I'd been seeing some RPG bloggers responding to this Roll to Doubt post and discussing their prep process. I decided I would give it a shot. My gaming has been erratic, but I have been able to muster some one-shots, so this is focused mostly on that sort of prep. I have been dong some playing, but I do feel like I have a GM brain.
How do I prep?
An interesting question that I haven't really thought about. I don't know that I have a good answer because I don't know that I have a really refined process. And I admit that I spent a fairly long period as a terrible GM. Enthusiastic, perhaps, but terrible.
The first thing I do is get an idea. This typically comes from random tables, but sometimes an actual idea will occur to me.
Then I engage in a little something I call "Backwards <-> Forwards." This means that I think about the backstory of the scenario and what happened previously to set up the scenario and project into the play experience of the scenario itself. And then I think about the play experience that I want to create and work out how the backstory and logic of the scenario need to work in order to support that. Repeat as needed.
Not really after that, but somewhat apart from it, I build the structure for the adventure. This is not necessarily consistent from adventure to adventure. Sometimes, I'll use the Beat Chart method that appeared in a couple of R. Talsorian games. I do that for D20 Modern, predominantly. For my apocalyptic zombie scenario, I built a series of escalating zombie encounters and a separate progress tracker for the *actual* conflict of the scenario. For my "Expendables save Christmas" adventure, I devised it as a series of "layers," flexible objectives that the players had to move through to save Christmas.
And as part of all of this, the mechanics need to be considered. For D20 Modern, I needed to make sure that the obstacles all had Challenge Ratings and XP values worked out. My zombie game was in Fate, so I statted the opposition and the progress bar in those rules and put some thought into Aspects and other elements that could be used. All Outta Bubblegum was the hardest. The mechanics are so loose that you can't have a lot of structure. No method to really set difficulty levels or stat opposition. So that scenario had to be particularly loose and flexible.
This is also the point where I consider my Laws of Gaming. Specifically, 3 and 4. "Respect player agency" and "Never roll the dice unless you are willing to abide by the results."
Where do I need to make sure that there's room for players to make decisions and take action? Where do I need to trim options that don't lead where I want to go? If I'm running a campaign, this should be fairly open. In a one-shot, which is more common for me, I will generally try to have more control. A simple version of this is to think of the 3 "pillars of D&D" from the current rulebooks (Exploration, Combat, and Interaction) as verbs that are applied to each encounter. For example, if the party encounters a squad of orcs, our expectation is that it's a Combat encounter. But what if they try to Explore the orcs? What if they Interact with the orcs? This doesn't mean that those approaches are viable, but making the effort to have an answer for what happens if they try will make your scenario stronger.
Also, be looking for die rolls. If there is something that the players can do without as they move through the adventure, it's okay if there's a die roll to determine if they have it or not. If there is something that they need in order to resolve the scenario, they don't need to roll for it. Again, this is something that is more relevant in one-shots than campaigns, but still something to think about.
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