My favorite go to, one I’ve used twice in the same campaign and no one was the wiser, is to throw some ridiculous fight at the party out of nowhere, let them sweat it out for a round or two, and start dropping hints it isn’t what it seems.
I had them stumble across a black dragon in a cave as a lvl 1 party once. After scaring the shit out of them, for a round or two, someone “finally noticed” that the wings seemed to be made of tar covered cloth. Druid did a nature check and realized that’s not what a black dragon roar sounds like at all. Literally 5 kobolds in a dragon coat.
One time, I thought we had canceled but everyone pinged me about why I wasn’t logged in to roll20 yet (got my weeks mixed up). Luckily one other person did too, so I told the party I was going to puppet their character so they would level up too. I had that character betray the party by leading them to a trap. They defeated the player character (I used their actual character sheet to fight the party), for them to discover it was a doppelganger, and the trap was the diopleganger’s lair. they solved through a bunch of traps and random creatures from the diopleganger’s managerie of tortured -to-the-point-of-insanity minor monsters until they found the actual player character that (as they discovered) had been kidnapped the night before.
One other time l, over lockdowns, I had a friend miss a few months of sessions due to some serious and very depressing circumstances. He still wanted to continue once life had calmed down. We were doing an Avernus campaign, and I had been NPCing his character, but I told him to fast forward to his character to the current party level (about 6 levels) and not tell anyone he was going to rejoin the play sessions or log into roll20 until I gave him the go ahead. About 15 minutes in, the party is sailing down the river Styx when they see a damaged flying fortress crash landing, streaking by overhead. They hear a hellish scream and see a buck naked tiefling jumping out of the ship directly for their raft. At this point my friend logs into discord and yells “I WANT MY SHIT BACK YOU IMPOSTER BASTARD!”. combat began immediately whereupon he fought himself and regained all the loot the imposter had been carrying. The party had a hell of a good time that night, and he never did explain (in character) what hell actually happened to him.
First, vibe check. Let the players shoot the shit a little more than usual out of game. While they do this, you do a little last minute brainstorming or note-taking/reworking.
Second, if you let them drive the convo, they will usually give you some clues when they finally get bored and start asking each other to calm down and start the game. Things like “I want to find out what so and so has to say about the mission we just got from who’s his face!” Or “I want to kick that (minion of the bbeg)'s ass! Let’s get moving!”
This tells you what your players want. Now you have some focus on what you need to spitball.
Now it’s down to your improv skills. Yes-and helps a ton here. You ask what they do and it just works, or works with consequences. Ask them to roll some checks and if they roll high and it isn’t stupid they succed and do the thing or get the info.
If they roll low something bad but not lethal happens. Minions show up, NPCs laugh at them, etc etc.
If you panic, ask them to roll a check and figure out what is is for while they are rolling the die and adding the result. At some point it’s just art which you get good at with practice.
It’s easier for me because my table is a bunch of 9-12 year olds. Most of the time I’m just prodding them to do something, anything, then I get rewarded with the monk randomly punching someone in the bar because “we hadn’t had any combat yet.” I made some nemesis NPCs but I can never predict what these kids want to do so I wing it the whole time.
Npc with a sob story, but they’re shy so it takes some conversation (time to think and roll with what the players think might be going on) before they will reveal it.
Is that honestly such a big deal? If it’s long term chronicle/campaign than i’m sure you have lots of plot threads hanging around waiting to be woven into a new story. If it’s a new chronicle just make a session zero - players will keep talking a make most work for you. And if it’s a one-shot… Well, than you improvise, i guess.
That’s a fair point. In general when not prepared in long term campaign, I have enough running stuff to not need to prepare more.
But reading some other forum, it seems that some people are super anxious about prep and need hours of prep for every game night. Sure sometimes, I am on a creative mood and want to do these hours of prep, and come with a twisted plot, some maps and illustrations. But very often, I can just use all the ongoing stuff to improvise.
I think one way I have seen was to at first session get list of few details about PCs, then pull out an adventure based on it. Eg. If your cleric told you there is a food his religion forbids, he is suddenly ordered to deal with a heretic who argues othertwise.
Get yourself Sly Flourish’s Lazy Dungeonmaster and The Return of the Lazy Dungeonmaster, first of all.
To answer the question, think of a strong start, maybe a combat to give me room to think between turns. Think of 10 secrets and clues. Grab a map from Dyson. 5 Room Dungeon it. And if you’re pressed for time, ChatGpT can be super handy pulling together tables and last minute prep.
If I have nothing prepped, it’s goofy random sidequest night.
One of my favourite sessions ever started when the player the session was focused on called out due to work. With my plans derailed I had ninjas crash through the window, steal her famous recipe book, then run off and leap into the back of a van with her biggest rival at the wheel. It turned into a driving battle on the highway with characters leaping from vehicle to vehicle while a supervillain chef pelted them with capsaicin-laced muffins. It ended with an elderly PC duking it out with a morbidly obese NPC (neither of which had any points in fighting) in front of a police station. They traded single points of damage until the cops finished laughing and arrested them both.
Wait for everyone to arrive. Even the late ones. Then order pizza. Fuck around until pizza arrives. Then everybody has to stop whatever they’re doing to eat the pizza. By now it’s 2 hours after starting time. Have NPCs socialize with the party. Throw a pack of goblins or something at them. Have the party go fight with the locals over how much of a reward they should get. The store is closing in 10 minutes so we have to pack up for the night. The end.
If I have absolutely nothing prepared, like I don’t even know anything about the world or the situation the players are in, then I reschedule session 1 ;)
You almost never have nothing prepared. If I didn’t prepare for a session, it just means whatever was there gets built upon in a more rudimentary way, areas have less detail, characters are more rough, no nice maps, but otherwise everything is exactly the same. The stuff you do in preparation just means that the session will be better. If you don’t prepare, you’ll essentially just do “preparation” on the fly and it’s called improvisation. You don’t do drafts and discard them for something better, you just always go for the first thing that comes to mind.
So idk, for me, not preparing for a session is pretty simple, I just do everything the same just in less time.
The Gamemaster's Apprentice is the single tool you need for this scenario. Add in a playing card oracle and you can basically randomly generate a session on the fly.
If it’s a new game, I start off with a basic adventure I always have tucked away. A good starter adventure is a lifesaver sometimes.
If it’s an ongoing game, then we probably have stuff we were still doing? Just recycle the prep from last time wherever possible and play for time. “Oh, yes, you have the treasure from the depths of the dungeon, but now your rivals have seized the place and you need to fight your way back out! Totally not just doing this to reuse the dungeon map.”
If it’s an ongoing game and we just had a good cutoff point? Thank god that player just arrived. Ask them what they’re expecting will happen this session, nod sagely at their guesses and work from that. “Oh, you’re hoping you’ll fight that cult sometime soon? You never know, it might come up sooner than you think!”
Everything else is just good prep advice. Keep generic NPC templates and tokens you can use for anything. Use a whiteboard for any maps you need. Give your players control of the plot so you don’t have to come up with it.
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