In the light of creating Fellmyr and running two separate small groups of players in that world, I thought I’d update you on how Tiny Prep fits into this picture.

The short version is that I’ve developed a lunchtime Tiny Prep habit for the School Club stuff and a separate more traditional approach for the Saturday Night sessions. What’s interesting is the development of “prepping after the fact” – a tip from the Angry GM – to fuel the steps I need for next session.

Both groups started out with a largely improvised dungeon set-up. After each session, I wrote a brief summary of the action, typed up into Campaign Logger. For example, at the School Club (using a map cribbed from another product):

Players: x4

Summary:

• Hired by @Elias to retrieve special key aka !Vault Key made from a skeletal claw shaped piece of bone with the key carved into the wrist bone.
• Boated across #lake longmere to the #”Lakeside Ruins” – hiked 2 miles to the site, found the entrance stairs down, and descended.
• Attacked by Giant Spider in First chamber: Magic-User cast Sleep and knocked it out, then the Fighter smooshed it with their Battleaxe.
• Checked out rotting sacks and got to choking from the mould dust and flour.
• Noticed the bones in the ground and discovered a garnet (50gp) in a Goblin skull.
• The Fighter extracted the fangs and poison from the spider.
• The went west to a door. Heard rising and falling moaning. Opened door. Blast of wind, lantern stayed lit, charged into cavern beyond, saw pool, face-down robed skeleton in priestly robes, noticed bone key on body, some kind of tube in outstretched hand…

Session ended.

Intentions: Get key and then explore some more of this dungeon.

The intentions gave me some direction in prep. As the party clearly wanted to explore the dungeon, I make note to prep the rooms most likely to be entered. This is where Tiny Prep stepped in: once per day, I’d add notes for one room in the dungeon.

Using the D&D Basic DM’s Rulebook, I am able to quickly stock a dungeon room. One option is to simply decide what’s there but another is to roll on the Room Contents Table and randomly stock the location. This is loads of fun, quick, and very much doable in about 5-10 minutes of my lunch break.

The principle is simple: only prep for the next session, focus on prepping what the players are most likely to do, and keep the prep light and simple. Just quick bullet points, grabbing monsters and treasures from the rulebooks, and adding a touch of your own creativity as ideas strike you.

Game on!