If you’re walking in on the middle of the Advanced Fantasy Dungeons series, there’s an index here.

Preparation gets the barest of nods in second edition, compared to campaign building. It’s hinted at here and there, particularly in regards to talking with other players Bout their characters and what they want, but there’s no mention of strict time keeping or records or restocking or rumours or factions.

So, the section in preparation that I think is essential discussion is the first section that’ll be mainly just what I think and what I do, drawing from a lot of the legacy principles that second edition builds upon and doesn’t support. It’s another section that screams “have a worksheet” to be honest.

There are four types of preparation you can perform as GM for play, and you shouldn’t do all of it at once or all the time.

• Campaign prep the campaign is infinitely expanding. Do this as little or as much as you wish.
• Living world prep should take between ten and twenty minutes. Do this every week or between sessions, whatever is longest.
• Improv prep should take about ten minutes. Do it between sessions.
• Response prep should take about ten minutes. Do it immediately after a session.

For all of these, it is useful to keep is a campaign history: A record of what the PCs do in session and how the world responds, in addition to things happening in the background. Whenever a piece of prep becomes part of the world because a PC or NPC acted on it or reacted to it, add it to your campaign history. Whenever a piece of prep changes a map or map key, do the same.

Living World Prep

Living world prep consists all the moving parts of the world that the PCs do not interact with but which make the world feel alive. This happens in real time, so do it between sessions or once per week, whichever is longer. Progress things randomly or as it interests you, especially as the campaign becomes more complex:

• Response Prep check: Implement response prep if you haven’t already.
• Dungeons: Progress the dungeon using the dungeon transformation procedure.
• NPCs and Factions: Progress projects randomly or as per your interest.
• PCs: What are the next stages in their projects?
• Rumours: Delete investigated rumours and progress uninvestigated rumours using the rumour transformation procedure.

Improv prep

Improv prep is quantum prep, in the sense that it doesn’t exist until a PC or NPC acts on it or reactsee to it. Keep your prompts topped up, but delete things you haven’t used in a while as that usually indicates they aren’t inspiring you. These prompts need to be generic so you can work them in easily, but also specific and interesting to serve as hooks in a pinch.

• Top up your improv prompts to six each of:
  • Secrets
  • Strange or fantastic locations
  • Named and sketched NPCs
  • Unique treasures
  • Monster transformations
• Events: Check your campaign calendar for events you can incorporate this session
• Modules or locations: Review any module or location you’re using
• PCs: Review any PC goals or backgrounds that might be relevant to the upcoming session

Response Prep

When responding to a session that just happened, you simply have to let the world change in the PCs wake. Each PC changed the world in at least one of these ways:

• The PC emptied something, cleared out someplace or took something away. How did it change the world permanently and obviously?
• The PC interacted with an NPC who did not die. How did they change that NPC irrevocably?
• The PC gave something away, told someone about something or left something behind, How did it change the world permanently and obviously?
• The PC chose inaction when action would have helped someone. How did it change an NPC irrevocably?

Implement these changes immediately if you can, and record them in the campaign history. Change any maps or map keys.

Campaign prep

Continue to expand your campaign world in discrete chunks between sessions at a leisurely pace. Pick any of the following, whatever seems most interesting to you at the time:

• Map out a similarly sized area adjacent to an already mapped area
• Map out a similarly sized area related to a PC after asking them for details
• Create a villain, important NPC or god
• Create a faction that interacts with an existing faction but in another area
• Create a faction that is related to a PC after asking them for detai
• Add an arcane conjunction, celestial event or festival to the real-time calendar
• Add two or three rumours and two or three events to an area you have developed to draw PCs or NPCs there from afar
• Create a unique magical item and its ancient and recent history
• Make a special random encounter table for a terrain that already exists on your maps
• Expand an existing dungeon by one to three floors by opening up blocked passageways
• Add a dungeon to an existing map that doesn’t have one

For any of these, simply follow the procedures in the worksheet or in the chapter on NPCs.

So this is the first time I’ve wrote an actual chapter text here, and I’m not sure I’m happy with the loose leash I’ve given myself here.

Things here are drawn from many places over many years, and as I don’t keep a file on which blogs I’ve read for the last ten years, I can’t be more specific with inspirations, except that improv prep in particular takes inspiration from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master. I need to write a dungeon restocking procedure, a rumour restocking procedure, about campaign calendars, and some examples and definitions around improv prep to fill this out. Prep is a lot!

This has been a part of the Advanced Fantasy Dungeon Series! Let me know your thoughts on whether this is a good approach to preparation, if there are questions left unanswered, whether I’ve overlooked anything glaring, or anything of the sort!

Idle Cartulary

18th May 2022