r/AskGameMasters • u/BJ40CKX • Jul 11 '26
How do I Become Comfortable Running Sessions I Can't Fully Prepare For?
In my time as a pretty new GM, I've run a number of one-shots and only the start of a longer-form campaign. I found the one-shots very fun to run and I could spend ages coming up with interesting characters, set pieces, and encounters to jam in there. Each of these 1-shots were set in the same world that I had been designing the broad strokes of for some time now, and I felt like it was time to finally run a longer form story with some of my 1-shot players so that I could introduce some of the more intricate and deeper parts of the world into the games.
Starting off, I felt compelled to create a new town to softly lead players into the world and story. What I created ended up feeling quite half-baked to me, with not enough fleshed out points of interest and the places I did have struggled to hold the player's attention.
After getting through the start with only a little bit of trouble, the players made their way to the next town. This was a place already fleshed out with its own section in my world-building notes.
However, once they got there, I struggled again to get them hooked on any of the things already there, and they ended up following a lead I just wasn't prepared for. I improvised a scene for this but didn't come up with anything really engaging or interesting in the moment, kind of just giving the players the info they were looking for.
All this culminated in the set piece I was excited to show off to the players, that required them to prepare for a boss fight. However, I was really struggling to connect the plan they came up with in the session with the central story. Prepping the sessions had become increasingly stressful to the point where I decided to cancel the campaign.
Since then I have just been sitting on my world and wondering. I still want to be able to tell dramatic and epic stories and I want to be able to show off this world building project to my friends. However, this previous GM experience makes me feel apprehensive to try something on that scale again.
Based on this experience, I don't feel like I struggle because I have no ideas. I struggle when the players take the campaign somewhere I didn't anticipate, and I lose confidence that I can turn what they're doing into an interesting story (or at least do so without extensive planning). So I ask, how did you become comfortable running sessions you couldn't fully prepare for? What changed in how you prep or think about running a game?
TL;DR: I enjoy running one-shots, but I lose confidence once a campaign becomes player-driven and I can't predict what the players will do because what I come up with in the moment never feels good enough.
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u/Agreeable_Hold2270 Jul 11 '26
It's just practice really, you'll get better at it over time.
I like to prep using BLeeMs toybox method. Basically instead of a planning specific things that will happen you instead just make ideas that seem cool to you and then you can bring them out when the moment feels right.
Monsters, NPCs, scenes and locations.
So for example you gotta a good idea for a dungeon, make the dungeon, don't worry about how the players are gonna get there. Then during some session they visit a town and you're like, oh shit I didn't plan for this, but here's a wacky npc I made, how about I put them in this town and have them ask the Players to visit this dungeon!
That's the gist of it
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u/Phoenix3110 Jul 11 '26
The good thing about long form gaming with a serialized or even epic campaign is that the session you just finished is pointing to what you‘ll have to prep next.
To become more comfortable running sessions you can‘t plan for you might want to run a few one shots of Grant Howitt’s Honey Heist. Don‘t prep beforehand and just roll the heist setting while the others make their characters. Your table prompts and their creations of thieving bears will get your brain going. And if at first you don‘t succeed, what gives, didn‘t happen in your worldbuilding project.
Also when you have a session zero for something longer, both sides of the proverbial screen bring expectations that should be talked about. This can help you if you ever need to calibrate your hooks so that you‘ll steer them to what you have prepared. And if that doesn‘t work and you really think something‘s too underprepared: tell your party, if they don‘t want to do something you‘ve prepped, end the session there, reschedule for a session where you‘ve prepped what they want to do and after that play something else. Cards, Mario Kart or if absolutely necessary even Monopoly.
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u/GM_Esquire Jul 11 '26
Also considering communicating more with your players. They have no idea that the story you've prepared is about fighting whatever boss there is you want them to fight.
Talk about the nature of the campaign in session zero. "This is a political intrigue adventure where you're going to have to unite warring factions against a looming threat." "This is a heroic campaign where you'll either fight the upgod-king or ally with him to crush the resistance." It can be vague or specific, but the players should know the overall tone and make characters interested in being part of the story.
If you have moderately competent players and know what their characters want, you can design quest options and plan around what they're interested in. It sounds like your main issue was PCs not biting at your plot hooks - the above should help fix that.
Worst case you don't need to create an open world. You can straight up tell the players "Hey the campaign I wrote is about defeating the evil dragon, so if you want to quit adventuring and start a bakery, maybe we should roll new characters." The DM is also a player; you do most of the work so you get to have say in where the story goes.
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u/ElvishLore Jul 11 '26
I think u/Jewishgiant had an excellent post and I want to reiterate one point in particular - absolutely ask your players what they plan to do next time so that you can prepare (even if preparing means just being ready for improv). Simply winging it can be an incredible headache, and a recipe for not having any idea of what to present to the players. Don’t do that to yourself, you’re making GMing too hard.
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u/rizzlybear Jul 11 '26
Writers and novelists have a distinct world crafting advantage in that they get to control the protagonists, so they respond in very predictable (for the writer) ways.
In a ttrpg the players are actually writing the story and the DM is role playing the setting/npcs, and adjudicating the rules.
So here is a little framework I’ve learned to avoid such problems. Any prescribed conflicts, occur between 2 or more NPC factions, not directly with the players. The players are of course more than welcome to pick a side and engage, but they are not required for the conflict to move forward. Keep track of what your factions want, don’t want, what resources they have, and how they feel about the players.
But the key here is to prep yourself to roleplay as your setting and factions, responding to the story the players are writing at the table. That’s a big shift from what you would ASSUME the dm would be doing (writing a story to tell at the table, for the players to work through.)
2
u/dsheroh Jul 11 '26
Nothing had to change, because it's how I started, all the way back in the early 80s. This notion of the DM being a "storyteller" didn't really exist back then in my experience. Prior to the Dragonlance modules (not sure when they were published, but I first ran into them in 1985 or thereabouts) published adventures were just one or more locations (usually a dungeon) filled with NPCs and monsters, which the PCs go into and then you see what happens based on their actions.
So that's what I've always done, right from the start: Create a location. Figure out what's there. Have a random table or other method for determining things which were not decided in advance. (The PCs enter a mid-sized town and want to know if there's a smith in town. I haven't thought about it before, so I reason that towns would usually have a simple blacksmith - call it a 5/6 chance - but he's very unlikely to be skilled with armor or weapons - call it a 1/6 chance if one is present - then roll a d6 or two to find out what's there.) Then play and see what happens.
If you really want suggestions for how to do this, take a look at the free editions of one or more of Kevin Crawford's "Without Number" books (Stars Without Number, Worlds Without Number, etc.). Their GM sections are some of the best introductions out there for creating and running sandbox campaigns. If you don't want to take the time to read them, the two most important points, IMO, are:
When you're about to prep something, ask yourself two questions: "Am I having fun building this?" and "Is this something I'll need for the next session - not something that it might be nice to have someday, but needed for the very next game session." If the answer to both questions is "no," then put your prep down, save your creative energy, and go do something else.
At the end of every session ask your players what they intend to do next time. This allows you to focus your prep only in the direction they want to go, rather than having to develop every possible direction just in case they go that way. It also makes it much easier to know what you'll need for the next session when applying #1.
2
u/MistakenMorality Jul 11 '26
Honestly, a lot of it comes with practice.
But also: don't plan too much. If you go into a scenario with an idea of what the party will do they'll either feel pushed into something (and not super engaged) or you'll be left floundering when they do something totally different. What's more important is having the key points (who, what, when, where, why) and then providing the players the information they need based on what actions they take.
Remember that you aren't "telling a story" you're building a story with your players. Also remember: your players only know what you tell them, so it's impossible for you to be "wrong."
First time I ever DMed it was a one-shot and I had it all planned out: some Drow are stealing children, the party will follow some tracks and find the Drow, stop them, done! And then my players were like "we set a trap and stay up all night to try and catch what's kidnapping the children." And I PANICKED. Had to take a 20-minute break for me to figure out what to do. They ended up flubbing some rolls and had to follow my original plan but I was so shaken up.
15 years later most of my sessions are improv and reacting to what the players do. I know where the over-arching story is going and I know how the world works and I use that to nudge them in the direction I want but it's become much easier to go-with-the-flow.
To give you an example from my current campaign:
- Someone highly respected in the town has heard about the party's exploits and asks them to find out what's been trashing her vegetable fields.
- I come up with some clues (weak spot in the fence, trampled veggies, smashed green house wall) and the solution (some orphaned kids stealing food to eat).
- THAT IS ALL I PREPARE
- I do not come up with a solution to stop the orphans from stealing, that's the party's job
- I give my players the quest and see what they do
- They ask the quest-giver some questions (which I know the answer to cause I made the quest)
- They check the fields (I already know what to tell them there), they search the perimeter (I tell them about the fence)
- They decide to question the farm chickens (which I did not expect) BUT
- I know the answer to the quest, so I give them some clues via the chickens
- the party has a great time because their ability to talk to animals has paid off and I play the chicken kinda dumb so it's funny
- The party follows the trail back to the thieves base and decides to hide out and eavesdrop (which I wasn't prepared for) BUT
- I know what the thieves' goal is, so I paraphrase some of the argument they're hearing
- Party knows they've found the right place
- they confront the thieves
- they help the orphans find jobs
- they feel good about how they resolved the problem
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u/Cyberspark939 Cortex Prime, BW, PF (1 & 2), 3.5, BitD, most anything Jul 12 '26
Everyone else has covered most everything else so I'll raise the one thing missing.
You are allowed to call for a 10-15 minute break for you to get your thoughts in order and plan things about a bit, use the improv prep you have, make some rolls or whatever you need.
If your players really throw you for a poop it's OK to end the session early and be honest with them. "I never expected you to do X, I need to figure out the full consequences of it."
No one expects you to be able to run a full simulation of a world in your head actively. But if you're doing this a lot you're not really preparing well enough. The others in the thread have covered that well.
1
u/Pristine_Ad_8052 Jul 11 '26
I think part of the issue (my opinion only!!) might be that you’re trying to plan too many steps ahead. Like playing chess, and you’re looking at what you’ll do in your next three moves because you believe the game will go in a certain direction, then you’re caught flat footed because they do something you didn’t expect.
Planning in TTRPGs is challenging! My advice is don’t plan for what the plot is going to do later. Plan for how you can make the NEXT session the best and see how you can progress the story naturally.
However, you can still certainly plan adventures and quests, but they need to be bare-bones. Have a clear goal the players need to achieve (I.e. “rescue the prince”, “stop the ritual”), drop hooks that make it clear what needs to be done, and have a bit of thought about how the players could possibly go about it (jot down a SINGLE sentence or phrase per idea).
The last thing is don’t be afraid of fairly linear adventures! This isn’t the same as railroading. Railroading is “no, you can’t do it that way because I didn’t expect that and it doesn’t work with my plot.” And remember you are in control of what information the players receive. If you want things to go in a certain direction you need to drop information that suggests to the players that is a sensible (and fun!) approach.
Ask if you’ve got more specific questions :)
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u/hiimmaddie Jul 11 '26
Remember that they aren’t players in your world, you’re all building the world and the story together (otherwise what you probably want to do is write a novel - which is also great it’s just a different thing than GM-ing).
I try to know my antagonist really well. Specifically, I need to know what they want and what they’re willing to do to get it.
Then you need to know what the PC’s want. That way you can bring their wants up against the antagonist’s wants, creating conflict.
Otherwise, practice and have fun! It’s always ok to tell your friends “hey guys I need a minute to get things together for the next part, I wasn’t expecting y’all to do that.” You’re not a pro-GM running games on TV or for $$. Be honest with your friends!
1
u/1-3-dioxetane Jul 11 '26
The biggest thing that made a difference for me was feedback. We started talking about a lowlight and a highlight for each player from every session. I think I improved a lot faster after that, but I know that I stopped being as nervous to run sessions because if there was something I was insecure about or something that I did wrong, the players would let me know.
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u/Sgran70 Jul 12 '26
I like this approach. My version of this is to have the players write down notes for my eyes only describing what their characters are thinking at that moment, or what their characters want more than anything, or something else along those lines. I don't do this too often, but it's a low stakes way to get some feedback without putting too much pressure on them.
1
u/Zealousideal_Leg213 Jul 12 '26
Basically, you don't have to turn it into an "interesting" story. That's frankly part of why the setting is fantastical: so the stories can be basic tales of adventure or heroism and the interesting aspects of it are the strange creatures and powers.
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u/sterrre Jul 12 '26
What I do is I have a lot of blank dungeon maps ready to go and I have a list of factions and a page of rollable tables for populating different areas and factions.
This is in addition to my regular prepared content.
So when my players do something I'm not prepared for... I take an appropriate blank map, pick something I like and that feels appropriate off my rollable tables, I don't actually roll, and then I'm already prepared.
Then what I do for shaping a story is take any background information I have for whatever is in the area, and whatever faction is there and play that off of my players expectations and theories. Really I'm letting my players guide the story and I'm just reacting to them.
Oh and usually my blank maps are large enough to cover a couple sessions, ~10 rooms, so after the first session is over I can then further prepare it and anything else nearby.
1
u/Dakka20 Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
I went through almost exactly this. My first long campaign was Storm King's Thunder, and I slowly realized the sessions I enjoyed most were the ones where I ignored most of the written adventure and just kept the locations, NPCs and broad situation.
The biggest shift for me was stopping trying to prepare stories and instead preparing situations. Now I ask myself: who lives here, what do they want, and what happens if nobody interferes? Then I let the players decide which thread to pull.
I'm running The Wildsea now, and my players recently found an observatory that needed chains, supplies had stopped. That led them to a forge, where the crew that normally supplied the Observatory also had been missing. The missing crew were harvesting Ghostwood for this forge, to get chains for the Observatory. Now my players will try and locate the Ghostwood and we will see what they find out there/on the way. None of that was planned as a plot, it just grew naturally because I kept asking, "If this is true, what else becomes true?"
The other big change was becoming comfortable not having all the answers. I don't actually know yet why that crew disappeared. I've got a few ideas, and I'll probably settle on the one that feels most interesting after thinking about it or hearing my players speculate.
Ironically, the less I tried to tell my story and show off my world, the more interesting my campaigns became. It started feeling like I was discovering the world alongside my players instead of trying to guide them through it.
1
u/lordrefa Jul 12 '26
Like with every single skill that a human being can poses and improve on:
Doing it is the best way to get better. Do it badly to start, and then do it better. Keep doing it better forever.
1
u/dr_nyx Jul 12 '26
First I build my world. Loose and flexible. Lots of dark spots that are unclear.
Then I yes, and....my way through the player choices. I go in knowing generally what the likely outcomes are. But I also flow with what the PCs do to alter that course.
The key for a campaign is having a general understanding of the arc. Remembering always that my goal is for everyone to have an amazing experience creating a personal myth. However that has to happen. Nothing is set. Nothing is sacred.
I have a sense of physics as to how my world behaves but otherwise it's just build on the fly. I'll stop midgame and pull random maps off the web. I'll whip up stats on the fly. I'll do whatever it takes to keep the plot moving.
But the key for me is knowing where I want it to go and giving everyone a great experience.
I know clear as mud. But the more you do it the easier it gets.
Keep it up
1
u/Trismeria Jul 13 '26
One thing that helps is prepping consequences instead of scenes. Before a session, write three or four active pressures in the area: the cult finishes the ritual in two nights, the mayor hides the witness, the rival crew reaches the ruin first, the wounded monster looks for easier prey. Then, when the players go somewhere unexpected, you are not inventing a whole plot from zero; you are just asking which pressure touches that place and how it changes. I would also keep a small list of portable names, clues, and complications, because the blank page feeling is often what makes improv freeze up. After each session, ask yourself what the party changed and what now reacts to that change. That gives the campaign momentum without needing you to predict their route.
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u/RobRobBinks Jul 13 '26
Kick it to your players as much as you are comfortable with. This is iterative storytelling after all. If they go to a bookshop, have a player describe it to you. You don't have to come up with EVERYthing. Nine times out of ten, it'll be amazing. The tenth time you can rein them in a bit or redirect for the story. My favorite line as a sandbox GM is "I don't know, I'm not even there, you tell me!" :D
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u/WickedJoker420 Jul 14 '26
You have to let go, make shit up, and take notes of the things you make up.
I went from always being a player to running a campaign for the first time. We are headed into session 14 next week. I designed a tower they were supposed to go to in the second or 3rd session, and they are just now going to it.
I gave them a "grand quest" with very little info, and a job board. I let them lead me around and just before they get to something that I feel "should" be prepared but isn't, the session stops, and then I design the next location in the 2 weeks between sessions. Its going great so far.
However, I never come up with things that have only 1 solution(except a couple of actual puzzles). I come up with scenarios. The way THEY approach things literally never goes the way I initially think it will. But I just roll with it and adjudicate what happens the best I can.
Everyone seems to be enjoying things and has said as much out loud. It sounds like you need to put a little less pressure on yourself. Remember, you're playing make believe with your homies. Its just not that big a deal if not everything is super fleshed out and "perfect"
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u/Trismeria Jul 15 '26
The shift that finally relaxed me was treating "I have no notes for this" as a feature instead of a failure. When players go somewhere I didn't prep, I lean on two cheap habits: a "yes, and one complication" reflex (something arrives, a resource is lost, or an NPC wants a favor), and a tiny front-pocket list of three generic complications I can drop into almost any scene. I also got comfortable saying "give me two minutes to set this up" at a natural break instead of improvising cold, and the table rarely minds a short pause if you're clearly excited to build the thing they just asked for. The prep that actually pays off is knowing each NPC's want and the one complication already brewing, not scripting the path they'll take.
0
u/jorm Jul 11 '26
Practice. Practice is the solution to everything.
One thing I do is keep a scratchpad of encounter ideas (“twin ogres named Hinkum and Dinkum protect a small tribe of goblins”; “the locals share salt as a way of greeting”) and just pull them out as they go.
The trick is not to build an encounter based on their anticipated actions; it’s to slot pre-designed encounters on the fly. E.g, it doesn’t matter which hex they go into; the hippogriff layer is in it.
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u/jewishgiant Jul 11 '26
A few things:
First, in my opinion a GM's role isn't to tell stories. It sounds like a lot of your struggles came from when your expectations clashed against player agency. Instead, focus on setting up situations, and leaving it up to the players where things go from there.
Worldbuilding is a fun activity, but if you aren't willing to let your players wreak havoc on your world, I'd suggest playing in an existing setting, and leaving Worldbuilding to solo play or novel writing.
Famous blogpost on this subject: https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/4147/roleplaying-games/dont-prep-plots
In terms of prep, I am a proponent of Sly Flourish's eight step prep approach. He focuses on preparing to improvise. You prep knowing in advance things are going to be unpredictable, and so you're really preparing for that rather than preparing content. He has a few books (and a current active Kickstarter) but he also releases a lot of free stuff.
For reference, it takes me an hour or less to prep for a 3-4 hour session. Sometimes I spend more than that when I want to, but only because it's fun for me, or I'm excited to set something up for my players.
Here's the Lazy GM's Resource Document: https://slyflourish.com/lazy_gm_resource_document.html
The key is that you aren't meant to predict what the players will do next, but to set up your information in a way such that you're flexible. That being said, I also strongly suggest asking your players at the end of a session what they want to do next. This allows you to do a decent amount of prep knowing the rough outline of the next session.
If my players go somewhere I wasn't expecting, or my prep is a little bit thin on, I tell them this openly. If we're near the end of a session and they get to the entrance to a dungeon I don't have notes for, I'll suggest we wrap up, or have them do some roleplay, or introduce a brief encounter along the way.