What do you consider "Traditional" GM prep?

[Levi]

...Specifically, in relation to stuff like the situation and mission builder stuff we have here?

[Kyle Aaron]

Drawing the dungeon map?
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[Levi]

[Kyle Aaron]

Yes, seriously.

Most roleplayers are playing D&D. The ones left over are playing d20, and with a D&D-ish approach. "Here's the mission... go and knock over these guys, then you win money and xp."

The point is that most scenarios played out there are quite simple ones - simple in plot structure and depth -, and most GMs' "preparation" is writing up stat blocks, not considering NPC motivations, dilemmas and secrets, etc.

If you want to talk about what you or I do, that's a different matter, and was the first thing I brought up on this forum after parodying jargon. But you're asking about "traditional" GM prep - what most GMs do and have done. Which is "draw the dungeon map", or the equivalent.
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[Tommi Brander]

At the highest level: World and NPC (not including stats) prep.

At the level situation builder etc. work: A timeline, flowchart, map of the adventure location/relevant city.
To elaborate,
Timeline: Day 1: The guild spies PCs. See the marketplace encounter. Day 2: The try an assassination, preferably at a lone target. See first NPC assassin. And so on.
Flowchart: This clue leads to that clue and that fight, where victory will lead to that dungeoncrawl and defeat to imprisonment, where they can find a secret door or wait for event number 3...
Map: This encounter happens in this dark alley, that cave is guarded by a stone golem, the village smith lives in that house...

A bunch of encounters/events. These are usually, but not always, keyed to one of the above. This includes statting out NPCs/monsters, creating treasure hoards, etc.


So, general structure: The large scale world prep provides context.
Mid-level prep is all about the flow of events. It gives structure to encounters or events.

[Levi]

So, groups of techniques include...

Top: Setting elements that give context.

Middle: Maps, timetables, encounter flowcharts.

Bottom: Specific encounters.

There's got to be more. What else?

[Merten]

Traditional in what sense?

Top level: Has a vision (what's this scenario about?) and setting elements that brings that vision to the event, including but not limited to:

Setting at large (What is this place? How is this place? What kind of people live in this place and how is that potrayed in the diegesis? How do I potray the setting to the players in order to make it feel like a real place?)

Characters (Who are these people? Why are they here? Where did they come from? What are they expected to do? What's the motivation? And preparing them so that players have something upon what they can flesh the characters, to make them real people.)

Group of characters (Why are they together? What binds them? What drives them apart? What are their relationships and what's intresting in those? How do they feel about the setting?)

Middle & Bottom: Pretty much what has been said, on case by case -basis. Do I need to street the events towards something? Is there something happening elsewhere which could affect the characters? How does the rest of the world respond if characters do this or that? What do I do if they do something spectaculary different, like they always do?

[MrZero]

SUPER ULTRA BASIC: Lists of names. Character names, place names, object names. There's nothing worse than struggling to think up appropriate names.

[Andy K]

[Levi]

http://www.therpgsite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2966

Abyssal Maw, breaking it down.
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[jhkim]

I just want to note that there are very different things depending on the game.

1) Traditional D&D prep

Map of the dungeon, keyed location descriptions and encounters within it, and sketchy background info.

2) Traditional Champions prep

Villain character sheets, a few planned locations, a MacGuffin or other thin plot device to get things going.

3) Traditional James Bond 007 prep

Mission briefing, location maps for chase scenes, NPC stats, a villainous plot (possibly with timetable of what will happen if the PCs don't stop them).

4) Traditional Deadlands / Feng Shui / Torg prep

A sequence of scenes divided into acts, with an encounter for each -- including notes on location, challenge, and info to be found.

[benlehman]

Fun topic!

I used to do tons and tons of GM prep (world design and languages and history and such) but nowadays I'm pretty bored with it. Here's what I prep nowadays:

A splotch of color. (example: You're agents of the emporer in a steampunk version of the Qin dynasty.) No more than three sentences. Usually I can get this out of a book.

A simple situation (5-7 rooms of a dungeon)
OR
A few scripted encounters (nine ogres in a bar and two hill giants in a hut.)
Which of these depends on the predilictions of the group with regard to action and scene framing.

Enough material that I can improvise (name lists, monster manual, what have you.) At most 2 pages. In an extreme case, this can all be in my head.

Play-aids (minis, dice, rules summary sheets, etc) as needed.

Enough sleep and food that I can think on my feet and make snap decisions. (this is absolutely the most important part -- GMing hungry sucks balls.)

I'm pretty sure that this is the absolute minimum prep that you can get away with, although I look forward to being proved wrong.

yrs--
--Ben

P.S. MrZero = Sean?

[shootingdice]

Prep? I haven't done more than 30 minutes of it in years. I use a three-teir method for my notes, which are:

* Overarching themes and plotlines for the campaign. This usually takes the form of an annotated map of relationships and possible major events.
* The session's agenda in point form.
* People, places and things. I rarely bother with full stats. I find making up names on the fly a lot more difficult.

If I want to heavily mod an existing game, I'll take more time with it. My current Vampire/Mage game has this kind of thing, but a lot of it is derived from work I did years ago. Then again, it's much easier to have material ready when you do a lot of game writing, simply because you end up with a vault of developed ideas on hand.

If I'm working with an original RPG, it takes more work, but I prefer to just do half of it and make the rest up on the fly. Worldbuilding and coherent motivations are overrated.

For contemporary games, I also keep online resources at hand, so that it only takes a minute to describe (to pull an example from my game) an area in downtown Toronto.

I also have a number of stock concepts, themes and locations. One example is the fictional city of New Coventry. Another is the tension between intent and competence that many of my NPCs have.

[Balbinus]

Work out who the key NPCs in a situation or place are.

Work out what they want, in broad terms. If you're feeling uninspired, a mcguffin can work here but if you can something more abstract tends to work better.

Write down a list of unallocated names, as I am lousy at making up names on the fly.

Add PCs.

That's pretty much it. And I do think it's traditional, it's widespread and has been so for about as long as I've been gaming, which is some time now.

Basically you create a dynamic situation and add the PCs to it and then see what happens, easy as pie.

[Balbinus]

Oh, it can also be useful to stat up the setting equivalent of a couple of guys with guns in advance. That way, if things bog down you have them ready to burst in and the resulting conflict will tend to get things moving again.