A Rule of Three
“What should I prep for my session?” you ask, mere hours before the session starts. This is something that happens regularly in the DM Academy Discord. We field questions routinely about how much of anything a DM should prep.
Understanding, of course, that different games have different preparation demands, there are nevertheless some principles one can apply broadly. The five room dungeon is one example, and my go-to scale for hexcrawls is 7 or 19 hexes (a hex flower). But when sketching out preparation from the largest to the smallest scales (worldbuilding all the way down to individual encounters), I keep circling around one number: three.
A “rule of three” for TTRPG prep goes like this: Focus on three things. Zoom in or out and focus on three more things. In this way, you can build complexity without overtaxing yourself. But don't forget that most of this prep is just window dressing if it's not immediately gameable by your player characters!
Let's look at this more closely with some particular examples.
Worldbuilding
At the scale of the world, your main concerns are the shape of the world, its major historical arcs, and the people who shaped it or were shaped by it. So think of:
- Three continents, countries, kingdoms, or regions, depending on the precise scale you're looking for.
- Three historical eras at any or all of these resolution scales.
- Three peoples involved. (Sure, you can just adopt the generic D&D fantasy races/species, but ask yourself: are all of these peoples the major players of every era?)
Then zoom in or out and repeat until you have a sketch of what your world looks like. One of the benefits of doing things this way is that you also get some hints on what might be interesting factions, situations, and even points of interest/adventure sites.
Campaign or Adventure
Campaigns often have a beginning, a middle, and an end, unless they are open-ended sandboxes like my current Dolmenwood campaign. But if you were following along above, you might already have some ideas on when and where to set them, as well as who might be involved. Campaigns usually zoom in considerably. For the start of a campaign, you need any of the following:
- A place to start: a town, a forest, and a dungeon. This was the name of a Cairn game jam, but it's also a good heuristic for thinking about location building.
- An alternative: A point of interest, a person, and a situation.
- Some hexes, each with three things: something visibly interesting, something hidden, and something secret. The visibly interesting thing can be found by traveling there; the hidden thing can be found just by searching; and the secret can be uncovered only by gaining specific information.
- Some people, you guessed it, with three things: a thing they know or have, a thing they want, and a thing they're willing to do to get what they want.
- Alternatively or in addition, your people can each have: a distinguishing feature, a mannerism, and some likes/dislikes. Is that three things? I'm counting it.
- People don't always act alone. They join groups, like factions. Make three of them!
- Each faction has a set of resources, a set of goals (and current progress), and an attitude toward at least one other faction.
- A dungeon. But you know what I'm gonna say? Model what it has using the same approach as for hexes, but also consider: a threat, a treasure, and a secret, perhaps something that connects to other secrets.
Encounters
Can we build encounters with a rule of three? Why not? I'd focus on these three things when setting up an encounter:
- What are they doing now? And how will they react to the PCs?
- How likely are they to stay and fight if things go sideways?
- If they fight, why?
These are nothing more than “reaction”, “morale”, and a sense of motivation, which can also speak to tactics (if you know why they fight, you'll know how they're likely to fight). Use your favorite tables to determine these during play.
Okay, what about the composition of enemies in a more tactical setup? In this situation, you can think of a defense (or offense) in depth scenario. You need:
- Front-line warriors.
- Mobile skirmishers.
- Ranged attackers (weapons or magic).
Which of course means thinking about what groupings go well together and create good battlefield synergies.
So that's it! A rule of three you can use for any kind of preparation. Is it comprehensive? I doubt it. There is undoubtedly more to say. Is it simplistic? A little. But layer these things on and jam them next to each other, and you get a lot of interactivity and apparent depth without too much work.
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