Balancing Time and Effort for Maximum Fun
In the first post in this series, I covered the steps you should take before starting a new duet campaign. This post continues that conversation with strategies for striking a balance in your GM prep. It closes with a GM diary where I’ll walk you through the first couple sessions of our current home campaign.
The big question I want us to work toward answering is: What’s the right amount of prep for me as a GM? We’re looking for the Goldilocks balance between too much and not enough.
This is where process and personality come into play—what’s right or best for you won’t match what works for someone else. We’re all wired so differently!
As you read, think about the parts of your prep process that are working for you and where you can streamline or experiment to find something that works better.
Finding Balance on the “Spectrum of Effortful Preparation”
First, we’ll look at the two sides of a sliding spectrum between too much prep and not enough. Your preparation style and process will change and evolve depending on where you are in your campaign arc and where you are in your journey as a GM.
What Not to Do
I normally prefer to keep the advice here on the blog positive, focusing on what to do rather than what not to do. But this is one of those places where I’m going to make an exception.
As GMs telling stories with loved ones as part of a game and hobby, I don’t really believe in us making “mistakes.” By that I don’t mean that we’re always perfect, only that we can always undo an in-game mishap or miscalculation. The vast majority of these instances fall under the “rule of fun”—having fun with your duet partner is more important than rules or mechanics. In other words, fun always wins.
That being said, I do find that there are two mistakes GMs can happen across, especially early on in a campaign. These mistakes exist along a spectrum—let’s call it the “spectrum of effortful preparation.”
Over-Prepping
On one side of the spectrum, we have over-prepping. If you’re anything like me as a new GM, then you likely spend as much time prepping as you do actually playing. If that degree of preparation makes you happy, then don’t worry about it! This advice is only for if you’re running into a problem.
For me, that problem was the time commitment my prep process required. There were weekends where we didn’t get to play because I “didn’t have time” to prep. And mostly that was because the prep I wanted to do was too involved.
I see this with new GMs relatively often, especially ones who want to design their own worlds. They’ll spend weeks if not months trying to get all the pieces in place and details fleshed out. But oftentimes their standard of preparation is too high, and they’re missing out on valuable time that could be spent playing.
Again, this is about being happy with striking a balance with how much is “enough” to be ready to play.
Under-Prepping
This isn’t something that I see as often, but I did want to mention under-prepping a campaign as this happened to me with the previous campaign I tried to run for me and Jonathan. I still have plans to come back to it and to turn it into a mini-campaign for sale in the Grove Guardian Press shop! But it was a pretty frustrating experience and one I’d like to spare others from if I can.
The campaign was Journey to Vestige Lake, and I had the first few sessions planned out, the first mini-arc, really. But once we got through about session three, I hit a block in my GM prep that I couldn’t find my way around. Our poor, sweet characters are still waiting for me to circle back to them!
In case you’re curious, I discuss the block more in the post on starting a new duet campaign and things to reflect on before you dive in.
Jumping in too quickly can lead you to get stuck after just a session or two. It might also look like an incompatibility between the PC and GMPC. There are absolutely ways around this—it doesn’t mean your campaign is doomed! It’s just not a fun feeling to play for a few weeks and get your player excited and then have to put their character on the back burned while you dive back into preparations.
Bare-Bones Basics – Motivation
So what do you need to start your campaign or feel ready enough to play? A lot of this, for me, comes down to personal preference and mindset.
Pay attention to your internal monologue/dialogue about yourself as a GM and your preparation for a session. Is your inner voice being kind to you? (This is a much bigger topic than I can tackle in this post, but it’s absolutely worth asking.)
Regardless of whether or not you feel ready, what you need to be ready is some permutation of an outline or sketch of events and possibilities that will help your PC move forward in their story.
Let your player help!
One of my favorite things to do when prepping a session is to lean on Jonathan for help. Is there anything his character wants to do? For session zero, he wanted to create a homunculus.
You can pull on PC backstory here too—what motivates the PC? In the video that accompanies this post, I talk about positive PC motivation and maybe what we can call prickly PC motivation.
We see this in Baldur’s Gate 3 (which I’m working on a post about and want to discuss more). There are things the characters want and things they’re desperate to avoid. They also have sensitivities and shortcomings.
Is the PC quick to be offended about a slight to their family or place of origin? Can they not stand a bully, like the duke in season one of Bridgerton?
Use these qualities, both the good and the “bad”, to your advantage. We want to spur the PC to action. Basically, you’re asking yourself as you prep: What can I put in front of the PC that’s going to provoke action? What will they not be able to resist moving forward?
Help Along the Way
Of course not all GM prep needs to be done on your own! That’s a huge part of why Jonathan and I design duet-specific adventures and not just provide advice for them. There’s no need to go it alone!
In fact, we’re just a couple days away from the end of our first-ever Kickstarter for a full-length duet campaign! You can check it out here or click on the picture above!
If you’re looking for some one-shot adventures to string between campaigns, check out Witches, Fae, & Foes. Or maybe you’d like someone for your PC to travel with? Our Adventuring Companions supplement is for you! (At time of posting, the revision to our Adventuring Companions supplement is only available as part of the Kickstarter. We’ll have the update in the Grove Guardian Press shop soon!)
A Widening World—GM Diary One
If you’d like to hear more about our session zero and the first session or two after that of our new campaign, I go into details on my prep and process in the video linked below!
Next Steps: Personalizing your process
If you’re stuck in your process or there’s something about your planning and preparation you want to improve, there are steps you can take!
First, make sure you aren’t being too hard on yourself. As a GM in a duet game, you’re creating “a whole world just for two,” an immersive adventure for your duet partner and their PC. That’s big! And as a process, it will take time.
This will likely involve listening to other GMs as well—I don’t pretend to be the sole authority here!
a list of helpful resources to get you started
- Justin Alexander‘s blog has amazing advice for running campaigns published by Wizards of the Coast for your gaming table.
- Mike Shea‘s “The Lazy Game Master” covers GM prep in depth.
- When we first started playing, I know that Jonathan got a lot out of both Matthew Mercer’s and Matt Colville’s series on running a D&D campaign.
- There are so many cool GMs and designers out there, sharing their ideas and process, so search around to your heart’s content! If you have a favorite that I didn’t mention, please share them in the comments below!
- Ginny Di just created a fantastic video on running duet D&D!
And of course you have me, here to talk specifically about running duet D&D! I’m about to celebrate 10 years as a writing professor, which means that to my very core, I love and am obsessed with writing and individualizing the writing process. In this specific application, GMing is a very special form of writing. There may be periods of block just as there will be periods of great inspiration.
I like having a place for next-session notes (or the next couple sessions). I tend to keep these in my GM notebook. And then in a separate Google doc, I have longer-term story arc pieces that we’re building toward.
In our current campaign, my notes on the heist I’m about to run are in my notebook. Notes on backstory reveals and our campaign villain are in the Google doc. That short term and long term balance are really helpful for me!
Closing thoughts
I hope this post was helpful as you look at your GM prep process! If you have any advice videos or series on GM prep, please share them below.
As always, feel free to leave me follow-up questions or requests for future posts. I’m really enjoying this series, and I hope you are too!
Happy adventures!
We’d love to hear your thoughts and questions!