DnD Prep Stats babble

One of the weird and wacky things I decided to do in the beginning of the year is to start logging how much time I spend prepping and playing D&D games.

The motivation behind it was to see what I could work on to help fight back against the last-quarter-of-the-year burnout I have endured the past couple of years. I had to be realistic and I had to make liberal use of my scalpel in an attempt to trim down on how much time I spend in and around games. And I was somewhat successful. I've trimmed down how many games I play in and how many games I run. 

Besides cutting things down to size, I kept a monthly log of the number of hours I spend prepping. And... It's a lot. Even having cut things down, I spend a ridiculous amount of time prepping my games. Considering how liberal I was with that scalpel, I can imagine why previous years have been so exhausting.

Things I've included as prep are map making, summarizing previous sessions, reading certain materials that involve D&D (like The Griffon's Saddlebag for magic items), and everything that basically took longer than 30 minutes to do. That was my mark. So if I only spent a minute on something, I didn't log it... which probably means I spend even more time than I have logged but I figure 30 minutes makes sense.

So without further ado, the most recent results:

Homebrew refers to everything prepped for my two homebrew games... it's definitely what I spend most of my time on. Oneshots are sessions that conclude within one or two gatherings - I haven't done a whole lot of those, and it's interesting that it takes between 2-3 hours for me to prep them. Written adventure specifically relates to my Dragon Heist Campaign which has now been concluded. I'm fiddling with the idea of possibly running Phandelver and Below in a year or two... we'll see. And then Other refers to things like making maps for other people or fiddling on World Anvil (which I'm admittedly struggling with, but I'm trying to use. My brain hasn't figured it out yet).

What I found particularly interesting about this logging exercise is the very visible ebbs and flows that naturally occur without my pushing myself. Some months I'm excited and full of ideas. Other months I'm lazy and tired. My games don't become more or less. They remain fairly constant. And yet, I still have more than enough material to supply... well sort of. I still feel like I don't have enough material, but I think I'll never stop feeling like that.