this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2025
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After 4 years, 16 days, and 14 levels, the party finally defeated my final villain. They successfully prevented the return of the exiled gods and earned the highest honor in the land.

I am an extremely tired GM. Time to take a few weeks off, then start planning the next campaign.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

How much planning does that take?

[–] PoorYorick 18 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I am something of an over planner, but it took me probably 40 hours to get the themes and major plot points nailed down for all three acts. Then, probably another 40 to flesh out act 1 to the point I was ready to bring the players into the sandbox.

For the first year, I was then spending about 3 hours of prep time per session to tie in all the character backgrounds and weave them into the narrative. After the first year, it was down to probably an hour of prep per session unless they were about to transition between acts, or a major character story was happening.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That's really cool to me. Your being a story teller, writing a series. Add in the player spontaneous and that's got to be pretty fun, I imagine

[–] PoorYorick 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It is a great deal of fun and tremendously addictive.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I want to play. No one I know plays though. So I live through you guys here haha

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Uncountable.

A single intense session can they're take an entire weekend of planning as your primary task, depending on how you run your table. It can take longer.

I remember the big fight from my longest campaign ever.

Arranging tokens, having charts set up for pre-rolled checks for the most common bad guy actions, drawing up maps, planning out the "big" minions' actions, the actual bbeg's actions he intended, the kinda of minions and their sections of books marked and ready, organizing miniatures for the sections that would make use of them, checking character sheets to make sure I could keep the important parts in my head, and more.

I think I worked for two weeks getting it all set up, an hour or two a day mostly, with the two days before set aside for getting everything finalised and physically set up, and those two days were pretty much an all day thing.

And that's with me already having had a good chunk of that info in my head. Back then, I could quote off most of the recurring monsters' stats, and the main bad guys too.

[–] NotMyOldRedditName 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

And then the players look in the big dark cave, and John turns around and says, I'm getting really bad vibes here, let's skip this one, and the party agrees and continues to the pub looking for another adventure.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Don't even ask me about the side trip into a dragon cult's lair when my kid and the group I was running decided to completely ignore a dozen preplanned hooks and go haring off through the woods instead.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Unless they plan to stay out of caves forever, then eventually they're going to stumble into the one that you have planned...

[–] NotMyOldRedditName 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

After a weary day of traveling, the group finds a nice tiny cave to sleep in for the night. While asleep, a wolf attacked and shocked John. John rolled a 1 on his constitution check and then rolled a further 1 on his emotional check. John now has a permanent fear of caves preventing any further cave exploration.

[–] PoorYorick 1 points 1 week ago

The caves are alive and have developed a taste for poor John. They yearn to feed, and their howls sound through the night like gusts of wind through the trees.

John knows the hopelessness of inevitability. Some day, they will find him. Some day, he will wake up deep in the bowels of the caves, and his cries will add to the howls of the caves on the wind.