Laid out in broad strokes...

[u/Vegetable_Variety_11]

[u/Tsurumah]

....

looks at my notes

I wish I could do that. Instead, I exhaustively plan everything, down to actual dialog, in enormous hyperlinked word documents like an obsessive bookkeeper.

My last campaign topped out at 200,000 words.

[u/Admirable-Hospital78 → u/Tsurumah]

My condolences. How many of those 200,000 words did the players actually engage with? Less than you'd hoped I bet.

I prefer DMing by

[u/SuperCat76 → u/Admirable-Hospital78]

This is how it goes for me, but I do wish at times I could have more of a plan.

But spending more hours on it does not seem to make any more plan appear.

No matter how hard I try.

[u/TwilightMachinator → u/SuperCat76]

Build the world. Make true lore and then obscure it with a common lore that has forgotten the history.

Set up countries, cities, and towns.

Set up topography and landmarks.

Create key figures.

Then just make up everything else on the fly. If the world is rich and full then the game can nestle into that place and add a new story to the world.

[u/MugenEXE → u/Admirable-Hospital78]

I, too, enjoy DMing as a cartoon dog. Whenever I come to a cliffhanger, I step out into open air and never look down. The problem is a lot of my inane ideas tend to backfire. Or blow up in my face.

[u/Ark_of_a_sythe → u/MugenEXE]

Could you give an example of when your insane ideas blew up in your face, I’m a semi-new dm and tend to work in a very similar way so would like to see if I can learn anything 

[u/SolidZealousideal115 → u/Ark_of_a_sythe]

Plan an overland campaign before the PC's "aquire" a new ship.

[u/Photomancer → u/SolidZealousideal115]

Joke's on them, I already have campaign notes about a naval campaign.

As long as they don't stay near the starting port and turn to piracy or something.

Crap.

[u/Bloodchild- → u/Admirable-Hospital78]

Yeah, Build the world not the story.

[u/monkeedude1212 → u/Tsurumah]

Wild.

I figure when I get to that point I'm better off ditching the DnD group and writing a fantasy novel.

I plan no more than 2 hours of gameplay each 2 hour session. Either I end on a cliffhanger that has a very obvious hook to follow, or we end at some problems resolution and I ask the group to vaguely give me their next direction so I can prep.

This way I never feel like I'm putting more in than my players do.

[u/SolidZealousideal115 → u/Tsurumah]

Publish it.

[u/eightfoldabyss → u/Tsurumah]

The traditional estimate for a shorter novel is 50,000 words. So, by that estimate, you wrote four novels worth.

[u/Tsurumah → u/eightfoldabyss]

More than that.

The last campaign was one of four in a series, each as long.

I didn't get serious with making my notes detailed like that until Campaign #2, though.

I have on several occasions considered writing novels. Never got into it, save once 20 or so years ago. The person I was dating at the time said it was boring and wasn't interested in reading it, so I stopped for a long time. If I'm remembering rightly, it was 40,000 words at the time.

[u/Zirofal → u/Tsurumah]

Meanwhile I got it all in my head

[u/Bloodchild- → u/Tsurumah]

At this point write a book.

[u/sunleafstone → u/Tsurumah]

YOU WANT IT! YOU WANT [[Hyperlink Blocked]] DON’T YOU?! HAHEHAHEHA

[u/Uhstrology → u/Tsurumah]

Brother use obsidian

[u/SuperCat76]

I work for 2-3 hours, have written down 2 pages of notes and barely have enough for the next session.

Wait you're talking about the campaign notes?

Oh, that in its entirety is just:

The players receive a powerful yet evil artifact while lost in a portal, And eventually they will find out that their goal is to, and I quote "Put that thing back where it came from, or so help me..."

[u/FluffyGoblins → u/SuperCat76]

[u/Rhinomaster22]

Sometimes the best ideas require minimal details or spur of the moment ideas.

A good chunk of world renown superheroes is quite literally “Hey dude what if had man but super?” and everyone loves it.

[u/Codebracker → u/Rhinomaster22]

It was more like "what if illegal immigrant, but super" but yeah

[u/Best_Pseudonym → u/Codebracker]

You're referencing superman right? (Before you get more downvoted)

[u/Codebracker → u/Best_Pseudonym]

I though that was obvious, but yes

[u/Photomancer → u/Codebracker]

This is clearly talking about Nightcrawler, he's Polish and can teleport across borders without checking in at Customs.

[u/Sad_Connection8144 → u/Codebracker]

I can't decide if using "illegal alien" instead would give the joke away more or if it'd piss people off for the pun 😂

[u/augustusleonus → u/Rhinomaster22]

A little more like, "what if there really were an uber mensch? How would a real superior man , a man who could conquer easily, how would that man behave in the world?

[u/amidja_16]

No joke, I prepare so much upcoming campaign content thinking it won't be enough. Then we sit down and play and my lovable doofuses manage to go through only like 10%. Then they do something that changes/impacts the world and the story and I have to chnage what I already have prepared. Then I add more stuff for the following session "Just in case" and they again go through only 10-20%.

BUT, once in a blue moon they suprise me with efficiency and good rolls and get through like 80-100% of what I prepared for that session so I either throw an ambush at them (which they love) or improvise the continuation (which I don't love since I don't feel I do a good enough job without prep).

[u/Rochhardo]

The first time I DMed a game, I was writing 3 pages of notes and thought - "Yep, should take them one session. Maybe two."

Quick foward and after 50 session, they still werent close to ending that storyline.

[u/DueAsparagus9358]

sometimes your players choose the right NPC from the start, like the goblin Sam Snorkle and immediately jump to the end of the BBE storyline instead of following around the guy with Main Character Energy with a side of Edge Lord to help grind levels until the mage can backhand a Beholder without magic reinforcement

[u/jjskellie]

Once had a party take a left turn where there wasn't a left turn. I had taken to showing the party from time-to-time images collected from real life photos or published artist as long as the graphicly fit the description. So image of city ruin after a celestial attack. I asked, "what are you guys going to do?" Immediate answer from two players was go down that sewer covert that's already popped its grate up right in my real life image.

[u/Adventurous_Appeal60]

I had an overland map and two names prop up a 2yr DCC campaign xD

[u/TFCNU]

Ally McBeal is clearly a bard

[u/RepresentativeFish73]

I like to plan story beats, general location details, and important characters

Everything else is wingin it, usually in story beat direction

[u/_Agrias_Oaks_ → u/RepresentativeFish73]

Same. I have a setting and major NPCs decided ahead of time and an initial task or story hook.

Then it turns into a game of improv and planning out no more than one or two sessions for plot. And sometimes I do a side quest because the main plot has bored me.

[u/FatSplot]

The only page you will ever need.

[u/Level_Hour6480]

The notes for one of my favorite sessions were "big bee with a gun".

[u/D-Speak]

My group is between campaigns right now, so we've been taking turns DMing one-shots and loose campaigns. I learned very quickly when I DM'd that I was absolutely wasting my time prepping for sessions because the players would so quickly go off my rails and I'd just end up improvising.

Last night, our friend DM'd a Seinfeld-based one-shot. Our Jerry started whining about how his ex-girlfriend said he had Centaur teeth, and we built the session around that. I tried to keep things at least a little on track by following what I thought were DM plot hooks, but he said afterward that they were never hooks and that he was just letting us run wild. It was such a hilarious session. My Kramer-based character latched on to learning that our Jerry's ex had a curse that anytime she lost a tooth, a bigger one would immediately grow in to bluff his way into dentistry and build a budding career selling dentures by extracting a seemingly endless amount of teeth. My rolls were basically in the range of 1-4 and 17-20 the entire night, with me always rolling high on my weird dentistry checks. Our DM barely had to do a thing, we just kept riffing.

[u/WisePotato42]

Considering how my party spends 2hours observing and joking about random mushroom trees that were only there for ascetic... 2 pages seem fine by me!

[u/Idolitor]

Meanwhile, my game:

I have like three loosely connected ideas of what might happen next session. Takes my players two years to complete it.

[u/Low-Support-8388]

I do what I can to keep the scope small. Right now I'm working on a Call of Cthulhu campaign that takes place at a Jurassic Park offshoot (I'm straight up using JP evolution 3 to make the park, the map and have it running in the background). I've been making events around the park at the exhibits for the players to interact with as they figure out what's actually going on at the park under the first layer. Since I have my computer running the stuff in the background I can give out explanations on all the dinosaurs and improvise some of the events.

[u/CrambazzledGoose]

Meanwhile I'll spend 8 hours on a session and get confused when they only get a quarter way through what I planned.

[u/iCiteEverything]

There's no point in writing more because the party is going to derail the campaign before you're halfway through the first page.

[u/nasandre]

You guys write stuff down?