Preparing for sessions can be a chore - I find myself wondering how to structure the stuff I'm making up, and thinking about ways to organize often take more time than actual campaign writing.
However, there is one technique that I am extremely thankful for coming across - the TRAPs method, invented by Ry at Enworld forums: ry's Threats, Rewards, Assets and Problems (TRAPs)
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Not that kind. |
It's really making my life as a GM a whole lot easier, because it's a simple algorithm for fleshing out an adventure or encounter: Everything you add should be either a Threat, Reward, Asset or Problem. If you're introducing something that's neither, it's ineffective. And before you complain about 'atmosphere' and so on - you can easily turn either of these things into stuff that provide atmosphere.
Right now, I don't have enough time to write about this more elaborately (I have to prepare for the session), but once I have tried it out a bit more, I will try to write down my experiences.