Prep for the Lazy Hack
There's a little challenge going around on the RainbOSR discord about how everyone preps. I like prep. I consider myself "blorby." I also mostly run modules, mostly as is, because I am a lazy hack. But I still dislike improvising heavily at the table, at least not the hard details of an adventure, so I do prep a bit with my modules.
Finding Modules
First, you gotta find the damn module you want to run! It may be easy, because you want to run Arden Vul, and so you find one module and then run it for the rest of your life. Or, you may be stringing together small dungeons that each last only a few sessions, in which case you need to have some ready to go.
Generally, I enjoy reading modules, and I enjoy module reviews. I see module reviews on blogs, see mentions on Discord, listen to reviews on Between Two Cairns, or see someone name a module in a dirty skeet. I may think the module looks neat, in which case I then immediately forget about it. But, if I see that module again then I make a mental note, read the preview, and maybe buy it. I have a pretty big backlog of modules that I keep, but I make sure to only keep ones I know I want to use.
Knowing if I want to Use a Module
I never force myself to read a module. If a module is boring to read, I'm probably not going to enjoy running it. Doesn't mean the module is bad, but I want a module to spark an immediate desire to play. If it doesn't, I throw it in a box or a junk folder or just forget about it. Maybe I'll circle back around someday, but I'm not gonna sweat it.
Getting Ready to Run the Dang Thing
Well I gotta read it. Apparently there are people who run modules without reading them? That's pretty crazy to me. If a module is a little hard to read, it can be incredibly helpful to rewrite it. This may sound like a lot of effort, but rewriting it in your own words is a great way to crystallize your interpretation of the module, almost like you wrote it yourself. Rewriting a room description is very similar to how you'll speak the description aloud to your players, assuming you're not relying on boxed text. Rewriting will highlight contradictions and vague details that you can firm up ahead of time.
I don't rewrite every module, because I am lazy. Some are much easier to run as is. But some modules that I like (T1 - The Village of Hommlet) are much easier to run from my notes on the module than from the module itself. Others, like Castle Xyntillan, I never rewrote any of since the writing worked for me out of the box.
The Things Between Modules
How are your modules strung together? Ideally, I like to have a map and place things, and have the campaign naturally shift between adventures. These days the effort of running a capital letter CAMPAIGN have been tiring, so instead I just plop a module in front of my players like slop for the hogs. But some connective tissue is still necessary.
How does healing work between adventures? Buying things? Training? Upkeep? Carousing? You can keep it very light between adventures if you want, but I like to have go-to procedures for this kind of stuff so that players have things to spend their money on.
Annoying Details
I mostly run D&D online, and use Owlbear Rodeo. My players really prefer to have a map revealed to them, so sometimes prep involves setting that up. This might involve opening up good old MS Paint and editing out traps and secret doors, or even the room numbers if I'm feeling fancy.
Then, I do like to get it uploaded and scaled correctly. Suddenly realizing you have to upload a map mid session can be a pace killer. If fog of war and all that are a huge pain, it may be easier just to send the edited map straight to them over discord and say the PCs have come across a map in game.
Post Session
For years I wrote a recap after every session. This is very valuable, as I suck at taking notes during sessions, so rewriting everything that happened and jotting down the important numbers (gold, monsters killed, etc.) gives me very useful records. It also makes it much easier to remember once I write the recap.
These days, I have faltered in writing recaps. I really prefer to do it, but it's one of the most annoying post-session chores.
Instead of writing down all the treasure that the characters found, I just jot down what rooms they looted, and then tabulate it up and the end. This part can be tedious, especially when dividing up XP, loot, applying XP modifiers, so a spreadsheet is ideal. Of course, I don't have one.
For longer campaigns, I have NPCs and factions do things. I may restock the dungeon if have the energy, though I do that less often now. When the PCs make an enemy and consequences are on the horizon, instead of having every faction react, I randomly determine a single one to be a problem between sessions. I then write up a few sentences about it and post it in our game discord. We may come up with a solution then, or at the beginning of the next session. Having only one thing happen at a time makes this much easier to manage than running the entire world at once every week.
In Conclusion
I like modules. I read them and keep a curated collection of ones that I would like to run. Procedures are useful, but I apply them as needed, like a seasoning. Writing things down and typing things up are useful not just for the reference material, but for imprinting them more strongly on your brain.