As much as it pains me to say, I find prepping those few hours before the session, at the eleventh hour so to speak, my most fruitful time to prep sessions. Something I’m thinking about doing in the future is to prep the following session right at the end of the current session!
Assuming you do at all, when is your favorite time to prep?
I frequently end up prepping in the hours before, and I really wish I wouldn’t do that. I’ve run just enough and am a good enough improv that I can make it work, but feel like there are missed opportunities.
I find my best sessions run when I do the prep the night before and percolate everything throughout the day. A good night’s sleep with all that in my brain usually leads to it running so smoothly and I find I’ve made connections without even realizing it. Plus I love the excitement of being ready and anticipating the session vs screeching into the party at the last second with my notes hastily scrawled on my arm.
This is a great way of putting this. I’ve been doing a lot of same-day prep lately, and it puts a lot of unneeded stress on me before a game, when I should just be looking forward to it.
When life is good and my game is clicking for me, I do a lot of mental preparation for my sessions in the minutes before going to sleep. I tell my wife that I am “going into my dungeon,” and I visualize the people, places and things that might be interesting in the upcoming adventure. Sometimes, I will rely entirely on these mental notes, other times I will write them up ahead of time. When I’m going to bed on time, but still unable to find my way into my dungeon, I know that something is wrong with the game I am running.
With certain exceptions, like building fights or props for 13th Age or reviewing a module for Trail of Cthulhu, I deliberately keep my prep to the hour before a session. Even if I have more time, I try to make sure I keep myself to that budget. it forces me to concentrate on being open to player input and to focus on things we can actually see at the table.
Obviously there’s the mental prep between sessions, but generally any hands-on sit down work I do in the lead up hour.
Before players start rolling, at the start of the series/campaign I bash out 6-9 quests/missions, each with 3-5 scenes. Most but not all of these are based on the setting, character choices and 3 plots that the pcs may interact with.
During the game I try to weave the scenes in, but if not because we are too busy being lead by players or flowing with the dice rolls, that’s okay.
Then between each session I review my pre made quests and scenes, adjust for what is used, where the characters are going and add new ones where appropriate.
Nearly every game there is stuff left over, so I stash them for later when I have a blank moment. I’ve used stuff I created 2 years earlier, nothing gets wasted.
If the players want to ‘hit the ground running’ right after session zero it’s fine, because i’ve got a pile of spare fantasy and modern supernatural scenes and plots in my stash folder.
I do most of my prep in the hour before and the hour after a meet.
The hour before, I glance over any notes I have, review rules or setting information if needed, and generally put together a couple ideas of where the session might go.
In the hour after, I update my notes while everything’s still fresh. This part often feels more like a chore but it’s worth it imo.
In between sessions I also keep my notebook on me and write down ideas for scenes or whatever else comes to mind to pull from during play. This sort of daydreaming is probably the bulk of my prep actually.
For campaigns from scratch, I’m usually excited after finishing a session and will get to prepping for the next one as soon as possible, while ideas are still fresh. Depending on the extent I feel compelled to prep, that can take up all of my spare time for for 1-4 days. For one-shots or modules, I might read up and make notes some time during the week before play, but even if I manage to do that I still need to review within a few hours of go-time.
@MorganMontazh, I totally “go into m dungeon” before bed too! That’s when I start turning over any game-related ideas or plans I have in my head, actually. It’s a comforting mental exercise that helps me fall asleep.
I have two stages of prep for campaign play. One is a longer phase prior to, or after, session zero, depending on if it’s a collaborative world building game or not.
This is where most of my time is spent in prep: creating factions, making notes, thinking about fronts, that sort of thing.
The second phase of prep is just after and just before each session. It’s never very long, and it often seems to get shorter each session as we have more and more plot hooks to draw upon.
My prep has evolved a great deal over the years and become very slimline. After character gen I do some work to structure the stuff I’ve picked up into a one-page reference sheet that I keep updated over time. My format recently has been to list the players and their characters in one corner, list key threats in another corner, key NPCs in another corner and then the third corner varies by game (e.g. in a recent Blades campaign it was key factions).
After a session I’m normally buzzing with energy that I actively need to dissipate in order to be able to sleep. So I use the half hour or so after the session to write a note of what happened, campaign journal-style. If I’m still buzzing I might do a bit more, like noodle around asking questions about the game and/or developing threats. Or doodle pictures of stuff from the session.
Pre-session prep happens in the day or two before a session. I can’t always wait until the eleventh hour because of real life stuff, so I try to pick a time when I’ll actually be able to sit down and think. But - as a campaign wears on, I’m likely so comfortable with it all that the final 30 mins before the session is enough, and can serve as double-duty: prep and warm-up.
During the second stage I go over my notes from the last session, and other materials (my notes from character gen, notes from earlier sessions, previous prep notes). Most recently I’ve been using this to draw out short lists, generally some combination of:
My prep becomes more and more lax over the course of a campaign though, as each session creates slightly less buzz of “OMG exciting new game” and I feel less anxiety about knowing what I’m doing.
Mentally I do a lot during my commute but that is often high level stuff, the more fiddly bits such as NPC stats (I’m running D&D 5e at the moment) I tend to do the day of the session during my lunch break. Partially that’s to give me time to work out the likely elements that could come into play during the session but also because I put it off. I’m not a massive fan of how D&D approaches stat blocks / monsters etc but for now I’m stuck with it.
I’m a fairly low prep GM all things considered, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like rolling up lots of random dungeons when I have time. My workload at my main job tends to be feast or famine, so if I’m having a slow day I’ll usually prep some stuff. In theory I’d love to use @jasoncordova’s 7-3-1 technique every time but I rarely end up coming with more than one or maybe two things at a time. That said, Freebooters 2E gives a lot of great tools for generating dungeons and settlements and followers, so I have a lot of fun rolling those up when I have a chance. Otherwise I keep a running list of notes for campaign/encounter/setting ideas on my phone so I can add to it whenever I need. My main prep before a new session is going back over the notes from the previous session, and then if there’s anything of my pre-prepped stuff that I might be fitting in I’ll make sure I have those handy.
The first three minutes I can snatch from the week before the game.
Depends very heavily on what game we’re playing. But typically, I’ll start trying to figure out the plot for the session about an hour after the game session starts.
I tend to think about my NPCs motivations and character as a background activity - waiting for the kettle to boil and similar. So I can keep a strong idea of who they are in a way that helps me improvise. I do that all the time in-between sessions.
Otherwise I’ll probably scribble a few things down 30 mins before a session.
I’ll echo the folks that said in small bursts of downtime and quietly right before bed. Some of my useful prep comes as I’m driving to work. I’ll turn off my radio and explain an NPC, threat, or location to an imaginary person. It helps me think about how I would bring something to life using verbal description alone.
I hadn’t heard of the 7-3-1 technique before! I can see how that’d be effective but yeah seems a bit labor-intensive. Here’s a link explaining the technique for anyone else who hasn’t heard of it.
My pretentious answer is I’m constantly prepping my games 
In the sense of devoting idle thoughts to cool stuff that happened/could happen in a game. (I’m a real daydreamer >.> ) I also try and write up the notes I’ve taken during games at some point between sessions which also helps firm up ideas. This is a bit different for stuff where I actually have to care about stats or whatever, but not run any of that for a few years (With the exception of some PFS scenarios, where I just read through the adventure a couple of times)
A few days before, or else the anxiety just eats at me. Sometimes I over-prep one session and don’t have to prep the next though, so that’s kinda nice.
I also do a lot of up-front “campaign” prep, which I think helps lighten the load, mostly because it lets me do a lot of prep-work when I’m most excited about the campaign.
An hour before the game at best. I then start the game with world build questions to add some locations, threads etc…