D&D Session Prep Checklist: Before, During & After Game Night

Before: define an objective and player decisions

A useful session plan tells you what the characters can change tonight. Start with one objective, two or three real decisions, and a consequence if nobody intervenes. Prepare enough to respond to those decisions; leave room for the players’ own approach. Your objective is a starting situation, not a required ending.

This original campaign follows one situation through preparation, play, and follow-up. It supplies names and decisions you can adapt, rather than prescribing creature statistics, encounter difficulty, or a rule for the rising tide.

Write your objective as a sentence: “Let the party decide how to get the medicine across before the ferry leaves.” Then list decisions: whom to trust, which route to attempt, and what cost to accept. For each, prepare one useful clue and one consequence. If the party ignores the ferry, the settlement still needs medicine tomorrow; the story continues from that result.

1. Enable Dungeon Master controls in Settings, then open Campaign Dashboard. Create or select Lanterns of Reedcross.
2. In Sessions, create tonight’s session with a title and date. Put the objective, possible decisions, and opening situation in its private session notes.
3. Use Private Notes for information the characters have not learned. Title one note “Reedcross — tonight” so you can find it during play.

Before adding detail, check your group’s available time, attendance, and agreed boundaries. A short session may need only the ferry yard and one choice of route. A scene you do not use can remain available for another night.

Before: prepare NPCs, quests, encounters, and an optional map

For each recurring NPC, write a want, a useful fact, and a response to pressure. Sella wants the medicine delivered and knows a marsh path. Oren knows where he last saw the lens but fears losing his cargo. Pell offers help while withholding who ordered the lantern dismantled. Keep that last fact in private preparation until the party discovers it.

Give the quest a clear completion condition: deliver the shipment or establish an alternative the settlement accepts. Prepare a peaceful approach and a complication, such as guards blocking the ferry yard. Combat can follow a decision; it does not need to be the decision’s only outcome.

1. In Campaign Dashboard, save Sella, Oren, and Pell under NPCs. Put the ongoing medicine objective under Quests. Keep undiscovered motives in the private record.
2. Open Bestiary to inspect creatures available to your account. Check their actions, defenses, and source before selecting opponents. If you use the encounter builder, set party size and level for the people actually attending, review its output, and save a useful setup.
3. For a shared fight, open the party’s Party Lobby and use Choose monsters or Generate monsters into encounter. Adding or generating creatures prepares the roster at initiative 0; choose an initiative roll separately.
4. If positioning matters, choose Map Table in the lobby. Prepare the ferry yard, lantern tower, and marsh path as useful areas. Review the player preview and fog settings before relying on concealed information.

A sketch or a spoken description is enough when exact positioning is unnecessary. NAT420’s Combat Dashboard also works without a map. For a mapped scene, identify the entrance, exit, cover, and anything the players can interact with. Record how the tide will matter at your table without treating decorative terrain as an automatic rule.

End this step by checking your encounter notes once. Know where the opponents start, what they want, and when they will stop fighting. Generated budgets are planning aids; consider the characters’ current resources and your group’s experience before using the result.

For a scene you can follow from objective to rehearsal, use the illustrated First Combat Encounter walkthrough. Return here afterward to gather the party and prepare the rest of game night.

Before: review characters and establish the party

Gather the people who will actually play before choosing the final challenge. Ask about current HP, expended resources, ongoing effects, and any companion that needs a place in the encounter. A saved sheet is useful context; the player still decides what their character does.

1. In Party Lobby, choose Create lobby, name the table, and optionally bring your own character. Use Copy code and give that code to the intended players.
2. Each player opens Party Lobby, enters the Party code, selects their own unarchived character, and chooses Join party. Review The party and the encounter roster before starting.
3. Use View sheet for a linked character when the control is available. The current enabled DM can inspect its saved mechanics; journals and private character notes are excluded. Confirm any disputed value with the owner.
4. Choose Add NPC or ally for a manual participant or a saved entry from your own characters’ Allies & Wild Shapes. Review its HP, AC, and conditions. This adds an encounter copy; selecting a Wild Shape does not transform a player’s sheet.

For Reedcross, add Sella only if she needs a turn or tracked HP. An NPC involved in conversation does not need an initiative row. If a player’s familiar participates, have the owner confirm its statistics; your saved-companion picker contains your characters’ entries, not another player’s private companion collection.

Joining and adding participants do not roll initiative. New rows start at 0. That value is also a possible rolled result, so use the roll result or history to confirm what happened rather than treating every 0 as “not rolled.” During an active fight, a newcomer keeps 0 until you explicitly edit its initiative; existing participants’ rolls and the current actor are preserved.

During: run initiative and record important events

Open with the immediate problem: the ferry is loading, the lantern is dark, and Sella asks what the party intends to do. Let the players choose an approach before you reveal the next prepared scene. If a fight starts, state the objective and any visible terrain features so everyone can make informed decisions.

1. During lobby setup, use Roll for all, or have players roll their own initiative and use the individual controls for others. Confirm the intended roll audience when prompted. Review the resulting order, then choose Begin encounter.
2. Open Combat Dashboard for the shared initiative order, selected actor, map, and encounter vitals. Owners use their own attack, spell, and resource controls. Creature attack rolls need explicit hit/miss and damage review before encounter damage is applied.
3. Use HP and condition controls to record outcomes agreed at the table. Advance with Next turn when the current turn is complete. For spell effects, review the relevant tracking prompts instead of assuming a turn advance resolves them.
4. Expand Combat history when you need to inspect a recorded change. Review an eligible correction before confirming it. The panel stays collapsed until opened, so the live combat controls remain easy to reach.

In Reedcross, note choices that change the next scene: the party paid Oren for passage, Sella promised a favor, or Pell’s guards withdrew. Add a short line to the session’s private notes when there is a pause. Combat history helps review mechanical changes; it does not replace the narrative session record.

When the encounter ends, choose End encounter and review remaining HP, conditions, and resources. Encounter values may differ from saved sheets. Owners should check the dashboard’s saved-versus-encounter values and use its explicit reconciliation controls for the values they want to keep. If an action becomes unconfirmed after a connection failure, check its saved status before repeating it.

After: distribute rewards and publish a suitable recap

Record what the table actually earned. Delivering the medicine might earn 17 gold pieces and use of Sella’s boat next session. That is an example reward you choose as DM, not an automatic payout from finishing combat. Decide how the group will divide it before committing movements.

1. Open Party loot from the lobby. The owning DM can record an adjudicated currency or item reward. Check for an existing reward entry before adding the same payment twice.
2. Choose Distribute party rewards, leave XP at zero for a coins-only split, and review the named recipients. For three characters, 17 gold pieces reserve five each and leave two in the chest. Each recipient reviews and confirms their movement; an item also needs a destination bag.
3. Return to Campaign Dashboard and update the quest and NPC records to reflect the outcome. Add the session’s important decisions to its private notes.
4. Open Session Recaps, select the relevant material, and save a draft. Read the exact text and check the named recipients before publishing. Use Player Knowledge if the group needs a specific handout.

A suitable recap says: “We delivered the medicine by the marsh path. Sella owes us a favor. Oren kept the silver-marked crate. Next time we will investigate the missing lens.” It leaves Pell’s undiscovered involvement out. A recap should remind players of their choices and available leads without answering questions they have not solved.

Private campaign notes remain private when you link a lobby. Publishing a recap is a separate action. Review player-facing text from the players’ perspective, including any secret copied from an NPC record. Tell the group which unresolved lead you intend to prepare, and let their preference shape the next session.

After: leave three actionable notes for next session

Close preparation with three instructions your future self can execute. Avoid a long list of possibilities. Each note should identify the task, the material to update, and what player decision makes it useful.

Save these under Private Notes with the next session’s title. Check that the session record, quest status, and recap agree about what happened. Keep unused encounters available, but revise their purpose before moving them into a future session.

Use Campaign Notes’ complete session template to record the meeting. Its sample player recap shows how to carry established facts forward while keeping private preparation separate.

Before closing the tools, make sure the last changes have a confirmed saved state. A shared lobby can be reused next time; review its existing roster rather than creating a second table by habit. If you close it, reopening replaces the admission code. Bring the checklist below to your next game and mark only the steps that apply.

One-page printable session checklist

Open one-page checklist

The print view contains only the checklist. Use its Print checklist button, or your browser’s print command, and choose portrait orientation.