I am pretty lazy. That’s it, that’s the letter. Goodbye. Signed, your average gen Z-er.
Okay, but, seriously, I could never put a game together while the entire time it feels like a chore. When I was in middle school, I’d spend all day everyday making all sorts of dungeons, regions, adventures, and so on. Nowadays, while I still find all that interesting, I find it so tedious doing it to that extent. For a variety of reasons, I neither am able nor willing to spend all my waking hours essentially in freeform brainstorm. That being said, my willingness does generally exceed my ability, but, by the time I can get around to actually working on the prepwork for my game, I have far exceeded my threshold for industry and cogitation. It’s just the way it is these days, and I’m sure I have a good long while until that changes.
Yet, this is my hobby, and I am firmly held in its grasp, so I must work within the constraints placed upon me. As is often the case, I was inspired to write this by a song, one which bears the same title as this letter, by a group called The Cockroaches. At least that phrase “bit by bit, little by little” does exemplify my approach to crafting a setting for my players to explore and experience. To say I paint my settings (not Uncanny Valley, but the ones I’ve played so far) with broad strokes gives me too much credit even, unless the brush you imagine is truly elephantine. I’ll skip how I start campaigns for now, because you only ever have to start them once, and instead just focus on the “mundane” weekly prep.
The greatest tools I have ever come across, indeed I believe the first of these ushered me into this style, are “anthology” type adventure modules; I13 Adventure Pack I and Basic Fantasy’s Adventure Anthologies 1, 2, and 3. There may be others of a similar persuasion, but these are what I have and use. These books are great. They give you an adventure that doesn’t care too much about the other parts of your game and gives you just what you need to run it. TSR’s book is a little more involved, and those adventures are certainly lengthier and more “fleshed out” than the Basic Fantasy books, but they are still much lighter on assumptions than full adventure modules. I don’t dislike the “big boy” modules, but I always feel they give me more than I ask for; that, I presume, is a byproduct of having only the I13 module as my preamble for what an adventure should provide. The shorter adventures still need pruning and adjustment like any other adventure, but the workload is much more manageable. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for an Adventure Anthology 4 some day.
Besides adventures in their variety of forms, my personal toolbox is merely pen[cil], paper, dice, and The Tomes™. I don’t need a vast array of tables or procedures, though I have a couple I printed. When it comes time to prepare something of my own, I need to be able to do something else at the same time, whether that’s working on something else, housework, or whatever else. In practice, this means I’ll open up one of either my 1st edition AD&D books or my Basic Fantasy books to a random page and flipping through until something gets me started on a barreling train of thought. Usually it ends up being some artwork or an evocative phrase, but sometimes too a mechanic or specific monster will catch my eye and, even if I don’t use it, it sets me on a track that reminds me of other, related ingredients I might like to use. The dice are there sometimes just to roll absentmindedly and sometimes to make an arbitrary decision, the pen and paper to record whatever comes to mind. In this way, I offload greater amount of legwork onto the books I have, leaving the fun stuff to my imagination. This process is not selfish for my time or energy either, and I especially enjoy cooking while doing this. In a way, the meals I cook for my family have as much influence on my prep as do the actual game materials, giving it a unique flavor.
The final, and certainly the single most important, piece that makes my lazy prep possible is asking what my players would like to do next session. By doing that, I don't have to guess, thus avoiding potentially prepping the completely wrong thing. I can prep for exactly what they said they want to do, going just a bit off mark in case they decide to meander, and any other satellite events or situations that orbit their target. I also have time passing between sessions, so I prepare for them to revoke their original pledge in favor of pursuing a different target. If something else should occur during the week, then it is either a completely fresh event, in which case the most important thing I need to know is what happened and the immediate reason why, or it is a consequence of some prior string of events, inclusive or exclusive of the party’s actions, and I have all the depth of knowledge I need for that anyway. The secondary benefit, which is mostly derived after a length of time of familiarizing yourself with the players’ approaches to different situations, is that it becomes almost second nature to suppose how they will react to the events which may occur and be able to respond to those actions should they be taken. Remember that my players are newlyweds to Basic Fantasy and its play style, but, if you have a longstanding group, then you surely have this skill already. It is invaluable, and it means that even randomly occurring encounters or bad rolls are unlikely to upset the flow of the game, even if it does foil the plans of the party.
All of that comes together in a sort of trifecta that means, in brief, that I can keep my inputs of time and effort to a minimum while maintaining enough output to run the game. Depending on what my players say they will do, the only thing I might come having prepped is a stick figure drawing and a couple words. Up until last session, as I say, my players are well-invested in the “Slavers’ Fortress” adventure from Basic Fantasy’s Adventure Anthology 1 (which I placed on the “Island in River” from the same book); they’ve learned when to run away but have not yet mastered “cheating” and taking every advantage to avoid being routed in the first place. They will, in time, and all it takes is for me to remind them to “scheme, play dirty, and use mischief” in order to get them in the right headspace. They have at least significantly weakened the slavers, but the party is also not yet ready to finish them off. They’re delving into a nearby ruined manor now, hoping to recover treasure and experience to levy against the slavers.
I’m not just telling you what my party is doing for the entertainment, I am doing so, because very little has been demanded of me in the process. The slavers and the island are completely done for me. I already had a large river nearby, so that’s where the island went, and the slavers went onto the island; the author of “Island in River”, J.D. Neal, noted that it had been done like that with success, so I took the advice. The only solicitation for my attention was the need to insert the names of my local NPCs into those adventures and decide where on the island the fortress would go. As far as the ruined manor goes, which is more like a castle in the shape of a manor, that was a dungeon I created a few months ago which has largely been left unexplored by the party. They found an elevator to a lower floor and booked it out once they encountered things too weird and powerful for them. The dungeon thus is ready to go mostly as-is, only requiring minor adjustments to its stock due to the things that have been disturbed.
You see now how a lot can be done with a little. Sure, I had to make the dungeon the party wants to explore, but I did that before I had to. It’s like doing the dishes; you’re happy to do them when you choose, but it immediately becomes a bother once you get told to do them, even if you were already going to! Another consideration is that making the dungeon wasn’t necessary, because there is no shortage of free dungeons about. I would personally stop short of having a completely stocked and finished one, because I feel like each one makes assumptions about how I or my players will handle our roles that differ from how we actually do. Having typed that now, I suppose that’s the core reason why I prefer scenarios to adventures. It feels like buying a pre-owned mouthguard. The size is right, but it is fitted to somebody else’s needs to such an extent that fitting it to mine requires an outrageous amount of work - better to just start with a fresh one. I do have most of Basic Fantasy’s adventures anyway, but I haven’t looked at any in great detail yet. I figure if I will ever make an attempt at using a more elaborate adventure module, then the ones from Basic Fantasy will at least embrace a presentation and style that is familiar to me.
Looking at this now, it seems a bit ironic that I’m talking about the limits, perceived or actual, that are placed on my ability to prepare for my game when I could just spend the time preparing for my game. Well, the truth is, there is very little I have to do for now and as long as that’s true, I will exercise my ability to be lazy towards that activity, and I fully intend that pun. We left off the week before last with them peering down the steps going to the second level down into the manor’s depths, and I don’t have time pass when we leave off in those cases; I know some GMs like to start and end each session at home, wherever that is, but I don’t keep to that convention myself. The key in all of this is that if you just do things one piece at a time, you end up with a complete vehicle that makes preparing for the game a breeze and makes running it, which is the whole point of the game, self-sustaining. I’d like to hear how you approach these things, so leave a comment either here or wherever else you find this letter saying so. All said and done, the short version of all that is “I am pretty lazy. That’s it, that’s the letter. Goodbye. Signed, your average gen Z-er”.