, but maybe not married to these guys because that's a whole wing, that's the whole wing of their house gone. But you know what though, like a lot of these like like a lot of folks I visit that are like that, Like you know, one spouse has their room that has all

16:52 their D and D stuff and shelves full of books and bins full of minis. But then you kind of go around the corner down into the basement and you like look in the door and there's like, you know, fifteen hundred skeins of yarn and you know or like you know, dress patterns or something like that. The plants room exactly. Yeah, if everybody's got their dedicated hobby space, then I think that works out best for everybody. So yes, you can call that compromise, you can call that bargaining. Everybody's on the same page because I will I will happily build Cara her own library slash corgy sanctuary if I can get my game room. But prepping their minis and having them at the ready, all of them were kind of saying the same thing where it's like, okay, you get your stuff ready for today, and a couple of the decoys in there as well, so that they don't really know exactly what they're going up against. Because if they see you with a table full of little goblins and bandits, then like, all right, because there are goblins of bandits today. But if they see like, you know, three or four goblins, two or three bandits, a medium silver dragon and a beholder, then they don't know what they're up against. Yeah, and four and five. Be some argument about which order you do these, but I think four is more important than five, and four is reread the player character sheets. It can be easy to take the PC's abilities and backgrounds for granted and start to rely fully on the players to keep track of all that stuff. But ideally before every session if you can, but if not, at least whenever they level up, take some time to go back

18:23 and actually look over their full character sheets to remind yourself what class ability is, they've got, what spells they've got, and what they can do that might either shortcut your encounters if you forget that somebody can fly or has access to pass wall or something like that that can just bypass a whole section of an encounter that you've set up. Know that that's a possibility, and understand that that's that they can do that. That's what going back over those sheets will help you do, and think about ways as you do that to work their background and history into the session, whether you're wedging that into a published module somehow, or they're kind of trying to shoehorn it in, or you're using them to build out your Homebrew world. If you've got Homebrew and you're looking at that sheet as you're developing what you're gonna do. That can really help in creating content that is tied to the characters and that engages them.

19:18 But it can get very easy to get kind of laser focused on doing your thing and forget that it's important to keep track of where they're at what they're doing. I know some dms actually like to hold on to character sheets for players. Not every player loves that as a thing, but however you do it, you should always have access to their sheets and be able to look at them as they're updating them. And also just to make sure that nobody is misinterpreting the rules or you know, accidentally giving themselves bonuses that they're not untitled to, or you know, you know, it completely slipped their mind that they can only attune to three magic items. That kind of thing. That also keeping track of that in between and getting on that before it comes up in a session also really helpful to running the game. That's another aspect of good prep I think. Yeah, and a lot of that assumes that it's a fully pen and paper character sheets too, which I think is important for someone to do at some point is to do all the math that goes into your character, or if you're playing online, if you're playing on Roll twenty, if you're using D and D beyond, just make sure that you've got access to those sheets and that you're looking at them on the regular and communicating with the players about anything you see that you don't understand or that you're unclear about. I don't know if I have a witty retort for this one.

20:34 Okay, that sounds great, Jim. Number five last, but not least, And like I said, this may depending on maybe even the nature of the particular session you're going to run that day, kind of be sort of interchangeable with number four. But that is read up on monster tactics. Take a look at what the creatures you might be using in those encounters can do. Pull out your copies of the monsters know what they're doing, and the monsters still know what they're doing, and maybe something like you know your Cobalt Press book of Layers that has suggestions for running different versions of those monsters beyond the kind of bog standard monster manual approach to building them, to building encounters out jump onto DM Academy or a dming discord that you're part of to look for tips. Ask for tips on how to effectively run those monsters so that they're challenging and fun. If you have tactics in mind in advance, or better yet, you write them up, write a little battle plan, just put it on an index card so that you can, you know, or post it and just tack it to the inside of your your DM screen that says you know, they're going to go after this guy first and then do this, and here's their typical strategy, or think in advance about the point at which they might decide the fight's not worth it anymore. That's the kind of stuff that if you are thinking about it in advance, it will not only will it speed up play, but you won't get caught by surprise, because a lot of the things that we see in DM Academy and even some horror stories are I got neck deep in this encounter and realized I was

22:06 over my head and I didn't like I encountered this situation. I had no idea what the monsters should do next, and I feel like I made the wrong decision. But if you have that in mind and are thinking about it in advance, you can adjust on the fly. If those encounters turn out to be too easy and go too quickly or too challenging and you get bogged down, or they're just starting to frustrate the players. So having some ideas about how to handle those situations in advance super useful and you know, great prep. Yeah, I mean we we show this book a bunch of episodes. Now the monsters know what they're doing, more of the monsters know what they're doing. He has one about layers now too. Yeah. Yeah, it's are Defending your Layer, which is about layer actions and like bringing bringing monster or rain to life. Yeah. Volos Guide's great for that too.

22:52 Volos is good for a number of coldbal press books are good for that. Disappointing that those are all third party books now that I'm thinking about it, Well, at this point, things get better, get better. Wizards, Okay, yeah, Bolos is Bolos is their their first stab. They did it doing something that was beyond just here's a block of stats and two paragraphs about you know, what their personality is. But I try something about how they fit into the world. Even though I said it out loud, I forgot I said it so Okay, so most of them are a third party. Yeah, get a little better wizards, how about that? All right? Certainly the best of them are third party? Yeah yeah, but yeah, this is this is huge, and this is I don't know if I would I might switch four and five, but I agree that it's debatable.

23:38 I would say to four, maybe on every level up or maybe every couple of sessions. Sure, rereading the character sheets and repping your monster tactics while you're setting up your plays base, or or while you're preparing for today's adventure. That's okay, we're going up against the Cobols today. Cool, let me read up on their like pack tactics and gang war fair that kind of stuff. And that's also a thing where like, if you know today is going to be a cryptal of zombies followed by a cryptical of skeletons followed by some ghouls, you don't necessarily need to read a lot of monster tactics on that. But if you're using you know, some kind of like weird demon type that you've never put down on the table before, that's the time where it might be more important to read up on that. Like I said, so you're not caught by surprise, so that you're not in the middle of the fight looking down the sheet and go, oh wait, they can teleport.

24:29 Holy crap. I should have paid more attention to that, especially a monster that is more intelligent too, like a beholder, something that's that's going to act a little bit more intentionally. Yeah, any any dragon, anything vaguely human should be should have some sort of plan going into it, where like you know, your skeletons, zombies and goules, they'll be like, okay, well, how many attacks do I get? Yeah, but yeah, this is this is huge. I think I don't mind it being lower on the list because you can kind of just do it once and just kind of keep that, you know, to throw the post it notes in with the monster manual, so that you just kind of remind yourself and say, hey, they like they gang up on one enemy, or they like to split up, or you know anything else that that Keith and Man tells you to do in his books. Yeah, but I will continue to show that book. It is it is that good, is that important. I think he has a new one coming out too. I thought I saw something on the shelf and I recognized. But I think I have all this stuff now, all very good stuff. Jim, and it's and it's a lot of like like, yeah, this is mostly just things DMS just all kind of do, but just having it as it almost as a checklist. Yeah, when you you know you you got a game coming up in two days, let's let's just start working the list and being able to you know, use your time properly. Yeah, because it can get easy or know how much time you need. Yeah, because it can get easy to get into a rut, especially if you're like running a game out every week at the same time, and you start to think, well, I don't need to prep I'm running this every week, and that that prep time can kind of get squeezed as you you're doing other stuff or your dinner runs a little later or

26:02 something like that. And so I think having a you know a little bit of an order of operations of oh crap, i've only got five minutes before people start arriving. What's the most important thing to do? In my opinion, it's roughly in that order. And but you know, but we have listeners that can quibble with that or or suggest things we haven't put there at all that they think might be more important. Yeah, like la, like number zero get your snacks ready. Well, that's that's social stuff if you if you social, if you only have two minutes to prepare, maybe throw tho pizza rolls in the air fire and have them ready to go. Yeah, I suppose that's. Yeah. If you're a good DM, your players are bringing you snacks. So if you're a good if they're coming to your house, you can be a good host too, I guess. So listen, we all we all bring snacks and sometimes we eat them on top of our books. I was gonna say, like you said, you sent me a picture of your game, and somebody had a like half a cake on top of their player's handbook. I mean, sorry, it was on a plate. Everybody like it was not literally a plaque on the player's handbook.

27:00 It was on a plate. But I just, yeah, knows, that was so so First, for some context, show one of my players took one of my players took a picture of the of our game. And I've got not a huge table and there's only a DM with three players, and you know, with everyone's DM screens and books and laptops and everything like that, play it. You know, space got pretty scares pretty quick, and you know we're we're all adults with it. We're all with adults with adult money, and we like to go in on the snacks. This table was more snacks than game. Like these guys went all out. The the one guy especially, you know he's got half the guys at the table have kids and the Joe like but Nick in particular, like he just when he can get out, gets out and goes all in. So he shows up with like a bag full of like gummy snacks and like he had a whole ass cake with them, which was amazing by the way, and uh, he takes a picture of our game just to be like, hey, look how much fun. When happened, throws and throws it online. I realized, like there's a lot of snacks on the table, like a lot a lot of snacks on this table. So I throw a picture, throw the pictures you our little discord. And Jim's like, why is there a cake on on the on the book? Because we ran out of table? Was there a cake on the book? Just why is there a cake on the bull?

28:15 Because he had to put it down the book he wasn't putting on his laptop got wipe off the book at least he was eating it with a knife and fork. There we go. Yeah, yeah, like a pizza, right, Jim, Yeah yeah, and forget about that one. That's all we got for today, guys, thank you so much for listening. We're gonna put something. We might turn this into a little bit more of a of a blog article. We'll see if we feel like taking all the extra work that that takes. So keep an eye on Curmudgeons Dragons dot com and we might put some of these up on there. But either way, we'll put the list in the show notes with some helpful links. Other than that, stay tuned for the next episode. It's a lot, but I don't really I don't really have anything, like, I don't have anything fun here, go give us a followut on stuff. But if you're listening to us right now, you already did so, thanks Jim. You're very welcome.

29:00 Interested to hear from anybody that has opinions on our list here. Yeah, yeah, let's let's do that one. That's that's our call to action today. So if you disagree with the lists or if you have things that you want to add, Curmudgeons and Dragons pod at gmail dot com is our email, and that is Jim is Jim Crocker. If you want to send all your your angry letters over or your happy letters, I'll take you either one. That's cool. I can take it cool now. Now that's all I got. Thanks much for listening, Jim, thanks for hanging out, you Bet and the Thank you Adventurers. Thank you for listening to con Mudgeons and Jackens. Please chat this with your favorite adventuress, leave a review on Apple, and follow us on social media. All links can be found at Conmudgeons and draggons dot com. Practice Safe Adventuring my Friends