Holy crap! I’m actually finishing something!

No. It’s not AngryCraft. Shut up.

But AngryCraft’s not dead. Just to clear that up. Some of you said it was. It ain’t. It’s on life support sure, but I’m no longer thinking about pulling the plug. Still, it’s going to be in rehab for a while.

Nope. Today, I’m finishing my Angry’s Open World Game series. This is it. Lesson four. The last one. Because that’s all I promised. In just a few thousand words, it’ll all be over. Huzzah! Hooray!

So, let’s get this article over with so that I never have to speak about open-world games ever again. That is what you all wanted right? You wanted it done.

AOWG Lesson Four:
Closing the Barn Door After You TPK the Horses

Welcome back to How to Run Your Own Angry’s Open World Game. This is it. The fourth and final lesson.

Recall this all started when I promised that I’d teach you how to run an open-world, exploration-based, crappy, nothing of a game with minimal prep. Actually, I started by bragging about running that sort of game for my own players. But then, I promised I’d teach you how to do it.

In Lesson One, I shared the three pillars of Angry’s Open-World Gaming:

1. Whatever Happens at the Table is Good Enough
2. Mechanics Don’t Make the Game; Sometimes They Make it Worse
3. The Minimum Amount of Prep Time You Need is Zero Minutes

Then, I told you to harness the power of pre-published stats, slapdash lists, and crappy maps. Basically, fill your gaming backpack with bits of game and then slap them together right in front of your players.

And then I told you how to keep track of what your players were doing with a Player Do List and how to make sure there was always a next item on that list. And I taught you how to yank your players off their chore lists with smoke on the horizon.

I also taught you a couple of supplemental lessons. I told you about the Quicksand Incident and taught you how to script a session. That’s useful s$&% to read, but you don’t have to read them to make sense of this final lesson.

Today, I’m going to tell you how to bring it all together. I’m going to tell you what I do before each and every AOWG session to make four hours of totally okay gaming happen. Except I’m not. Because I actually don’t prep before each session. I prep after each session.

Yeah, yeah, I hear all you f$&%ing pedants. “Well, technically, after each session is also before each next session!” Yes, you’re technically correct. Which means that you’re right, but that you’re also an a$&hole. So no one cares if you’re right. You’re also missing the point in favor of trying to win an argument nobody but you’s actually f$&%ing having.

The deliberate choice to say after instead of before conveys a very important conceptually idea. The spirit of the idea is more important than the literal words. Because communication is about ideas, not words. So shut up.

Anyway, caveats. First, remember the goal’s to minimize prep time. Prep sucks. It’s a necessary evil. It makes it possible to run an RPG session, but you want as little of that s$&% as possible. If you do it efficiently, you’ll get away with less prep and you’ll also run a game properly. That said, efficient prep isn’t always fun prep. It’s not always writing stories and designing mechanics and custom monsters and writing pages and pages of backstory. But less prep is better than fun prep.

Second, remember that nothing exists in your game world until it appears on the movie screen. You might know an elder swamp dragon is living under the credenza in the party’s chateau — or think you do — but there’s no dragon there until the players find their butler’s bloated corpse. And even then, until they actually see the lizardy bastard, anything could have did it to the butler.

Third, use whatever f$&%ing tools you want. I don’t give a s$&%. I don’t even care if you take my advice. I know that confuses the hell out of people. They’re always like, “well, I don’t agree, and here’s my point of view.” And I’m like, “I don’t care.” And they’re like, “but you have to convince me you’re right.” And I’m like, “no, I actually don’t. I can just walk away and let you keep being wrong.” And they’re like, “but you have to debate me or else…” but I can’t hear what else they’re like because I walked away.

Anyway, I don’t care what tools you use. I use paper. I like it. I have good, scientific reasons for using paper which you may or may not agree with. But, well, see the previous paragraph. If you want to use One Note to make a Wikipedia on D&D Beyond? Fine. Whatever works. Use what you think is best. I use paper. I like it. And the examples I’m including? They’re all on paper. Because I use paper. I like it. If you want to argue there’s a better way, go make your own f$&%ing website and argue it.

And I still won’t care.

You have all been caveated! Now, let’s talk about how to prep after the fact.

Prepping After the Fact

Here’s me. I just finished running another totally okay session of my awesome Angry’s Open World Game. Now that the session’s done, I’m ready to prep for it. So, what do I do?

Wait. First, when do I do? I start my prep the day after the game session. If that’s reasonably, practically possible. Which it never is. But I do try to start my prep within 24-hours of finishing the session. I also try to get all my prep done in one sitting. Which is also never possible. And I try to limit my prep to two hours that I never have. If I’m spending more than two hours prepping for a four-hour session, I figure I f$&%ed up.

So, here I am. Ready to prep. And here’s my process:

1. Write the Recap
2. Update the Bible
3. Write the Player Do List for the Next Session
4. Expand the Player Do List to Fill a Session — Or Just Write a Session Script
5. Prep Whatever I Need to Prep for the Next Session

Five steps. Easy peasy. One hour most weeks. Sometimes two. Except usually, I stop at the fourth item on the list because I don’t have an hour.

And yes, it is technically flawed to have “and then do the prep” as the last item on a list that I claim to describe my prep process. And yes, three of those steps actually do involve prepping for the next session even though I made such a big deal earlier about prepping after sessions rather than before.

Just keep in mind that paragraph about how I don’t care. That might be the single, most important takeaway in this entire series of articles. Perhaps, it’s even the culmination of everything I’ve been writing for the last ten f$&%ing years. If you learn nothing else from anything I write — if you never become a better GM, not even a little teeny tiny bit — I will consider myself a successful content creator as long as you have learned just how little I care what you think about anything I’ve ever written.

Anyway…

That’s the overview. Now let’s break the process down. Step by step. Yes, even that last step. And, by the time you get to that last step, you’re down to using whatever time you’ve got left to finish up. Which just shows you how important the prep part of the prep process actually is. Or isn’t.

Step One: The Point-by-Point Recap

The first thing I do after every session is to write a point-by-point recap of that session. Now, this ain’t for the players. I’m not going to share it with anyone. Except it kinda, sorta did become a thing I share. But that’s not important and I really didn’t want it to work out that way. Don’t worry about that.

So, I write this recap. It’s just a little timeline of the important things that happened during the past session. Now, I know GMs love their f$&%ing recaps. They’re recap and recap and recap and get super detailed and super descriptive and it’s like Tolkien and GRR Martin collaborated on a world-building treatise. Don’t do that s$&%. My recaps are like a list and a timeline had a little baby. And then put a bunch of bullets in it.

Don’t think too hard about that analogy.

Point is, I don’t write:

In the Chamber of Unspeakable Horror, the players encountered three creeping jellies and an eyeball gouger. Grothar the Incontinent charged the jellies but fell victim almost immediately to their goopy onslaught. He was rendered unconscious. Fortunately, Pious Patty was on hand to cast cure wounds and then… look, I can’t even continue this f$&%ing drivel. You get the point.

Instead, I write:

Chamber of Unspeakable Horror, Tomb of Wackiness
9:00 AM

• Party fights jellies and gouger, then retreats
• Pious Patty dead, corpse dissolved
• Jellies, gouger still alive

Or even just:

• 9 AM: Party fights jellies/gouger in CoUH. Patty dead/gone. J/G survive.

Simple. Point-by-point, event-by-event, scene-by-scene summary of what happened, what the outcome was, and what the party learned. That’s it. No more.

Here’s an actual recap from one of my actual sessions. It was one of those “wander around town and interact with the world” sessions. Lots of interactions, lots of information learned, not a lot of challenges. Ignore the highlighting, by the way. I’ll explain that in a second.

Looking at it, I should mention that’s an older recap. My format’s changed. Now I list the location first, then the time, then the events. Here’s a recent recap. In fact, here’s a recent player-facing recap. That is, it’s one my players get to see. It’s a little more detailed and a little prosier, but still the same thing. Note that I never bury my players with an over-bloated recrap.

Now, if you’re attentive, you’ve probably noticed that I track dates, times, and locations. That’s good to do. How do I do it? I do it while I’m running my game. I keep a little piece of scratch paper handy and scribble notes like:

Hartwood’s Inn
8 AM Kamen meets Merilla
Party meets Olyvar, story of sheep attack
Thedwick’s Cottage
9 AM Evendur visits Thedwick, “care for Speaker?”
Thedwick says avaracia flower might cure Speaker

.

Thus, by the time I sit down to write my recap, I’m already mostly done. And scribbling those notes is quick and easy with a little practice.

Step Two: Updating the Campaign Bible

Let me explain that highlighting now.

A long time ago, I wrote about campaign bibles. A campaign bible’s just an encyclopedia of everything you know about the world you’re running. Everything that’s true. Which, remember, is only s$&% the players know. If it hasn’t happened at the table, it doesn’t go in the bible. And anything that’s not in the bible isn’t actually true. So you can change it.

Do you now see why I say I prep “after the game?” It’s because the game doesn’t exist until it has already happened. Until it does, it’s just plans and hopes and dreams and s$&% like that. And hopes and dreams are worthless. Trust me.

I use a big ole five-subject college-ruled notebook for my bible. Because that’s how I roll. Here’s some pics to show you exactly how I roll:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

My bible’s got five sections with color-coded tabs. The first section’s where all the recaps go. The rest are for people, places, things, and ideas. And the tabs are orange, yellow, blue, and pink respectively. Except that last divider is orange again because the idiots that made this otherwise gorgeous notebook are, well, idiots. So, I say it’s pink. Mainly because I have orange, yellow, blue, and pink highlighters.

After I write my recap, I highlight all the NPC people and the places and the things and the ideas. Using the appropriate colors. Then I check to make sure each thing’s listed in my bible. If it’s not, I add it. Unless it’s not important enough to add yet. And if it is already listed, I add whatever new things the players have learned to the entry.

Notice the guidelines and indenting and the extra space for things I think will get a lot of screen time? Yeah. I’m really good at planning and organizing. I even keep a table of contents and update it and the page numbers as I revise the bible.

But this ain’t about my gorgeous use of primitive, analog, dead-tree technology to keep perfect track of an imaginary world for my pretend elf game. I fully admit that a personal, editable Wiki-thing or a OneNote-thing would be perfect for this s$&% to. But I like to shut off every electronic thing and sit with a pen and a notebook and some highlighters and a cup of coffee and my imaginary world of pretend elves. And I like paper.

Step Three: Preparing Next Session’s Player Do List

I already explained Player Do lists. That was lesson three, part one. Well, that’s what I do now. I make that. Go back and do the remedial reading if you can’t remember how.

How do I know what to put on the Player Do list? Just like the recap, it’s mostly done by the time I sit down to write it. At the end of each session, after my players remind me that I can’t leave without giving them XP, I ask them what their next plans are. And I write that s$&% down. That’s the basis for the Player Do list.

I realize that just asking the players what they’re planning to do next is an advanced technique. It’s tricky. Something only sexy gaming geniuses can really pull off. But you should give it a try anyway. You’d be surprised how often it works.

Beyond that? I just guess. I explained that. Usually, it’s not a problem. Recently, though, I did have a little crisis wherein I realized I had no f$&%ing idea what my players were going to do next. They were behaving increasingly erratically. Unpredictably. To the point where I didn’t even know what they were trying to accomplish even after they told me what they were planning. But, look, that’s just because I broke my AOWG and did everything wrong and all of this advice probably doesn’t work. But don’t worry about that. You’ll probably be fine.

Besides, this is the last lesson in this series. So, even if I wanted to explain, I couldn’t.

Step Four: Expanding the Player Do List or Writing the Session Script

Next, I look at the Player Do list and ask myself if that s$&%’s going to fill a session. And the answer’s no. It’s always no. There is never enough on that list to fill a session. So, I figure out how to add more game to the list. I either plan to add goals that follow from other accomplishments or I add side things between the items on the list. Or, sometimes, I just jot down some things I can pull out of my a%$ to fill out the session. Because I know I can pull four hours of game out of my a$& if I have to.

Except usually what I do is write a Session Script. Which I covered in a supplemental lesson.

The point is, I make sure there’s going to be a next game session. With enough game to actually fill the session. If that means throwing new crap at my players once they finish all the old crap? Fine. If it means being ready to bulls$&%? Fine. You just have to be careful about throwing lots of side crap around your game. I recently learned that’s a great way to keep them moving frantically from thing to thing without ever making any progress. And also, you should never drag out something just to fill time. Don’t make a simple task more complicated to fill up your game. That just sucks.

As long as you look down at your Player Do list or your Session Script and you’re pretty sure you can make four hours of game session happen — good game session — you’re fine. Except…

Step Five: Actually Prepping for the Next Session

If you get lucky — or if you run out of time — you can stop this game prep process before it reaches this awful point. But sometimes, you just can’t.

It’s like this: every GM should be able to keep an okay game running okay for the length of a session. However long that is. Every GM should be able to improvise a mediocre dungeon or a simple mystery. Or whatever. But, if you know your players are about to delve a dungeon or solve a mystery and you’ve got the time between sessions? Well, you can use that time to make actual, good dungeons. Actual, complex mysteries. You know, you can actually write adventures like GMs usually do.

And you probably should do that whenever you can. Because good is better than okay. It’s more fun.

So, once I’ve got a Player Do list or a Session Script and I’m reasonably sure I know what the next four hours of my gamemastering life will entail, I read over that s$&% and figure out what I need to bring with me to make it happen. Is there a dungeon? I’ll probably need a map. And an encounter key. Is there a wilderness? I’ll need some hazards and points of interest and random encounters and s$&% like that. Is there a murder mystery? I need to know who did what where to who and with what and who the witnesses are what leads and clues to hide where.

In other words, from my Player Do list or Session Script, I can prepare a list of resources I need to make that session happen. And then I can check to see which resources I don’t already have. I mean, I might already have random wilderness encounter tables for the region through which my players intend to tromp. And if I don’t have something, I’ve got to make it.

And that tells me what to prep.

Sort of.

See, GMs? They’re stupid. Except me. I’m a sexy gaming genius. So, unlike most GMs, I never see this list as a list of things I actually need. I know it’s a list of things that would be helpful to have if I can have them.

First, some of the s$&% I think I need? It already exists. The DMG has perfectly okay wilderness encounters. And wilderness encounter maps? Please. They’re simple enough to crap out during play. Hell, you can just use a blank space and not worry about the terrain. Or run narrative combat. I’m not going to waste my time mapping an open field just to precisely place three squares of underbrush no one’s going to walk through anyway. I don’t need monster stats. I’ve got a Monster Manual. And I don’t need to stock my dungeon with treasures before the fact. That’s what treasure tables are for. I can just roll for treasure as the party finds it. It’s fun. We can pretend it’s a roguelike! Everyone loves a good roguelike! Which is an oxymoron. There’s no such thing as a good roguelike.

So that list of s$&% I think I need to prep? It doesn’t fool me. I go through that list and I highlight only the s$%& that I absolutely cannot possibly live without. Basically, I ask, “if I want to guarantee the best game possible and I only have time to prepare one thing on this list, what would I prepare?” Whatever the answer is? That’s what I prepare first. And I don’t just start preparing it. First, I say, “how long would it take me to make this thing I have decided I can’t live without?” And then I ask, “what would the thing look like if I had half that much time?”

That’s what I prepare.

And then, if I have any time left, I go back to the list and say, “okay, if I want to guarantee the best yaddah yaddah yaddah what can’t I live without?” And then it’s “how long” and “what if I had half that time?” And I prep that.

Now, you can do this s$&% however you want. But GMs are f$&%ing bonkers with their prep. They waste tons of time on it. Time that doesn’t make their game any f$&%ing better. And you might think you can limit yourself, You might think you can say, “well, I can keep myself under control; I’ll just start prepping and make sure I don’t overdo it.” No. You can’t. You won’t. Try that s$&% and eventually you’ll spend 32 hours a week prepping a four-hour game session. Prepping your pretend elf game — not running it, just getting ready to run it — will become a full-time job. That’s a stupid use of your time. No matter who you are and what you’re passionate about.

So, you set some hard-a$& boundaries. You’re only allowed to make one thing from the list. No matter what. No matter how many things you think you can’t live without. One thing. Or three things. Or you will only spend two hours. Whatever you do in two hours? That’s what you’ve got. Or make a game of it. You can pick 1d4 things to prep. And you’ve got 1d3 hours. Whatever of those 1d4 things doesn’t get made in that time, you go without.

I’m not actually joking. This isn’t funny Angry stuff. I’m serious. Try it.

I don’t have to do this s$&%. I’m lucky if I can find 1d3 hours to waste on my weekly pretend elf game. And the first four steps usually eat up thirty minutes by themselves. These days, I usually have just enough time to say, “okay, if I only had time to prep one item from this list, then I’d prep it. But I don’t. So, I guess I’m winging. Again.”

Or, I have just enough time to panic and cancel the game.

Someday, my players are going to ask me what the hell is wrong with my diet because I sure do get a lot of food poisoning.