Every now and then it has been known for the YouTube recommendations to recommend a hidden gem.

This morning it recommended a doozey

I like seeing and reading about how other DM’s prep for a session, or what they have in their DM tool box and the contents of their DM folder. They are great for stealing ideas from.

Every DM is different, the way they prep, the tools they use and the contents of their folder is unique to them. What works or is useful to one DM may be completely wrong for another. Plus the way they prep, the tools and content is constantly evolving. So whenever you get to see what another DM does, it is always just a snap shot of what they currently do. Come back a month, six months, a year later and it can be completely different, or there might be bits you recognise.

Back to this morning. After I refreshed my recommendations page on YouTube, I scanned the thumbnails for something interesting to watch. There amongst the usual mix of football analysis, recipe videos, and boardgaming/RPG videos was one from a channel I hadn’t seen before aFistfulofDice about prepping for an RPG (here is the actual video).

Yeah I’d seen the videos of how Matt Colville (yep worked him into the conversation) and how he preps for a session. I’d read The Lazy DM books. So my interest was piqued for how this DM went about prepping for their sessions.

The DM/GM who produces the aFistfulofDice videos uses notebooks (who doesn’t? Even in this digital age they can’t be beaten for easy of use and portability). And a combination of the Lazy DM, the 3-3-3 method and they talk about the IARR method.

Now my prep workflow (yeah let’s use some hip sounding jargon) is very personal to me. I use this blog to record ideas, think aloud and one day possibly get some comments, suggestions, about my up coming session. I capture notes for the session in Scrivener.

The image below shows the project structure I have for the current campaign.

Each session has it’s own folder. Plus the general research folder. Which is where I capture any relevant notes to the campaign, like webpages with useful info on.

Each session folder then has several documents inside it that contain my notes for each of the encounters for the session.

One of the nice things I like about Scrivener is that I can export just the pages for the session as a pdf. I have total control of what makes it into the final document. Which for me is the notes for the up coming session.

My notes vary in detail for each encounter. If I’m using a new mechanic, like the exploration or group challenge in the previous session, my notes will be more detailed. Otherwise they can be just a handful of words. I have noticed that I have been writing less detail in the notes compared to my first session.

I also use GoodNotes as a general digital notepad for the campaign. I use Excel to keep an up to date table of the players stats. I did use it to record the stats for each encounter as well. But I’ve moved away from that now I have the monster cards. I just make sure I have the relevant card handy, and just track the individual monster hit points during a combat.

But that’s enough of my process for the time being. I can write a longer more detailed post at a future date.

I naturally went to the channel page for aFistfulofDice and found a video they had done on their DM folder. That was very interesting. Well to me it was, granted it may not be for most people.

That DM folder idea was like striking a rich vein of gold. It came across that they used the folder more as notes for creating adventures than running them. Although with the info there it has (and I’m pretty sure they have), could be used during a session to generate something on the fly.

The find (ok it’s not exactly hidden) of the Lazy DM cheat sheet with NPC and adventure hooks was a great one. I’m going to get that printed out and added.

In the video they use some tables from the dungeon toolbox from the Pathfinder Games Master Guide. So I went and got a digital copy and boy am I glad I did. This book is a gold mine of useful info for a GM. The running the game chapter alone is worth the price of admission as they say. It’s fairly generic guidance, and easily applied to other systems. There really is a lot to love about the chapter, from the adventure structure to the emergency game prep advice. And advice on TPK’s! Then we have some tools for GM’s. These are tables and charts to act as inspiration for a GM. These too are generic and usable in any system. The cultural titles tables are fantastic, want to know the Chinese equivalent of a knight? These are the tables to refer to. But my favourite table has to be Words Every Game Master Should Know. Wow. Love, love, love it.

This is just a wealth of info and inspiration. I will be talking about one or two of them in future posts. Yes Pathfinder is not D&D. This Games Master Guide is for the first edition of Pathfinder. Which happens to be based on D&D 3.5. With the Pathfinder second edition now out, it should be possible to pick up second hand copies of this on the cheap. But the electronic version is not that expensive.

Another source of tables to use while creating an adventure that the video used was the Dungeon Alphabet. I’ll look into that one, it sounds interesting and useful.

It’s been a good morning for being inspired.