Tips on Running a TTRPG with Minimal Prep

I'm a lazy GM. Several times now, I've gone into session with literally 0 prep. And many times, those sessions turn out to be among the best sessions I've ever run.

I've been running the game periodically for over 8 years. Sometimes that was a biweekly game, sometimes we wouldn't meet for 6 months. But I've run many different games, with many different groups, and have introduced a dozen or so new players to the game.

I've learned a lot along the way. So I want to share with you some really easy ways to start running tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) with minimal effort.

You don't need to do much world building.

Spend much time in the TTRPG space (especially in the D&D space) and you'll see massive maps sprawling entire continents. You'll hear about centuries-long histories, different factions, and lists of deities that'll make your eyes water. But I have good news: you don't need any of that.

In fact, you need very little world building to start your first game. All you really need is:

• A name for the town you're in.
• A few NPCs in that town. Only name people that the players are likely to want to interact with: shopkeepers, experts on specific topics, and town officials.
• A location that the players would likely go: a nearby forest, a ruined temple, an abandoned village, or anything else that's interesting to you.

Once you have those, all you need is a way to get the players to go from their starting point to the interesting location. That's where the conflict comes in.

Side note: if you're looking to include more information, MCDM made a campaign worksheet where you outline a lot more than this. It's a bit too prescriptive for my tastes, but it is definitely a helpful guide for first timers.

Just outline an adventure, don't write it.

When I first started, I would write out pages and pages of prep. I'd explain each NPC, each story beat, and all the possible outcomes I could think of. And in the end, the players wouldn't even see it all.

It was exhausting and time consuming. I'd leave sessions feeling disappointed at the progress we made rather than excited at the cool stuff they did.

I've learned that you don't need to do that. I've learned you just need an outline of what you want to happen. If you get really good, you don't even need to write that outline down. And sometimes you don't even need that much (but we'll get to that later).

To outline your adventure, the most important things you'll need are:

1. The BBEG: A Big Bad Evil Guy or Gal (or Gnon-Binary) .
2. A location that the BBEG is (this can be the location you created earlier).
3. A reason for the players to go after the BBEG.

The easy part is #1 and #2; I guarantee you could come up with something in less than a minute right now (if you haven't already).

The last one is more difficult, but only marginally. You could stick with things like "The BBEG has a lot of money" or "the BBEG is just a really bad guy". This would technically work but the players won't really care about the BBEG, they'll just feel like this is what they should be doing because the adventure calls for it.

That works, but what if you could get them to truly care about going after the BBEG? What if you could motivate them to hunt down your villain?

Getting Players to Care

The key to getting the players to care about going after the BBEG is simple (in theory): emotion.

Giving the players some sort of emotional connection to the BBEG makes them feel much more motivated to take them out. For example, maybe the BBEG:

• kidnapped a little girl.
• burned down their tavern.
• is a rival crew of adventurers who is so good that, comparatively, the players look like amateurs.

There's are dozens of ways to do this. The more personal the players feel it is, the more invested they're be in your world. You can use player backstories or perhaps things that the players themselves are interested in.

For example, I have a player that really wants to be a powerful necromancer. They've been working towards this for a while. I could make the BBEG a more powerful necromancer who wipes the floor with my player. That player (along with any others who were beaten by them) will now have a huge motivation to take out that BBEG: the necromancer player wants their powers, and the rest want their revenge.

Mysteries are your best friend.

Another way to get your players to hunt down the bad guy is to use a mystery.

My most successful opening of an adventure (that I've used multiple times now) goes like this:

The players meet in a tavern. I let them chat for a bit, try to get to know each other. I usually have a bartender ask them if they want anything to get them more comfortable with role-playing. Players then chat between themselves for a bit. At some point, it gets awkward and players don't know what to do. That's when someone busts open the door and fires a crossbow bolt straight into the bartender.

Without question, the players have always jumped straight into action. Our inciting incident then becomes our first combat encounter. However this battle plays out, your players now have a question: Why did someone attack the bartender? They're now interested in uncovering that mystery.

A question is a powerful thing. The players no longer feel like they're awkwardly role-playing in a tavern, they feel like a group trying to solve a mystery. And, well, that's because they are. Just like their characters, the players themselves want to solve this mystery.

Side note: If you use this opening, I don't recommend making the assailant your BBEG. If you do, they need to be powerful enough to survive this encounter without being killed by your players, but not so powerful that your players can't defeat them later. It's a tough thing to balance, so it's often easier to just make the assailant a lackey.

Mysteries can be created on the fly.

Mysteries are great for more than just getting players interested in a story. A mystery is great because in TTRPGs, you don't need to know the truth when you create it.

You can have an idea at the start (and I recommend that). But the best part about a mystery is that, once they have a little information, players will start theorizing in front of you. They start putting some pieces together, and often, what they've come up with is more interesting than what you had in mind.

So, you should steal what they said. Not the whole thing, just a part of it. Or maybe that's just a part of the whole mystery. This way, you get a more interesting mystery, and the players get to feel good because they "solved" it.

Let's take our shot bartender example. Maybe we originally planned that the bartender was shot was because he cheated on the BBEG's sister.

After the battle, your players start theorizing. One of your players then says to another: "I wonder if they used to work together?" You can then steal that—they'll never know. Add that in to the story: now the bartender used to work with them, things went south because this bartender cheated on the BBEG's sister, and now you have some drama.

Plot holes aren't a big concern.

You might think that a mystery that is created on the fly might result in a bunch of plot holes. I mean, this is effectively J.J. Abrams' "Mystery Box" method, which, personally, I think is a horrible way to make movies and TV shows. It is not, however, a horrible way to make TTRPG adventures.

The difference between the two mediums is that you can rewatch a movie; you can't replay a TTRPG session. Even if you run the same exact adventure with the same exact players, something will change. Something will be different.

Without the ability to replay, players will forget any minor plot holes. There's so much happening in a few hours that a lot of it will be forgotten.

For anything that isn't forgotten, well, that's just another mystery. The one time someone has asked me about a plot hole in a mystery, I just said, "You can look into it if you want." That's all you have to do to cover plot holes. Well that and then the session that follows where they try to uncover it.

Motivate your BBEG

Since we're crafting things on the fly, we need a guiding star. Something to follow when everything inevitably goes off the rails (which happens very quickly when you're laying the track right in front of the train).

The best guiding star I've ever found is motivating your major characters, especially your BBEG. Give them something they want. They aren't just bad. People rarely, if ever, believe that they are the bad guy. They're the good guy in their version of this story, they just sometimes have to do bad things. So give them a reason to believe that.

Take inspiration from the real world here. The soldiers of the Italian-American Mafia in New York, La Cosa Nostra, knew that they were doing bad things. But they felt okay about doing it because they were doing it for the family; a group that they looked out for and that looked out for them (they also did it for money, but that's less interesting).

So perhaps you BBEG does what they do to protect something or someone they love. In our example, we actually have a good idea already who that is: the BBEG's sister. For our purposes, we'll say the BBEG is motivated by a desire to protect their entire family.

Now that we have the BBEG's motivation, we know more about how they'll react when the players arrive. Their primary goal would be to get their family to safety. This might be by fighting the players, but if the players are too powerful, then they might be more inclined to retreat.

You can use this to guide the more strategic moves your BBEG performs as well. Maybe they capture a fort for their family. I mean, with so many people out to get your family, wouldn't you search for a good defensive position? Maybe they'd send out spies or assassins, or put a bounty on your players' heads. From just a single, very simple motivation, we know a lot about how the BBEG is going to act.

Make your encounters difficult.

Okay, last thing. This is more geared towards D&D specifically, which is the game I've run the most.

I don't recommend getting too into Challenge Rating (CR) to build perfectly balanced encounters. Instead, just find a few enemies that seem interesting, fit your theme, and seem to be roughly the same level.

Here's my big piece of advice: always err on the side of a more difficult encounter. Your players are smart and creative; they'll figure something out. In any game, players will engage with mechanics when they are challenged. If the game is too easy, there's no reason to learn the ins and outs of the system.

The best encounters I've run are encounters that I thoroughly believed my players would die in. But instead, my players have always saved themselves by doing things I wasn't expecting. They've used tables to block doorways, thrown down marbles so enemies slipped and fell, and even abandoned people they've rescued.

The best encounters are tough ones. In D&D, encounters take forever. So make them good. Make your players think and you'll all have more fun.

Fudging the numbers when you mess it up.

Occasionally, this won't work. You'll build an encounter that's simply too difficult and is completely unfair to the players.

If you run into that, then your best bet is to fudge the numbers a bit. You have two options for this:

Fudge the die rolls.

This only works if you use a DM screen. I don't like to use one, because I've had players who believe that I'm protecting them by fudging the die rolls regularly. I do that rarely and I don't want them to think otherwise.

But it does come in handy.

For this method, roll behind a screen, and tell the players something that favors them. Simple.

However, my word of warning: this should only ever be used to fix a mistake that you have made. Your job is make sure that the players believe that their actions (and mistakes) have consequences. If you use this as a safety net for their mistakes, then they'll lose interest in your game. They have to believe that doing something stupid or bad or wrong could get them killed (or worse!).

Reduce your enemy's health.

Just by fighting enemies, your players will get a good idea of many of their stats. They figure out resistances and immunities. They'll figure out their AC based on what hits and what doesn't. They'll figure out how much damage their regular attacks do based on the rolls they make. They can figure out a lot.

However, the one thing they can't figure out is the total of the enemy's health. They know how much damage they've done if they're tracking it (which I recommend, one less job for you to do). But they won't know how much they have total.

Take advantage of this: just quietly reduce the health on an enemy so they go down faster.

I use this more often than die rolls because it also helps with pacing. Occasionally, it becomes clear that the players will win. If that's the case, why make them go through another meaningless combat round? Just reduce their health and let the players move on.

Putting it all together

I hope these help. With just this, you could run a game tonight. Once you have some friends on board, all you have to do is:

1. Name a town and a couple NPCs.
2. Create your BBEG and give them a motivation.
3. Steal my inciting incident in the bar (modify it however you wish).
4. Grab a few enemies that seem cool, fit your theme, and are fairly low level.
5. Play!

I have a lot more tips on how to run a game, but these are some simple ones to run the game (whatever game!) you want. I'll probably do a follow up to this at some point, so subscribe to my newsletter if you want that in your inbox!