How Long Does it Take to Prep a D&D Game?

Would have hit like but you were at 666 likes.😮

Lol, I do 16h to 4h more or less

Once I ran a oneshot … and I think I prepared 20 to 40 hours for 4 hours of play. I say you have to do this .. once. But I never want to do that again.

Many of my best games have been games with little to no prep time. But I love spending lots of time prepping because I find it fun to do so.

Dungeons waste my time more than 6 adventures combined

30 minutes minimum for my 3 hour(ish) sessions.

I also prep in the game. I spend about 30 minutes prepping beforehand (maybe an hour if I need to set up maps), but then I take a break every hour for a 5-10 minute break to refresh what I might need in the next hour. (You can also do that every 2 hours, but I work with kids so I do it every hour for their sake as well.)

Dude, I goofed and thought your Kickstarter ended on the 31st. Was waiting til i got paid. Any way to still back it?

Like most things in life that comes down to quality over quantity. Maximize the time that you have versus focusing on how much time you need.

It depends on whether you include Campaign Prep before I even start.
My new campaign has been in the planning stages for about 8 months. (My current log in time on roll20 for this particular game is just over 760 hours with NO player involvement...)
It's nearly ready to start.
I have brief descriptions of dozens of adventures the party may or may not come across. Which I flesh out as they approach them, and discard the ones they don't follow into a file for "Random Encounters" later on.

I hate being in the position where I HAVE to get a whole session planned from point zero to 100% ready in 1 week. Too many things can go wrong...
So when my brain is in the right mode I write, when its not... I make maps. Or create spell lists to upload to roll20 for Virtual players. Or transfer monster stats to roll20.
Since I still play (a heavily bastardised version of...) 2E there aren't that many resources for me to just upload...
(I use roll20 for my table top games as well as VTT. I realised having a vertical TV set facing the players for maps saves SO MUCH space at the table...)

I write long, fairly linear, campaigns with objectives and goals that run for years. I know to many neophytes that is possibly the worst sin a DM can commit... all that "Railroading" and "Lack of Player Agency" but all that scary stuff is just nonsense. Mainly generated by people on social media who feel the need to say something new, so attack the "old ways".
Unlike the vast majority, my campaigns run to their climax because the players feel SO invested in what's happening... Contrary to popular belief, most good players love it when you sculpt an entire world to fit around THEM. I stopped pandering to needy attention whores years ago. That's probably why I'm STILL a DM and not weeping in a corner somewhere.

So prep time between sessions takes maybe 2 hours tops, just to make sure I have everything set up right and any minor tweaks that need to be made. (And I tend to double check a lot of stuff..) So that the session runs smoothly. But during that week, if inspiration strikes, I'll also be writing stuff for 3, 6 or more months down the line... but with no sense of urgency.

(But it's taken me over 4 decades to find the exact system that works for me...)

When it comes to secrets and clues, how do you know when to write a secret such as “NPC, the right-hand man within the council, is the mastermind” vs. “Someone within the council is the mastermind”?

Sounds like with prep time there is a point of diminishing returns where the DM is pursuing information that is interesting to them but not relevant to the players. At that point, the DM is creating for themselves and enjoying the act of creation, but it's relevance to the players is minimal. If I understand correctly, then the DM might benefit from keeping a 'player-centered' approach to preparation to prevent from "falling down the rabbit hole"?

Channeling Marie Kondo - discard preparation that does not spark joy!

Great video! It really is highly individual and depends on what game and how you run it. I run a homebrew setting, so sometimes I just spend a few hours world building, without the goal of preparing the next session. Maybe it comes up in the next session, maybe it does not. I don't mind, I had fun doing it.

To be fair. I guess a lot of DMs - especially homebrew - spend a lot of time thinking about their game and their story. On a boring office day, on the bus, before bed, while taking a dump... You get the idea.
Or while watching/reading/playing an unrelated story. It's not stealing if you're just "inspired", haha.

All in all that could easily amount up to ten hours of "prep time" between two sessions I wager. But would you count it like that? Most likely NO. Because at the time it's just a fun exercise.

Actually sitting down and sketching it out - on paper! - that's probably what takes me an hour, too.

It takes me roughly an hour to prepare a 2.5 or 3 hour home brew Eberron game.
I use Foundry VTT not only as a VTT but also as a database to keep all stuff I might need ready. Sometimes, for example for boss battles, I spend some extra time putting together something fancy, but I usually run theater of the mind style games. I just display a nice evocative image, which some music and a few effects like fog and embers on top, and then use Foundry to do all the math for me. The scenes are usually generic -- a forest, a city, a ruin, a cave -- and are reused every few sessions. Setting up the VTT specific stuff for any given session only takes a few minutes. The rest is standard Lazy DM stuff. Most of the time I am extra lazy and only do the Secrets and Clues step, which is an amazing technique for prepping games efficiently. Thanks for that. :) It really helped me run games when time was in short supply.

I had to move to online play due to the pandemic, but I quickly realized that this style of play works so much better for me than in-person games. I currently have very little time to play and it is really nice not to have to deal with driving times, or setup/cleanup times. That is at least one hour saved each session.
Also, it makes player search so much easier if you can play with people from all over the world instead of just your city. It is also nice to not depend on any third parties that might go out of business.

Thank you for the constantly best dm advice on the internet ❤️

Depends. Some weeks, for my long-running homebrew campaign (loosely based on planescape/forgotten realms), it's 30 minutes or less to actually plan, but hours of watching/reading lore that I sprinkle in and keep in mind in case the players decide to run far off track (which happens often). Most NPCs are improv, or with one or two sentences (the exception being BBEGs or important, recurring characters).

Brilliant! Focus on preparing the most important things first! Characters and their backgrounds. Immediate NPCs. Storyline and encounters.

I sometimes do a 2-3 month prep setting up the world space and then it only takes me maybe 10 minutes in advance of the game just to go over notes and make a few adjustments

I’ll outline all the major place, events, dramatic happenings in advance by just spending some time thinking about what cool shit might inspire adventure and intrigue

Then before any individual game it’s not a problem because I already know it’s essentially done

For all those people who’d like to DM, but have never got that chance, you can always just focus that energy (while you’re waiting) on world building and plot points

*IMPORTANT* None of what I’ve mentioned has ANYTHING to do with the players - they will inhabit the world at some point, sure, but the events and timelines will happen regardless (unless they intervene)

I'm one of those FoundryVTT over preparers. FoundryVTT prep blows out to about three hours per hour of playtime, however I think it's worth it. If I have all the walls and lighting set up and my creatures pre-placed the players can essentially move through the dungeon by themselves and this tends to speed up time playing, I occasionally pause the game to read a description to them or ask them to make a decision.

There are some extras; one of my players loves making puns so I have a button that plays the opening few seconds of the CSI Miami theme that I occasionally press when he makes a good one. I usually have the art for a published adventure pre-loaded into Foundry so I can show the players, which is a big thing for me as I always hated that the GM got to see all the cool art in a published adventure but if they wanted to show the players they had to hold the book up and cover any spoilers.

Lastly, I'm big on modules and automation, I created a map with NPC shopkeepers that will sell items to the players and automatically deduct the gold. Obviously if it's a big story thing we'll roleplay it rather than let them self-serve.

I run games on Fantasy Grounds and my players and I are all very visual. I spend extra time on preparing visuals for the players and myself to help with immersion.
One thing I am finding useful is when I have multiple NPCs in a place, I put all of their portraits on an image file and use either lighting effects or visibility to help players (and myself) keel track of who's in the room or who's speaking

Ty Mike! I massively over prep omg! Have to admit it

Another great video Mike.

Mike, your content has changed my entire experience about DM-ing. I have pretty bad anxiety/ADHD, and I would often spiral thinking about all the prep for the game coming up (a lot of cancellations would happen because of me). On the opposite end, I would sometimes rally and over-prep by a mile once in awhile only to have the players engage with half or less of the content. The lazy DM philosophy has given me so much confidence and autonomy over the game I GM! Most if not all the energy I put in to prep is translated into so much fun! This really has put into perspective for me "why we play". I believe we play to have fun and share experiences with friends. You have made that much more possible for me. Thanks Mike <3

I love building my own maps, but I think I might go overboard in the amount of time I invest in it. I easily spend more than 4 hours per 3 hour session. Like you said, I need to find a better way of analyzing diminishing returns with planning.

I usually set aside an entire day to prep and it's completely unmanageable and leads to burnout. I can usually do it for 6-12 months but I start to resent it.

A big problem I have is the amount of time I feel like I need just to think. 2 hours of prep might be 90 minutes of listening to music, looking for inspiration, thinking of ideas, plotting things, making sure what I came up with makes sense for the setting and current context of the game, then 30 minutes of actually writing up the plan. Then I'll procrastinate, rinse and repeat, edit what I have so far, before I know it an entire day has flown by.

The Lazy DM method has helped immensely with organising my thoughts but I still feel like a huge sinkhole of time for me is just spent thinking about things and making sure my ideas are good enough to put forward.

I have to limit myself from prepping to much. Write down good ideas but focus on them during actual prep. 1hr ish unless maps need to be made

I take this problem from another angle. Rule of thumb for me: the time I take to prep my game multiplied by the number of players equals roughly the time the game will actually take.

As an OG DM for OD&D I didn't have anyone to teach me how to DM and made up the whole campaign including many monsters from my imagination or inspiration from books. It took a long time. And my process was incredibly inefficient. I was probably prepping two hours for each one hour of game time, and since we played a friday night game that went on for 4-8 hours I often spent a whole day (after school work was done) prepping. My maps were amazing! But they weren't even for players' use. I find Mike's techniques inspiring and aim to spend about 15 minutes per hour of play time in prep. I'll borrow settings and adventures and characters from anywhere I can and remind myself, this is not an adventure for publication. It doesn't need to be polished before it's played. Even now there's a temptation to do a lot more writing in onenote (where I take notes as I haven't adopted notion yet) than is strictly necessary.

Mine is between no time and all the time seeing as I watch videos about d&d all the time and think about the campaigns all the time but don't really have time to make maps or schedule time to just prep. (I run homebrew worlds and campaigns)

There is a concept in weight training for muscle growth known as "junk reps." Often its the hardest reps that actually cause the muscle to be stimulated toward adaptation. The rest of the reps are essentially useless except for getting one to the real reps. I have found a similar phenomenon in DM prep. I will ask myself a lot of questions, try a few answers and boil things down to the most interesting elements. The rule I have used for about 25 years is a rule of three. Three critical encounters (combat or social or story or whatever). The rest is an entropic effect like a gas filling a bottle during gameplay. These were 4 to 6 hour sessions and I often wrote nothing down. I personally would consider any prep that exceeds a half hour a day (as long as I am consistent to at least that much a day) to be "junk reps." If you think about it that equates to over two hours a week. Prep is usually done by mid week so an hour or so for prep total.

Dms are actually Batman. Prep time.

Another thought that I have is “What counts as prep?”

Is the time I spend practicing my villains’ voices while walking my dog prep? Or does prep refer to only heads down work?

I spend a lot of time thinking about my game throughout the day/week, but a lot of that isn’t necessarily “prep”

For some reason running a published campaign takes me longer to prep. Reading through and remembering the details is harder when i didnt come up with them. And i dont want to stop and read every 5 minutes during a game.

right around 2:1 for me

It takes me an 1 -1.5 hours, I homebrew. I'm ready for TOTM. Then I spend the rest of the week adding props, picking minis.another 2-3 hours.

Depends if I need to prepare maps or not. It also depends if I'm sure where characters will go the next game. 4h game 2-8h game prep. Tho it also means that I might prep more then one session worth of material.

Prepping a map on Roll20 definitely takes me a long time. However, I've found that as I'm doing it, I am becoming familiar with everything that can happen in the given setting. I now spend almost no time setting up what is inevitable a linear scene by scene progression because I am comfortable with wherever the players want to go on the prepped map.

I usually think about the next session through the whole week until next session, looking for maps, thinking of plot hooks, conversations they might have with npcs, cool monsters to throw at them, etc. but on game day i usually take about an hour or 2 to set everything up and get into the mind of the npcs and monsters they are going to encounter

I know I spend too much time prepping. I get side tracked into looking at different possible monsters, maps, and items.

Prep is the side game that DM's play

The other side of this issue is if you enjoy prep, then certainly spend all the time you want, but do it for yourself and don't insist on the players having to engage with it all or be disappointed that they don't (e.g. learning reams of lore).

Awesome video! Love the backdrop and the new camera. Looks great