This being the “standard” way to play dnd is a relatively recent phenomenon (although things like this have existed forever) which suits Hasbro just fine because they can sell people big glossy hardcover books for 70 bucks a pop. Traditional monsterkilling games are modular and are run on an adventure by adventure basis. So if you don’t want to quick & dirty write your own adventure for the small ttrpg you’re trying out (which is not the same thing at all as the “pre-work for creating a campaign” that you’re imagining), you just nab one of the thousands of available modules and run it. You can get em like 8 pages long.
In fact, sometimes one of the best ways to really elucidate how a new system compares with other ones you’ve tried is to run the same adventure through a series of different systems, though that’s a little boring if you have the same players, unless they’ve all bought in to the idea that you are really testing the system as a game design exercise, rather than purely for the group’s fun.
For example, when I started this Shadowdark (5e-based rules lite dungeon crawling centric system) campaign, I wrote out my own adventure based on a dnd one I was familiar with, changing up stuff I thought would be fun or to work more closely with Shadowdark’s specific ruleset. My notes are basically an outline and maybe like 250 words altogether? And then writing it prompted me to make a few setting notes about the town surrounding the dungeon and the world surrounding the town that were like another few hundred words. Spent an hour goofing together a map with a free online tool. That was it. When it was successful, only then did I really start to think about a “campaign,” and just spun off from the details that first adventure had established.
Then I just copy pasted the monster stat blocks in for easy reference and drew the map. This was enough for 2 full sessions. If you can do this you can run a game. Anyone can!
It depends on the game but no, you don’t have to plan too much ahead for most systems. I have never run a game from a big campaign book (though I have taken adventure ideas from them) because it is just as much work for me to convert a campaign to a style that I would feel comfortable running as it is for me to make something up.
Oftentimes I don’t even prepare anything at all! There is a lot of very good advice on how to run a game with minimal to no prep. For traditional style ttrpgs (and I am assuming that the Phantasy Star ttrpg remains fairly traditional) you can do worse than reading sly flourish’s the lazy dm.
The chapter titled ‘five minute adventure preparation’ is a good example of how you can make a traditional adventure in very little time
I’ve tried and I never feel really comfortable winging it like that and I usually do a lot of preparation but it’s always stuff immediately germane to the upcoming session—possible enounters, map of the village or dungeon floor, and whatnot. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you need a whole world mapped out or every major religion and culture figured out or even what ever big picture villainous machinations you dream of introducing down the line figured out. Think of it like a tv show that builds all that as it goes on. The bonus is that lets you incorporate your players into the world building process. If there’s a desert planet or a space colony that one of them wants to be from, you can toss that in your back pocket (although conversely as a player, coming to the table with a full novel of a backstory for your character isn’t a good move either).
something that hasn’t yet been mentioned is that most rpgs do at least come with a starter adventure in the rulebook, even if there’s no other published adventures for that game
The preorder page for Phantasy Star says it’s “powered by” Esper Genesis, which in turn says it’s “powered by” D&D 5e, so in this particular case you’re probably good.
Thanks, this is actually really helpful is getting a sense of just how little might be needed to get a game up and running. What actually got me thinking about all this was…
I dropped this name because it is really interesting people were making a Phantasy Star TTRPG in 2025, but what actually inspired my question was thinking about those various itch.io TTRPG charity bundles that happen every now and then, with 400 - 500 indie TTRPGs in them. For video games, it’s really easy to just sample a bunch of random games: install one and play it for umpteen minutes to get a feel for what it is, and if you don’t like it you just uninstall it and move on to the next one.
But how did one realistically sample even a fraction of 500 TTRPGs in a bundle? Who is the audience of those bundles, and how many of those actually get looked at and played? They looked like games that wouldn’t have a lot of pre-made resources available, so I was really curious how you’d “sample” a bunch of TTRPGs from those bundles when I assumed you need to write material from scratch.
But I guess improvisation carries you most of the way even at the outset, so it’s not a huge effort to try something new out, as long as you have a group interested in doing so.
I know D&D doesn’t and the tiniest of ttrpgs that have really tight self imposed size limits don’t, but most ttrpgs that I’ve played have a small scenario included as a guide for the players of how things happen.
Also for monster things in most games I have thing called RatWolfBear, where any monster I don’t have statted uses the stats for either a giant rat, a wolf, or a bear; but with some super power applied if needed. I don’t bother with a lot of fine tuning of the creature statistics, just figure if it’s more like a rat, a wolf or a bear and none of my players ever complained.
I mean, for most people, you don’t. That’s the reality. Some gaming groups are made of people for whom trying new games is a thrill, and they might rotate through quickly, giving lots and lots of things a shot. But the average player is pretty system-neutral and just wants to have fun with their friends playing a game they’re familiar with.
If you’re the try everything type and don’t have a group of friends that are up for experimentation, there’s probably like discords or something where the curious gather and assemble pickup groups for online games, but I don’t know any myself, I’m not plugged in that hard.
The best RPGs give you the content or make it easy to generate your own.
Anyone that doesn’t do that is just making a bad game.
The reason why DnD works is bc people just make content for it and then people make DnDlikes and then their content kinda sorta works for DnD. It’s a cycle.
TLDR play Mork Borg (DnD wouldn’t go well with its content) Fist (totally different) or Shadowdark (is better than nuDnD for old DnD content)
I feel like a jerk but I totally wrote off shadowdark when I heard it incorporated advantage/disadvantage. I’ll always love stacking incremental bonuses and penalties to a catch all one size fits all solution. Seems like it discourages multilayered problem solving when it comes to things that hinge on rolls.
Juice is not worth the squeeze on this one imo. A massive part of the reason 5e is a better system than 3.5e is that it gets rid of floating modifier soup, which encourages endless rule generation and rule debate.
If you really want players “piling on” to be optimal you can still assign modifiers if you want even in an adv/disadv system, like there’s nothing stopping you. I think a better solution is just rolling less in general, then “important” rolls don’t have to be distinguished by the players working harder to generate all the +2s they can think of. For example, the Shadowdark rules explicitly state that if there’s a trap and the players look for it in the right place they just find the trap, no roll necessary. I love playing this way and it contributes a lot to its fast & loose style.
Actually what happens more often is players saying “can I make an x roll to do y?” and I say “you don’t have to roll just do it”, like I’m deprogramming dnd players.
I usually go you either are rolling normally, rolling at advantage/disadvantage, or you just succeed/fail. The crunch for in-the-moment gameplay is so much better, and then it gives you the room for +1/+2/etc for leveling up or items or whatnot.
