Dungeons and Dragons

I've been running a Star Wars DnD campaign since mid 2020. The 5e rules module incorporating SW5E.com content is top notch. It allows me to easily create battles with tons of low level minions that my players absolutely love mowing down.

How do I plan sessions? My campaign is less of an open world and more of a story. I always try to set up any puzzle/combat/scenario so that there are three ways to solve it. 1) way of the warrior (players just want to kick in doors), 2) way of the scholar/mage (players find a secret that allows them to mitigate or more easily defeat the boss), and 3) way of the scoundrel/investigator (a hidden exploit that allows them to completely bypass or nullify the problem).

I try to follow this strategy in fights, social intrigue, investigations, and so on. It can be as simple or complex as you want, although the more complex it is, the more likely your players will miss it. Many times it comes down to if-then analysis. I'll describe a scene, my players will describe how they want to interact with it, and then I'm forced to think about how things would be in relation to what they want to try. Sometimes I will roll percentage dice to see how close the scene is to what players described (usually reserved for theater of the mind).

As far as setting up battlemaps, I'm really lucky. I'm a subscriber to , and he has a knack for creating map offerings of exactly what I need a few weeks to a month before I need it. I will try to set up each map prior to the session, and populate it with bad guys and so forth. Ctrl+C and Ctrl-V copy/paste.selected light objects and is a huge time saver. I do use multi-level maps, but sometimes stairwell and elevator tiles can be finicky when it's game time, so I have to rest those maps thoroughly before using them (and even then half the time they are broken anyway). I also use ChatGPT for creating random NPCs, shop owners, minor party characters, etc.

Bottom line, FoundryVTT and ChatGPT have allowed me to save HUGE amounts of time with scene creation and NPC stat blocks so that I can focus on the story plot, and then allows a LOT of automating battles. This allows my players to feel epic and like the world is their oyster.