carnival round-up: preparation

This month's RPG Blog Carnival is at it's logical conclusion.    Plenty of people writing games with the new academic year and long nights drawing in and it's Read An RPG Book in Public Week.  Preparation seems to be a lost art yet what's missing in quantity is made up for in quality.

Compromise and Conceit offers an example session prep for a mystical alternate America. Detailed plans and giving everyone something to do makes this a good example of planning collaborative play.

Pen and The Sword suggests Triage as a solution for preparation for those GMs blessed with a surfeit of stuff to put in their game, offering a seven-step plan to reap an excellent game from the chaos.

Monsters and Manuals warns us to Be Prepared while planning a WWII zombie survival game on the Eastern Front with lost German POWs using Cyberpunk 2020s Friday Night Firefight rules.


Nuketown shows how to run a game in 60 minutes with a prepared GM's kit and points us to an example of how to prepare using a three-page manifesto.

Campaign Mastery shows how flowcharts can be used to help plan and prepare games, providing examples of how to structure an evening's session.

Time for the carnival to leave town but for some, the preparation continues...