I think the Gm-section of Kult divinity lost is pretty great, as it explains you how to build a mind-map for your metaplot and how to use PBTA mechanics to make the plot move in the background.

Now what I practically do is outiline the main theme and the reccuring NPC, then rely a lot on what the PC want to do and how they act to see how it develops. There is no point in writing long texts nor planning too much in advance when the PC will break everything by killing the wrong person

“Whatever fits on a flashcard” is my golden rule.

If the players are visiting a new city/town, the city/town gets a POI list and a key NPC list on the card. Each major NPC gets a flashcard. Each special item the players get goes on a flashcard that I can hand them when they receive or find the item.

Granted, I usually have a plaintext markdown doc that sketches out how I’m planning to weave the pieces together for each session, but each piece of the story in that doc? Written on a flashcard.

Depends on the type of adventure! I find that mysteries or political intrigues need a substantial amount of planning, but something like a journey through hostile land can be improvised much more. However I do also just kinda enjoy building out the settings, so I will so a fair bit just for its own sake too

I generally start small and personal. Let the characters explore one tiny corner of the world, get to know the NPCs and get a feel for the setting. I normally have some idea about the larger world and how this corner fits, but until something is canonized through play, nothing is set in stone. It’s both a world tutorial and gives me a chance to adjust things in response to how the characters interact, their backgrounds, how engaged they are, etc.

How and what to tune is a whole other question, but it’s a shared story and being open to ways to help players feel more invested means it’s a huge waste of time to plan out a lot of things that players never care about or see.

On the other hand, I’ve started in campaigns where a DM spends months planning out a world in great depth and 30 minutes into play I know that it’s all going to fall apart within 3 sessions. I’ve seen other DMs who literally just run group after group through the same world or even story every time, even when it’s the same players, because that’s what they spent months or even years building. It’s dull as fuck and makes me feel like I’m just there to witness the greatness of the DM’s world-building or unwritten novel. That being said, it’s perfectly fine if you view it as a purely social event and don’t get invested in having agency.

I’ve come to think of the process of GMing more like stage production than storytelling. You litterally set the stage for your players and you just need to control what’s on that stage at any given moment. So instead of writing out entire cities, towns, dungeons, and deep descriptions I’ll come up with a unique shop or NPC and drop it in when the situation calls for it. Even with a map and set locations, if the players haven’t visited yet then they don’t know what’s there. You can wheel in the set pieces and backdrops as needed. The party doesn’t see the stagehands moving the scenery they just need to enjoy themselves onstage.

It works for me because I might have a fun idea for an NPC or location randomly and write it down. Then I have a catalog of people, places, quests/treasures to pull from as I plan sessions. And if the party doesn’t interact with it that session it goes back on the shelf.

Otherwise I have a loose plan for the overarching main quest but I spend a lot of my time thinking about how the world will look based on the characters choices. Like right now the group failed to stop an assassination of a lord. This also got an ambassador to another nation killed. With tensions already high between the two kingdoms, how will this effect everything else? I found that so much can change in the world based on their choices that planning so far ahead can be detrimental and I’d end up trying to railroad them early on.

If I’m world building and not just borrowing, then I go into decent detail. I have a set table of information I try to have fleshed out for every capital city and then another important city in whatever country. So in terms of that, it can get granular.

Cities usually go something like

• Brief history, population, population type
• Government type
• Law level (lax, moderate, authoritarian, etc), literacy level
• City culture
• Important places/holidays/NPCs
• Famous dish
• Intrigue

Some of these are left unanswered if they’re too much, but I generally try to at least get a handle on how strict the law is, how smart the people are, and the culture and food. This helps me get a clear enough image to envelope my players in any one city. I personally also have a lot of fun trying to think of the dishes, ice flowers drizzled with fruit juices in this desert city, while an underground settlement has fried mushrooms and cow beetle steaks.

I also prefer to leave the imagery of a certain city up to an image as that can really inspire me to go from whatever I’m looking at.

I have not done it much because I don’t have the patience. I had a few neat story things but like one superhero one I made everyones characters did their thing in our hometown so like locations and such were easy to map and plan.

I plot out a few thousand years of history for the setting so that there are recognisable strata of cultures in the locations the players explore. I usually tie quests and narratives into the history so that its all meaningful and not just window dressing.

I do usually use an existing setting as a base, preferably one that has some established history to build off, usually Greyhawk.