I just did a blog post about my excessive preparations for GMing (even if I'm running a premade scenario.) I'm curious--how do the rest of your prepare for running an adventure? Are you ridiculous like I am, or do you fly by the seat of your pants, or some combination of both?

If I'm playing a pre-made adventure, I read it through once or twice. Then I refresh things that are in the near future for the PC's along the way. For WFRP I generally set aside all creature, location and action cards that I will need throughout the adventure and put them in a certain deck box just to have them allready sorted out for the adventuring.

Then I'm good to go.

I'll read the adventure and hopefully have a few monsters and standups available.

I only do pre-gens, so I usually just make post-it notes on indicators and thoughts. I pen or pencil "read aloud" text in scenarios to ease my make-it-up burden or to avoid missing crucial clues (as FFG could use some work on bolding clues and proper nouns).
I also use the notes to cover up paragraph titles that say 'THIS TITLE GIVES AWAY THE ENTIRE PLOT."

* I review past plot elements that need to be updated. For example: we have residuals from the following scenarios:
- Marie and the 'ring' from TGS
- The 'scent' from Karls & Scents
- The Painting and judge in altdorf from Worse than the Disease
- The Reikshound from Dog Eat Dog World
- The statue from There's Something About Marie
- Lord Aschaffenberg's appreciation from Eye for an Eye

I've usually got a 2nd scenario already read so I have something to start in case we end 2 hours early.

jh

I plan ahead and then when it comes to gaming night I just come up with all the stuff from the fly mostly. I'm terrible at remembering things so I use random generators and notes during the came and afterwards update everything in our group's wiki.

i will get a basic outline and the npc's laid out then wing it to what the pc's do

i write up my own notes in power point. save the presentation as a series of .PNG files and then use my iPad at the table.

I would be guilty of various forms of (in my case) ineffectual over-prepping.

Ideally I would just fast for three days, stay awake for two, attend a witch trial, a thief hanging, couple of hour flagellation and then a good roll around in some mud. That should do it.

I've been trying to create "encounter sheets" for all the major scripted encounters in my games.

Example: i.imgur.com/z1Mvf.png

In addition to these more structured preparations, I've been creating home-brew random encounter and rumor tables for each session. This allows me to fill in the story with interesting little tid-bits that may or may not be directly related to the current story arch, but nevertheless help to create the sense that the world is living and breathing.

I've also incorporated the expanded Interlude rules by Valvorik (which can be found HERE ).

I usually prep my players with an email that includes a prologue of the previous sessions events/rumors/important persons and a prelude to the coming session.

Next I pack up only the items that I will NEED for the coming session. I try to fit everything into the core box and one binder. This includes action cards and creature cards, standees, tokens, wounds, insanities, condition cards, notes, encounter sheets, maps, GM screen, players guide, scenario book. I tend to leave diseases (unless I'm certain the PCs will be in an area or situation that calls for them) and the parties Apprentice Wizard keeps the miscast cards with his character as he's the only one that uses them. I've also taken to using a wet erase battle mat and black table cloth of late...the battle mat comes in handy for tactical encounters and the table cloth keeps cards and tokens from sliding around too much and helps the components to really "pop" visually on the play surface.

Lastly I type up the order in which I want the session to proceed and if I'm using a pre-written scenario, I give it one more read through the night before the game.

Yes, Goblyn, I've seen those sheets before in another post--very impressive. You may actually prep more than I do. Those are stunning work, and I think they'd be useful to me if I ever run for five again.

Zombie--that's a good idea to use the iPad and slides! I'll have to consider that.

I tend prepare by writing out nearly everything I can think of from location and event descriptions, special npc stats, action cards and equipmentment, to the number of copper pennies carried by the lowest ruffian. I'm quite good at preparing enough so the my players can get through a session or two without me attempting to wing it.

I'm not great at winging it, but I tend to be pretty good at giving a juicy enough hook that the players follow it at least for one session. Then, based on their actions, I go and write the next session so the story flows with them. This approach is a kind of virtual "winging it" which has worked for me so far!