The Superior Value of Input Prep
Referees want to know how long they should spend preparing a scenario and how to be more efficient. This is understandable. But this focuses on the wrong problem. Instead of thinking up tricks, referees should cultivate themselves. Appendix N is often viewed as a historical novelty, when in fact it's more important than the game's rules.
This misstep in refereeing tradition is made worse by some language in the AD&D DMG, which gives the impression that being busy all the time is just an indicator that you're playing the game:
Dungeon Mastering is, above all, a labor of love. It is demanding, time-consuming, and certainly not a task to be undertaken lightly (the sheer bulk of the book you hold in your hand will tell you that!). – DMG 2
You, as referee, will have to devote countless hours of real effort in order to produce just a fledgling campaign, viz. a background for the whole, some small village or town, and a reasoned series of dungeon levels — the lot of which must be suitable for elaboration and expansion on a periodic basis. – DMG 7
What lies ahead will require the use of all of your skill, put a strain on your imagination, bring your creativity to the fore, test your patience, and exhaust your free time. Being a DM is no matter to be taken lightly! – DMG 86
These statements set certain expectations in the reader. It's quite true that refereeing demands time and effort. But these passages do damage to new players' understanding of adventure gaming, because they raise alarm without actually describing, practically, what the referee should be doing to aid in this effort. "This will take a lot of time!," says the book, and the reader is left to assume that they are to expend all of this time developing their world. It's reasonable to assume this, when most of the rules are spent describing the responsibilities of the referee with regard to game management.
Developing your world is a poor way to spend prep time. Even worse is "game management" and other paperwork. The best way to spend prep time is consuming media that was created by people who did the things you want to do.
Imagine you have four hours to prepare for a game session. You feel under the gun because you need to produce a 30-room dungeon area in that time. While you can key 30 rooms in that time, you're not sure you will be able to make it awesome in that time. Who knows if you'll be inspired with those ideas that take an adventure from good to great. You want to give your players the best, and you regret that you didn't have more time for prep this week! For this case, what I suggest might surprise you: consume classic fantasy media for two hours, and write your scenario for the next two. I think you'll find that, in those two hours of scenario-writing, things will flow out of you and onto the paper. Your mind is no longer a desert, thirsting for material, searching for random tables and generators to jog its creativity. No, your mind has been filled with jewels, costumes, carvings, altars, characters, quests, relics, rituals, plants, animals, swords, and sorcery! It's by filling your life with the right material, that you cultivate a mind from which adventure will flow like a river.
Of course, there is paperwork to do as a referee. We must track time, we must track location, and we must draw maps and key them. But you must not allow your prep time to develop into "spreadsheet gaming" – mechanical, paperwork-focused play which I discuss in an upcoming article – nor should you revel in the work. Paperwork is a thing to be avoided like disease, and if it's needed, it should be delegated to players when possible. At its worst, paperwork is a distraction from consuming media! If you lack the time to watch a movie and read a book every week ("input prep"), you're probably doing too much "output prep." A movie and a lightweight map key beats no movie and a detailed map key, any week. Trust in yourself. Trust in your input prep.
This isn't something I've invented. Dave Arneson and countless others ran – and run – sessions mostly or entirely off the cuff. This was not made possible by their genius, but by the books they read and movies that were on that week (and because of the ergonomics of the game rules they used, but that's another matter). Dave consumed media from people who were creating the types of things he wanted to create, and thereby, he created them. This is well-documented by primary sources who played with him. And it's not some secret technique. It works for everyone.
Now, the second bolded part above cannot be hand-waived. "Created by people who did the things you want to do." It's often said that you should emulate the behavior of those who are doing what you want to do. It's so true. And it applies to consumption of media as well. If you want to produce adventure gaming, it won't help to read modern fantasy, or watch the latest Dungeons & Dragons movie, or play Baldur's Gate 3. You ought to be reading classic fantasy, watching adventure films, and playing games made by people who read and watched those things! The majority of today's media is produced by people who have only consumed the media made by the people who have consumed the media made by the people who have – you get the point.
If you've ever wondered why things are so damn boring now, when we had The Night Land and A Princess of Mars over 100 years ago, it's because these new things are made by people who have not read any of this material, and often have contempt for it. Another goblin, another slime, another demon lord, another sociopolitical issue parallel to this week's real-world news story. 20 orcs in a cave with a ring of protection +1 and a poop pit. If you consume these things, these are the things you'll know how to make. Meanwhile, Conan was outside the Tower of the Elephant, on page one, 90 years ago. I'll read that instead.
You can watch The Thief of Bagdad (1924) today, and be creatively impassioned for months. Go watch The Warrior and the Sorceress (1984) and then claim you couldn't run a game off the cuff at that very moment! A Dying Earth story or Conan tale can be read in an afternoon, but pays dividends for a lifetime. Even video games can have great power, but you ought to seek the alien and creative, not the meek and generic. Put another way, at least play Morrowind instead of Oblivion or Skyrim!
This power is free, and you get it by relaxing. How many powers do you get by relaxing?
