Sometimes you just don’t want to prep. Sometimes you get a last-minute call to run a session. Maybe it’s your first time DMing and you don’t know where to start.

Whatever the reason, prep may seem like a mountain to climb. Well, allow me to help you! I remember when I was first trying to figure everything out and I stumbled across The Wild Sheep Chase. It’s a fantastic One-Shot by Richard Jansen-Parkes that you can get for free over on the DMsguild. The only issue at times can be how do I convert this pdf into an actual session?

Some DMs have a gift, they can read it once and go from there, some are masters at improv, storytelling, and off-the-cuff humor. Well, I unfortunately don’t fit that boat and I’m sure many others out there are just like me. I need a ton of notes; because once I’ve got things organized, then I feel comfortable taking things in new directions.

So welcome to Advent’s Amazing Advice! The series where I take popular One-Shots, Adventures, Campaigns, etc. and fully prep them for both New and Busy DMs. This prep includes fleshed-out notes, music, ambiance, encounter sheets, handouts, battle maps, tweaks, and more so you can run the best sessions possible with the least stress possible! Onboarding new DMs should be easy and I hope with this I can help grease the wheels!

Without further ado:

Included in The Complete Collection are:

  • A Word document with all my notes including a link to music tracks for ambiance and fights
  • Special PDFs for all the encounters. This includes all the enemies’ stat blocks organized neatly along with an initiative tracker and a spot to mark HP.
    • A complete spell list for Noke which gives full details so you’re not bouncing around for info.
  • A map of Shinebrights tower. I use this as a reference when drawing out the map for my players
  • A handout for The Scroll of Speak with Animals

Index:

Other Fully Prepped One-Shots, Adventures, and Campaigns:

As always, If you see something you think I can improve, add, change, etc. please let me know. I want this to be an amazing resource for all DMs and plan to keep it constantly updated! If you’d like to support me, shape future releases, and get content early feel free to check out my Patreon!

Cheers,

Advent

  • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
    2·
    1 year ago

    I love this adventure. It was one of the first I ever ran. One of my players did something super cool in it. He was playing an Eldritch trickster rogue 3/ fighter 2. During the fight with the dragon, he ran into the house and looked around. I told him that scrolls for basically every 1st and 2nd level transmutation scroll was there. So he’s like “so I grab a jump scroll” then he runs to the balcony, casts jump, and leaps onto the back of the dragon in flight to fight the kid directly. It was badass.

      • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
        2·
        1 year ago

        The behind-the-scenes DM bullshit was that they would have killed the dragon the turn that player went into the house. I juiced its HP quite a bit so that the player got to do the cool thing and had an epic finale to the fight

        • dozens@tiny.tilde.website
          2·
          1 year ago

          @Advent well the first thing i did was freeze up and then break character and tell them that they just killed the quest giver and now i have no prepared way to hook them into the plot 🤣

          then i think i had some orcish thug employees of the wizard show up and coerce them into getting back on track. Continuity meta-police.

          • Advent@ttrpg.networkOP
            1·
            1 year ago

            Haha ya i get it, sometimes you’ve just gotta let your players know. You worked on prepping a session and it’s fine if they want to do crazy things, but they need to give you a heads up and not go straight murderhobo all the time! 🤣