How to Prepare For a Gaming Session as a Player

I have seen a lot of articles that show game masters how to get ready for a gaming session, but very few on how players can get ready for a gaming session. And since players comprise the majority of any group, I think I will focus on that today. I tried to visualize times when I showed up at a gaming session ready to rock and roll, and other times when I just merely showed up. Here are some suggestions on how to prepare for a gaming session as a player.

- Make sure you have all of you gaming gear. This includes dice, books, writing utensils, your character, and anything else that you need to bring. This may seem like a no brainer, but forget your character to one session and you’ll see the importance of this.

- Get all of your food and drink needs set up prior to getting there. If you’re going to pick up something on the way there, give yourself some extra time to get it. If your friend is supposed to bring drinks, or a pizza to share with the group, call them and make sure they remembered to bring those items.

- Call your game master and see if they need you to bring anything. The game master probably has a lot of things going through their head to get ready for the adventure. They may need you to pick up something for them on the way, and this will help them out greatly.

- If your character leveled up the previous adventure finish that up. Maybe you need to choose another skill or feat for him. Or maybe you’ll now have access to some new gear. Try to get that done before you get there, so you don’t spend an hour trying to find the right new ability for your character.

- Think about what happened last adventure. Try to recall what happened last adventure in your head, where you left off, and what possibly needs to be done this coming adventure. If it was a good adventure, this should be easy to do. But sometimes it may have been a week or more since you last played, and can be more difficult.

- Show up on time. This should be the golden rule for player preparation. No one, player or game master, wants to wait for that last player who shows up an hour late.

- Once you finally get there, get all of your non-gaming related talk out of the way prior to getting started. If you play with friends that you don’t see very often, you may want to catch up about what has happened since the last gaming session. Try to get all of that out as soon as possible so everyone can start up with what you’re there for, to roleplay and have fun!

These are suggestions that I was able to think off of the top of my head. What suggestions do you have in order to prepare for a gaming session as a player?

Getting in character is the big one. I can play without my books, dice or even my character sheet, but I can't play without my character in my head. At minimum, I have a few pages of quotes, etc. I read before the game. If I have the time, I watch an appropriate movie, like Streets of Fire. I'll wear my leather jacket or cammies if I can. I'll listen to some Sex Pistols or the Clash and sing loudly on the way over. Maybe I'll flick off some old ladies.

I also try to eat something heavy in carbs, to help dilute all the alcohol I'll be drinking later.

For me it is not that big of a deal. I toss all the books likely to be used into bag of some sort. Chunk in my crown royal bag o' dice, couple pencils, pens, erasers, extra lead for pencils, and notepad. That package usually stays together if it is a regular gaming group. So I just grab the bag on the way out the door, or it is still in the truck. Only thing that requires planning is picking up drinks for the evening.

As far as getting in character. It really depends on the group/game. Sometimes it's just an ego stroking game where we roll huge dice pools, and do retarded stuff. Other times it is an actual roleplaying game/group. For those I'm usually running scenarios through in my head about what would my charcter do if?

A comment on general gaming style. I usually start with what I want a character to do. Then I stat them out to do that. Then I play the character through a couple of games and make sure it is going to work like I want, and the personality just kinda forms from that. Very rarely do I work up a personality and backstory, etc first and then try to stat to fit that. Most games really don't support that very well. As an example a GM asked us to stat up ourselves in Gurps for a little zombie game action. I found out that the points given weren't nearly enough for that. Nothing rates very high, but taking 40 skills at ratings 1 and 2 adds up points fast. Same thing with White Wolf. I realized that the attributes are never a perfect fit, and that you get far too few skill points to spread around. Character creation in there is really setup for creating 12 year olds.

That is why I do it the way I do. So my stats and story match up, and so the way I play the character fits the writeup. It has bothered some GM's since they have nothing to work with for that character until 3 or so sessions have gone by.

I'd wear my superman tighty whities, definatly bring chips or coke or something. One of the guys in our group baked cookies and/or always brought something even when it wasn't his turn. I also brought my A babe games, as we used to be downtown and I was expected to point out hot college babes walking by for us all to gawk at for the 5 secs it took to cross out view.

My pet peeve as a GM is the player who always seems flabergasted that it's his action. I mean, you have between 5 and 10 minutes between actions to plan what you're going to do. Sure, sometimes things change rapidly, and the action before your's can drastically alter what you want to accomplish, but that's the exception. Most of the time, you have the whole round to be looking up whatever rule/gear/spell you're planning on using.

Have several player character sheets all filled out and ready to go so that if your PC bites it you can jump right back into the action next scene with a new character, and there's no temptation to be a baby when your PC bites it.

A crotchety old ork adept that tells them to get out of his alley with their nonsense? Have to be an alley, unlikely to be his lawn/sidewalk. Maybe has a weapon focus walker.

Considering most of my characters? I read Ansem Retort and a couple of other websomics like that.

Back when I gamed, I was almost always the GM, or if not, I was always the guy with all the books. So my number one priority was to have all the possibly needed books on hand, pencils, paper, spare character sheets, and exacting knowledge of what is in each rule book and where. My groups almost always had BYOD (bring your own Dew) and would quite often get a pizza delivered during the game, so cash was useful. Making sure of your transportation and time limits is also important.