Reading I Cast Light! and their tale of TRUST IN A DEAD FROG: A Lesson In DMing from Nightwick where their adventuring party set off to recover the magical items lost when their own had fallen. They talk about how these sessions are wonderful for a GM as low-prep because you are retracing your steps over pre-prepared ground - and I agree. I have a similar story I gleefully tell where I got multiple sessions out of the same hook because the players just could not leave a thing lie.
This was from my 'Southern Reaches' fuzzy west march game - the sessions log is here and covers some or all of sessions 8, 9, 10, 12, 13 and 15. The open table nature of the game drove almost all of this (highly entertaining for me as a GM) too-ing and fro-ing because different combinations of players *who were largely the same people* kept re-hashing the decisions of the others.
The crews
Session 8 - Alf, Chestnut, Flint
Session 9 - Alf, Chestnut, Bin, Frances, Flint
Session 10 - Alf, Chestnut, Bin
Session 12 - Alf, Chestnut, Monroe
Session 15 - Bin, Monroe and Malcolm
The Events
Session 8 - the Taxmans Donkey - our heroes get a tip on a lost tax-chest, dodge a giant centipede, retrieve a tax-chest full of silver and stash it in the labyrinthine tunnels beneath their homebase.
Relevant here is that 'home' is a grotty little pub called the Flytrap on a big hill honey-combed with tunnels. Many used by smugglers, others used as short-cuts, but lots of quiet places too. The hill is topped by the spooky apparently abandoned castle.
Session 9 - exploring the tunnels, they run into guardsmen searching for the lost tax-chest, find a smugglers trove. This one I do not really count, this more 'set the scene' for the tunnels.
Session 10 - the players figure that the heat is off enough that getting and spending some of the silver from the tax-chest is a good idea. At this point Chestnut declares that they have in fact been visiting the site where the chest has been buried every day to make sure it is still there. People panic that a trail has been left so off they go down into the tunnels, dig up the chest, take some of the silver, bluff some searching guards, rebury it and leave.
Session 12 - setting off to find a way into the castle they decide to start by checking in on the tax chest. A couple of rolls on the encounter table reveals a large snake has taken up residence on the tax chest and so our crew paints a large warning sign about the snake on the wall nearby before getting on with the exploration.
Session 13 - back to the castle, essentially a freebie for me prep-wise because it had all been prepped for session 12.
Session 15 - this group, panicked that the giant sign saying 'snake' gives away the location of their treasure puts a complex plan into action to wall up sections of the tunnels and lure the snake out into the open so they can get to the tax chest. Dealing with the snake turns into a difficult fight but eventually the chest is exhumed, emptied and reburied for a final time.
The GM sits back and watches the fun
All the above was just a hoot for me as a GM - everything after the original 'adventure' of the Taxmans Donkey was pure self-generating sessions for me. The fate of the tax chest could have been a throwaway line like 'we split up the silver' but no, they took none of it and buried the chest as their first move. Everything after that was 'bonus' for me because I was able to recycle the encounter tables and maps prepared for session 9 for the tunnels beneath the castle again and again - even the *same sections* of the tunnels.
The players themselves explicitly added risk to the equation by saying there was a trail to the place driving a whole session in and of itself. Then the visit in session 12 let me split my prep of what was in the castle over two sessions because they only had time left to spend a half-session in the castle. Then the actions of writing the sign in session 12 drove the entirety of session 15 as a consequence. I prepped ~ three sessions (8, 9, 12) worth of content and got three bonus sessions out of this whole escapade (10, 13, 15). It was great.
The interplay between the different tables was highly amusing to me because with one or two shared folk there was always someone there to carry the thread of what was done - but also to have their judgement roundly questioned and the new table, who of course knew best this time, must set off to fix things. Cue next table having exactly the same reaction and the cycle started anew.
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