It’s varies, depending on where we are in the story! When it’s heavy worldbuilding/preparing for an arc, it can still be around then. If my previous prep is being explored, it lowers significantly. Map building/custom creature creation still take a bit of time. Overall, similar.
— Matthew Mercer (@matthewmercer) July 22, 2020
The scale of attention given to the world from the audience does lend an extra level of care I wish to take in regard to internal consistency, lore consistency, etc… and even then it’s far from perfect, hehe. That does add time as well.
— Matthew Mercer (@matthewmercer) July 22, 2020
The upside to the players only making it half as far as you thought they would means you’re already prepped for the next session. 😁 This!
— Matthew Mercer (@matthewmercer) July 22, 2020
I think it’s important to point out that this is not needed for local DMs.
For you it’s a paid job.
I prep roughly 30-60 minutes/session and then about 1/month I will spend 2-3 hours planning/adjusting the next Arc. Thanks to @SlyFlourish’s book that is plenty Precisely this! This is a very special case, and often when prepping for non-streamed games, I take an approach much more similar to yours.
— Matthew Mercer (@matthewmercer) July 22, 2020
Even so, I enjoy my prep and digging in deep, as I’m sure others do as well. It’s not a question of “how much time do you need to prep”, but “how much time do you wish to prep?”
— Matthew Mercer (@matthewmercer) July 22, 2020
