The one-page D&D session prep checklist

1. 1

   Recap last time

   One or two sentences on where the party left off and any cliffhanger.

2. 2

   Know your "why"

   The one thing you want to happen this session. Everything else is improv.

3. 3

   Three beats, not a script

   An opening hook, a midpoint complication, a possible ending. Leave room for the table.

4. 4

   Stat the likely fights

   Have 1–2 encounters ready to run; note initiative, HP, and one tactic each.

5. 5

   Names on tap

   A short list of NPC names so an unplanned shopkeeper or guard never stalls the game.

6. 6

   One map or visual

   Even a rough sketch. Players orient faster when they can see the space.

7. 7

   Loot & rewards

   Decide what a win is worth before they ask — gold, an item, a lead, or info.

8. 8

   Loose threads

   Jot the dangling hooks players might chase so you are not caught flat-footed.

9. 9

   Press record

   Start the recording before the first dice roll — DM-Scribe writes the recap and wiki for you.

Copy it into your own notes

Plain text, so it pastes cleanly into Notion, Obsidian, Google Docs or the top of your session notes. It is deliberately one page: a prep checklist you have to scroll is a prep checklist you stop using by session four.

1. Recap last time — One or two sentences on where the party left off and any cliffhanger.
2. Know your "why" — The one thing you want to happen this session. Everything else is improv.
3. Three beats, not a script — An opening hook, a midpoint complication, a possible ending. Leave room for the table.
4. Stat the likely fights — Have 1–2 encounters ready to run; note initiative, HP, and one tactic each.
5. Names on tap — A short list of NPC names so an unplanned shopkeeper or guard never stalls the game.
6. One map or visual — Even a rough sketch. Players orient faster when they can see the space.
7. Loot & rewards — Decide what a win is worth before they ask — gold, an item, a lead, or info.
8. Loose threads — Jot the dangling hooks players might chase so you are not caught flat-footed.
9. Press record — Start the recording before the first dice roll — DM-Scribe writes the recap and wiki for you.

Want the printable in your inbox?

We will email you this checklist as a one-page printable — one email, that is the whole transaction. It is the same nine steps you just read.

Why these nine, and not thirty

Every line exists because skipping it costs table time. A missing recap spends the first fifteen minutes reconstructing last session from six disagreeing memories. An unstatted fight means flipping through a book while the table checks their phones. No name list means every incidental shopkeeper is called “the shopkeeper” forever. The checklist is not a prep philosophy — it is the shortlist of things that cannot be improvised without the table noticing.

Just as deliberately, there is no worldbuilding on it. Prep that produces lore the players never touch is the main way prep time balloons — how long prep should actually take covers what surveyed DMs spend and what the hour should buy. And if your problem is capturing what happens once the session starts, that is a different artifact: taking notes during the session covers it.

The last item is the one that pays compound interest: a session you recorded writes next week’s “recap last time” line for you, and the one after that. That is the whole trick this site is built on.