Plan Your Session in Just 10 Minutes

2024-02-08

A common player phrase in tabletop amongst players has always been “Beware the smiling GM.” But the truth is, GMs are rarely smiling as they prepare for an upcoming session.

There’s a lot that goes into each session, and GMs often spend countless hours agonizing over the creation of a good story while trying to organize everything for efficient game management. And in today’s TTRPG world, their notes, reminders, calendars, character sheets, maps and even game ideas tend to live in many different places, which ultimately adds more time into what is already a time-intensive process.

It has long-been expected that a GM should take at least a couple hours prepping for the next session, whether it's planning encounters, making NPCs, making maps, etc. That time may be a little shorter if you have had life circumstances pop up, or a little longer if you are more dedicated to the adventure.

The Nurl app was recently released to enhance IRL sessions of tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons© and Pathfinder© by combining AI, extensions, and all your necessary tools into one online dashboard so you can level up your enjoyment of the game while powering down the chaos.

For GMs, the path to a better session, and easier planning, can come from the numerous widgets and extensions in the current form of Nurl. Nurl CEO Casey Baggz recently broadcasted a Twitch stream where he demonstrated how he actually used Nurl to plan his game session, and how it reduced his planning time from three hours to just 10 minutes.

“I surprised even myself, which is wild,” said Baggz. “Even though I’m building the app, it was impressive to see the benefits I am getting in my own game. Now any GM can utilize Nurl to enhance their games so they can focus on the story and have a better experience for running their game sessions.”

Here are the five steps Baggz used to accelerate his planning.

1. Determine Your Session Objective

Consider what you’d like to do for the upcoming session. Determine what you would like the group goal to be, the challenges you’d like to execute, and the potential reward the players will get in the end. The objectives, at this point, can be very top level and if you need help - use Nuro™ to your advantage.

2. Review Previous Nurl Notes

It may have been a few days, or it may have been weeks since your last session. And life happens. So, it can be difficult to remember all the nuances of the group’s last game. Nurl’s Notes section is conveniently on your dashboard, and makes it easy to have context from the last game. If you install the location extension you know exactly where the last session ended, the time of day, location, how long the group had been there.

3. Review Nurl Reminders app

Look back at the ideas you previously had, or reminders of certain game-play scenarios. If you install the Reminders extension, it is also on your Nurl dashboard, and it can help keep track of the high level points you want to hit instead of them getting lost in your GM Notes.

4. Engage Nuro™ for Game Advice

Last month, Nurl launched the TTRPG expert Nuro™ to provide instant answers to all types of GM and player questions. And it’s not ChatGPT. It is Nurl’s proprietary AI engine that was specifically built to be a TTRPG expert and do anything TTRPG related. The AI tool can be used for story ideas, challenges, riddles, game support, player creation/management – anything you need when preparing or running the game.

Baggz used Nuro for advice on his upcoming session. He asked for three problems for the players to solve, each one harder than the last. Nuro instantly provided three thorough scenarios that he was able to utilize, thus saving tons of time in scenario development. He further asked Nurl for a difficult riddle suggestion that was specific to Curse of Strahd, of which Nuro provided one that even shocked Baggz.

“Wow, wow, wow,” he said. “This is the magic of Nuro.”

5. Update Nurl Notes

Take the Nuro advice and simply edit your private GM notes. All these tools in one magical place will make planning much simpler and it will help you structure a better session without the stress.

“Using all the tools available on Nurl allow me to improv more and not spend so much time planning,” said Baggz. “Now I can focus on how I want the NPC to act, any special events I want to take place. I didn’t take that many notes because I didn’t have to, and the session went on for four hours.”

To see highlights of the broadcast with Baggz, visit Nurl’s YouTube channel. And as you plan your next session, use Nurl and these five easy steps to conquer your GM challenges and slay your next session.