I like to go for a long walk before I start planning just to get away from the obligation of ‘working’ right away for next session. Usually that lets the random hanging plot threads find natural ways to tie in with whatever mess the players made 🙂

Once I’m ready to start writing down my ideas I like to start on paper. I look over the notes for what my characters picked up or showed interest in. I ask them, individually, what they are most curious about for next session so I can make sure to plan out whatever that thing or place may be so they don’t surprise me too much.

Most of my world building is outlined before the campaign starts in a google doc. So after my paper notes are done it’s a matter of finding the right place in the doc to flesh out with player requests. Often this means adding or updating the table of monsters, outlining what players learned about a location (or what I made up on the spot) etc. Going from Paper to Digital takes about a week or two – I don’t like to do it all at once, sometimes great ideas pop into my head while I’m driving or such.

Usually this means I have to generate the following;

• Movements and plans of the groups favorite NPC’s so the world feels like its moving on its own.

• Something that happens that the players don’t see, with far-reaching effects – to generate a little mystery – this can carry over from session to session if they haven’t discovered it yet.

Some way a favorite NPC/enemy/god reaches out to them unexpectedly – this means I usually write out a letter or the description of a vision and they get that at the beginning of next game.

• One or two scenes to set the campaign mood – how their long rest scene looks for example.

• A new location to visit – usually the next leg in a journey they are on.

• Coming up with a list of 5 strange items I expect the next location/enemy will have.

• One or two random encounters with a strange, unfamiliar enemy.

• One or two Story-line encounters with the familiar plot-based enemies.

In my last campaign there was a lot of in-group deception so each player was consulted out of game to go over any secret stuff that the character needed to have handled, or ways they were investigating the others on the down-low.

Every once in a while I get a special request from the players. Once they wanted to have a shopping day in-game so I made a shopping minigame as well.

Then, the day before the session I write down a bullet list of points I want to get to something like;

• Player 1 Receives a secret letter at midday.

• Player 2 gets a holy vision at the next long rest.

•Player 3 is being hunted by NPC 1 – if the group doesn’t make it to X in time NPC encounter ensues.

• Earthquake at midnight

• Treasure 1 2 and 3 should be scattered where the player’s go.

I tend to be forgetful while playing so having a list like this is a handy reminder for me.

Last thing is to look over what they did last session as a whole to determine if they level up. In general we don’t track individual EXP, I just look over what they accomplished and then we start the next session by leveling up, when appropriate. I like doing it before the game ‘starts’ so I can handle level-up questions and so the group is re-familiarized with their abilities so they are less likely to forget to use them.