Nothing in the life of a DM is more of a time sink than prep.
A quick Google search will reveal this fact. You’ll find every possible option for prepping your campaigns and sessions: “10 Ways to Speed up your D&D Prep,” “Spending a Whole Day Prepping for a D&D Game,” “How to Prepare your FIRST D&D Session,” and on and on …
I mean, hell, you’ll find those same articles RIGHT HERE on 3WD! Just like any other endeavor, we want to maximize our cost/benefit – squeeze the most out of the time investment that we put in – to train smarter, not harder.
As I say on the podcast nearly every episode, I love stealing smart and I love kit-bashing. That same method is what leads us to what Thorin, Tony and I have started calling “Schrodinger’s Encounter,” after the thought experiment physicist Erwin Schrodinger used to explain quantum states known as “Schrodinger’s Cat.”
In its simplest form, the thought experiment goes like this: If you place a cat and something that could kill the cat, like a poison vial on a random decay timer, in a box and sealed it, you would not know if the cat was dead or alive until you opened the box.
Therefore, until the box is opened, the cat could be considered both dead and alive. This is what is thought to happen in quantum mechanics, where particles are in all possible states until they are observed, then they “collapse” into the state in which they were observed. (Look, we’re not quantum physicists, just go with it.)
In the same way, everything that you prep should remain in a quantum state. It is both existing and not existing in your world until your players “open the box.”
Schrodinger’s Encounter
I’m a fan of random encounters, especially during travel. I like the idea of making traveling overland in the world a dangerous endeavor. If not, why isn’t everyone doing it? However, complete randomness, like rolling on a chart, can be the cause of some serious headaches – not to mention balance issues, like DM Tony’s infamous story of the random encounter table that had four Fire Giants just meandering through the woods.
One of the phrases we’ve coined on the show is “Plandom Encounters” – planned random encounters. I came upon this idea as I started running our current Curse of Strahd campaign. No spoilers here, but the adventure includes two random encounter tables for Barovia: daytime and nighttime (even if it’s never quite daytime in my Barovia.)
These encounters are great at setting the tone for the adventure, including wolves, bats, Strahd zombies, and even a revenant. They also include non-combat encounters to help in dropping clues and setting the mood, like a hidden bundle of clothes (werewolves and wereravens), false trails, graves, and random trinkets (Blinsky, anyone?).
To allow for a level of randomness – without completely screwing myself during the session by having to build an encounter on the fly – I randomly roll 2 or 3 of these encounters for the session. This allows the randomness of the dice to assist in formulating some of my plot points (like the skeletal rider encounter providing our barbarian Hawk Morgan with his “Championship Belt”) while allowing me to build the encounter into something worth spending session time exploring that reinforces the mood and tone.
I could easily hold unused encounters over until another session or roll out separate ones each session. The encounters never existed until the players opened that particular box along the Old Svalich Road.
Schrodinger’s City
Towns. Cities. Kingdoms. Worlds. Here is where most DM’s time gets completely invested – building out fantastical locations, competing kingdoms, towns with more than just an innkeeper and a blacksmith.
But what happens when your players never talk to the apothecary whose only son was conscripted in the Duke’s Grand Legion and died in battle, thereby causing the loss of the apothecary’s singular bloodline that was linked to the legendary Good King Rigwynn, proving they were the true heir to the throne of the greatest Kingdom of the World? Or worse yet, what if they don’t like the apothecary’s demeanor and decide to yeet him off a cliff?
Going even further, what if they never visit this town during the entire campaign? What if in Session One, they decide to commandeer a ship at the docks and become pirates? Never fear, this is where DM Schrodinger comes to the rescue.
There are two ways to approach this.
- Be like me: Steal smart and kit-bash. There are thousands of villages, towns, cities and kingdoms already built and populated. Take one and start reskinning.
- Design your villages, towns, cities and kingdoms out of whole cloth, but keep them in the box. They never exist, in their entirety, until the players open the box.
Your players didn’t visit the town of Plotfall? No problem! Plotfall is actually west of where they are, exactly in the town they’re looking for. They had actually skipped over the town called Boredom.
They commandeered a ship and are now embarking on a pirate adventure? No problem, Plotfall is now one of the port cities they visit, or even the pirate stronghold they must visit to give tribute to The Dread Pirate Roberts.
Schrodinger’s Big Boss
But DM Dave, what if they spend so much time and so many levels opening all these boxes of quantum dungeons that they’re WAY too powerful for the Big, Bad, Evil, yet misunderstood, Guy (trademark, BBEymG)? Never fear, for DM Thorin had this very problem in our Woodstock Wanderer’s campaign.
One of our earlier adventures led us to a warren of followers of the Snakes of the Alakir. This warren was mainly populated with snakes (duh!) as well as worg-riding goblins. Oh, and the “ninety-foot giant boar” that the party has been spreading the tale of… “The boar was THIS BIG!”
The BBEymG that we were originally going to face, which I believe was some sort of Goblin Boss, was a Hobgoblin Boss when we finally opened that box. We never knew any different until DM Thorin told the story on the show.
It’s easy enough to ramp up your BBEymG to be level-appropriate with the party, especially since you are the one controlling the experience and/or milestone rewards. Remember, your Monster Manuals and Bestiaries are nothing more than guidebooks of average types of these creatures. There’s always going to be that one goblin that works out all day AND has a Wand of Fireballs.
Final Thoughts
We all come to DM’ing and prep in our own ways. Some of us love to build whole regions of the world that our players may never get to, some of us hate when our hard work goes unexplored. The only way that is correct is the one that you like. Don’t ever let anyone tell you different; there is no way to play this game wrong.
But with all of the work that you do, I would urge you to allow enough breathing room and malleability to let your players assist in formalizing the final product – I promise you, it will always be better than what was in your mind originally. Because, as a wise man once said: You can play D&D alone but it’s called writing a book.
Follow along with Professor Schrodinger’s example and build all the boxes you want. Just let yourself be a little surprised with what’s in each one.
Until next time, heroes … LIVE THE ADVENTURE!