It is the anniversary of the day Sage and Nightvale came to live with me. Many of my life decisions are questionable, but this one was good.

I have to go to work tomorrow, so today I had to do a bunch of shoppings after Sage let me get up. Annoying, but now I have the things.

What did I learn from running games this time? Definitely that railroading is my friend, and I don’t even need very many stations on that line. This time, after character creation, we had the announcement of the quest, pootling around in Lizard Bay looking for information, and then about two places on the Cursed Isle. Character creation should probably have been slightly shorter, but that wouldn’t have recovered enough time for a whole other scene. There were also only about five NPCs/encounters, counting all the old people in town and the mermaid and her pirates as one each.

A less welcome lesson is regardless whether I was ever smart enough to remember all the things, I’m not now. I definitely needed a checklist of things to take to the con, because I forgot several of them, even ones that are basic to any running-a-con-game expedition. I also needed better notes of both game setup (I completely spaced on mentioning the X-card in the second session) and specific important information for the PCs to appreciate the shape of their doom. Just winging it from vibes is not the way to get everything covered!

Even with my decrepit brain, it did go well enough that I must do it again next year. I might even remember these lessons.

Written: 262.