Schedule Before Content

We don’t need to know what we run before we can schedule a game

Schedule a game even if you don’t know what you’re running. That way you’ll run more games and you will get better at figuring out how to effectively produce content for a game session. The opposite of this equation is true as well: We can write entire novels worth of game prep and yet never run a single game if we don’t schedule one. Now, if writing prep notes gives us joy then we’re doing nothing wrong. But most of us don’t want to be novel writers. We want to run great roleplaying games.

And to run great games (or any games for that matter), we need to schedule them. Even if we have no clue what the content of that game session will be.

Schedule a regular time and day for D&D

If we want to run regular D&D games, scheduling is key. In my experience, it is more important to have a regular time and day than it is to know exactly what we are going to run long before the session comes up. There is no sense in preparing a lot of content if we don’t have a group to run that content for. And a regular game night allows for a consistent game by avoiding the constant hassle of D&D scheduling.

Work with players to set a time and date that works for the foreseeable future. Then prepare what to run for the upcoming session, after you can be sure that it will take place.

Don’t try to prep a whole D&D campaign before scheduling the first session

Much of our prep as DMs does not survive contact with the players. Therefore, preparing hours and hours or pages and pages of locations, NPCs, monsters, plot twists, etc. is not only ineffective, it can also stop us from running a game at all. If we need to have every last minute of a D&D campaign which might take months or years to run figured out before we feel comfortable scheduling it, that campaign is never going to happen. Because we will never schedule the first session.

Instead, once we have a rough idea of what kind of campaign we want to run (a general theme, setting, hook or something similar), schedule a session zero with the players. We can get comfortable with the empty spaces of a campaign, and run more games that way. In fact, the empty spaces will get filled by the players and their characters’ stories, making the game that much more interactive, collaborative, and engaging.

If we have a session scheduled and don’t know what to run, run published adventures

Sometimes we will end up with a session coming up (thanks to the fact that we scheduled one), and we have no idea what kind of D&D or other RPG session we can run. Now, at some point before the session we should prepare something to present to the players. It’s good to schedule before planning too much content, but to run a game, eventually we need some content.

Either we are incredibly comfortable with improvising everything with absolutely no preparation. Or, we can grab a published adventure. If it’s a good adventure, it will make it easy for us to run as a DM. We can take an hour or so before the game, and read through the relevant chapter to wrap our head around what to expect from the session. Then, we have the book or the PDF with us when we arrive at our scheduled session, and use the content there to run a game.

(I recommend SlyFlourish’s Ruins of the Grendleroot as a great example of an easy-to-run, DM-friendly book of adventures.)

Running a game is the goal

This all might sound easier than it is. And at first, it’s probably not very easy to run a game “straight from the book”. But it’s better than not running a game at all. We only improve by practicing. And we only practice by playing. And we only play if we schedule a game. Even if we don’t know what we are running yet.