My preference is to take an established setting and run a game in that. The most prep I did for one of my games was my Dresden Files games set in our home town. I looked into local legends and planned a bunch of character details and motivations.

In general I try to do as little as possible and improvise most things. Usually I’ll have some NPCs or factions with some motivations and plans. Maybe a few thoughts about where the players are heading next.

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I generally start small and personal. Let the characters explore one tiny corner of the world, get to know the NPCs and get a feel for the setting. I normally have some idea about the larger world and how this corner fits, but until something is canonized through play, nothing is set in stone. It’s both a world tutorial and gives me a chance to adjust things in response to how the characters interact, their backgrounds, how engaged they are, etc.

How and what to tune is a whole other question, but it’s a shared story and being open to ways to help players feel more invested means it’s a huge waste of time to plan out a lot of things that players never care about or see.

On the other hand, I’ve started in campaigns where a DM spends months planning out a world in great depth and 30 minutes into play I know that it’s all going to fall apart within 3 sessions. I’ve seen other DMs who literally just run group after group through the same world or even story every time, even when it’s the same players, because that’s what they spent months or even years building. It’s dull as fuck and makes me feel like I’m just there to witness the greatness of the DM’s world-building or unwritten novel. That being said, it’s perfectly fine if you view it as a purely social event and don’t get invested in having agency.

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I think the Gm-section of Kult divinity lost is pretty great, as it explains you how to build a mind-map for your metaplot and how to use PBTA mechanics to make the plot move in the background.

Now what I practically do is outiline the main theme and the reccuring NPC, then rely a lot on what the PC want to do and how they act to see how it develops. There is no point in writing long texts nor planning too much in advance when the PC will break everything by killing the wrong person

I have not done it much because I don’t have the patience. I had a few neat story things but like one superhero one I made everyones characters did their thing in our hometown so like locations and such were easy to map and plan.

I don’t do campaigns but scenarios. Session 0: Ask what characters they feel like playing and what vibe are we looking for… Then ignore everything they say and run a mystery cos it’s fun.

Nah jk, I then make a setting and usually play local, grounded games based on their interests. But describe a prologue of the setting to inspire them.

What I mean by scenarios is I set up some main characters of a conflict and drama that will go on whether the players are there or not. What makes it fun is that I prep once by setting up the actors (NPCs) and then the players are cast right in the middle of it in a way that they cannot avoid it cos it directly affects them. It might involve their family, their duties, themselves, etc.

The cool thing is that I have a lot of fun seeing how they drive the situation in unexpected ways and how the world reacts to their actions. They might attract attention (positive or negative), intervene with ignorance, draw a group of followers, get blamed for something, etc etc.

This way, after session 1, I only have to do a little bit more to think how the scenario changed or how the world responds. No need to plan scenes, big bosses, special events, and other things.

If you want to spice things up for your own fun, put a thing that will happen at a certain time somewhere and see if they are at the wrong or right place at the wrong or right time.

My secret sauce that seems to work always is to remember that “People are alive”. People talk, people make decisions, people ask for help or try to get obstacles out of their way, people engage with other people, and so on.

Finally, I avoid DnD like the plague. There’s plenty of people doing christian western medieval-inspired fantasy to be adding more to it. And I personally prefer easier systems where creating a character takes 5min or less so death is not the end for players.