Pretty sure it happened to everyone, you lacked time to prep tonight session, and now the first player just arrived
Bonus point if you explain how to do it when tired.
A shopping trip can kill half a session if it’s been a while. Then maybe one of the shopkeepers has a problem that would be worth one of the nicer items in their shop if it were taken care of for them.
A shopping trip can kill half a session if it’s been a while.
Do you really have fun running a session like that? Me and my players would die of boredom.
I think a lot of it is the dopamine of getting to upgrade your character.
Also, I have observed that people LOVE getting everything together to get kitted out for a mission. If there’s some special equipment they’re going to need to go into the temple, and they’re trying to think what they would need once they get there and running around town putting it all together, they just get super excited and it gets them amped up for the adventure. It is fun in my experience, although yes YMMV.
In their defence, Blades in the Dark, set a trend of having a formal downtime phase which is about upgrading team, healing physical and mental wound, and advancing your side project, and I heard player telling me that they’ve spend 2 (short) sessions on it.
Even on more classic games, having the player looking what to buy in the books, then finding a shop having it, negotiation with the shopkeeper and so on, can take a lot of time.
s a DM, I’ve always found it boring as hell. 👍Maximum Derek👍 English4•
I don’t really like running them, but my players enjoy it from time to time and it always seems to take half a session.
I stufferd a store in for my players to shop (Foundry) because it had been a while, and just grabbed a pre-built one and tossed it in…
they spent the night planning and implementing a massive heist because one item cost too much for them to afford and they wanted it… I had NOTHING for this (half the players beliefs on the shopkeeper, how they worked and how they could be robbed was based on some crappy random generated name and they had made “assumptions”…)
Found out later they thought I planned it all
While my players will easily kill 30 minutes collaborating on what to buy, a session like this is definitely more fun if there are NPC’s involved.
We had a memorable session when the PC’s found the Emporium of Evil, where they tried to find the magic items that weren’t TOO cursed, speaking to all manner of morally questionable merchant. (They bought a lot, actually.)
You can also brainstorm the next quest this way. Whether or not the party wants to take a quest from a one of these merchants, they can certainly hear rumors. You can see what they take interest in, and build your next plot arc off of that base.
Some trouble can always pop up when the shopping is winding down, requiring decisive action by the party.
Assuming a D&D 5e game, I load Kobold Fight Club and click until I find monsters I can build a little story around.
A while back (including enemies from Tome of Beasts) I got Spawn of Akyishigal and Giant Ants, and after a few overland battles they found a beleaguered anthill.
By the next session I had my dungeon made and some lore surrounding it.
The giant anthill had carved its way into an ancient tomb of an orcish warlord who had managed to seal the Demon Lord of Cockroaches with her in an attempt at everlasting life. The actions the players take can result in her rising as a Mummy Lord or in Akyishigal being freed.
All from going “Hey, these enemies work well together.”
Here’s a link to it:
So, here is my approach, in the context of a campaign. On my campaign, I tend to have a short list of NPC/Faction/Place and enjoy keeping the campaign on a shorter space rather than a whole multiverse.
So my technique would involve.
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Ask the players to give me a summary of latest session, that I’ll crosscheck with my notes.
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Ask the player what they want to do, following these events. having reccuring NPC/Places/factions mean that I can improvise how these person react to the event (if they do). This will easily burn a hour.
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While all of that happen, I have time to think about how to relaunch the story, either there is an event which absolutely makes sense in the context The local mafia isn’t happy that you dismounted their drug production lab, when you come home you find a miniature coffin with a bullet inside in front of your door or, even though it’s a bad practice, I throw a “randomish encounter” A big etheral cloud forms over the magic equipement store, and you can see some ethereal creature leaving that cloud and ear screams of bypasser being attacked The latter adds a combat buying me an extra hour to find-out why this shop exploded.
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Then, I can let the player investigate these events, it may-not be the most complicated investigation I ran, and kinda linear, However, it’s enough to keep going to the end of the session, and have new elements to develop for next time
For a one shot ?
In general, I organize them when they’re ready, and I have a lot of one-shot scenario ready on my computer, alternative would be pulling a zero prep game.
This mostly happens to me when it is very clear that the session is going to be about resolving something about player X’s backstory, and their work schedule changes.
The easiest way, is to use a generator, like https://donjon.bin.sh/scifi/random/.
I might not fully use the suggestion of “A minor executive named Jasper Catlow needs a crew to frame a rival named Porter Gammon for corporate espionage. However, the client hires a team of assassins to eliminate them after the job.”, but it’s easy enough to change some nouns to make an interesting one-shot.
Grab any two factions with competing interests, loosely define some scenario where they’re narrowly deadlocked, hook the group in via a scheming interloper who has mysterious (TBD) motives. Hash out all details by yes-anding. If ever there’s a lull, or I need a climax, the current underdog makes an unexpected power play.