I took a trip down memory lane and looked over my old game prep notebooks. Some of them were more than fifteen years old, and the prep in those was pretty atrocious haha, lots of huge blocks of text and way way more information than I could ever use. What really surprised me is how different my prep was even just a year or two ago—the way I prepare my sessions has really changed a lot over the years, and I tend to mess around with it a lot still. These days, I tend to improvise a lot more, and most of my notes are about player goals, bullet point lists of potential challenges and complications, and a few quick notes on NPC names, goals, and traits, alongside any mechanical stuff that’s too hard to come up with in the moment (puzzles, stats, etc) How has your prep changed? What changed it? I think the biggest influences that changed my prep drastically were proactive Roleplaying, Blades in the Dark, and the videos of Matt Colville (especially his downtime video and his sandbox versus railroad video)

My name is Phil and I am a long time game master. I have been playing and running for 38 years. First game I played was DnD. First game I ran was After the Bomb. I have played DnD, most Palladium Books stuff, Cyberpunk, Deadlands, and a handful of others big in the 80’s and 90’s. I am currently running three Pathfinder 2e games. One weekly ( Abomination Vaults) and one monthly (Shackled City) and as of last night one bi-weekly which we used Collaborative Campaign Design to build the world. At this time because the monthly and weekly games have just been in one area we put them as givens and they will be included in the world build on the next times they play. As of now I have 14 players across three games.

Welcome to the Game Master Laboratory! This is a place for people who are running (or planning) TTRPG games to brainstorm ideas with other GMs, share ideas and resources, and test their creations with each other. I recorded a short video to get you started, which you can view in this post. It's all about what we do here, but it's also about how to use Skool, so if you're new to Skool, make sure to check that out! If we haven't met you yet, we would like to. Please make a post in the "General Discussion" channel to introduce yourself and tell us... 1. Which systems you like to play/run 2. A bit about the games you're running right now Glad you're here. DM us if you have any questions.