Three events down ...
... and I still don't know what I'm doing. I think my largest contribution to entertaining the players was getting the bridge built (with lots of help from Alymar, Reynard, and Vlad (we only twisted his arm a little)) so that people could get out to the White Spring after dark without falling in the stream. Pretty much everything else I did was targetting one or two players at a time. (I'd planned one small combat repeater and one medium-small combat-and-roleplay mod, but both of those were put off due to scheduling issues. I hope they'll both run next event. I did run one small roleplay-and-minimal-combat mod, but that was designed by jjmarika and the bit that really made it work were the text props she wrote for it.) I think the players I was targetting were generally happy with what I threw at them, but I'm nowhere near pulling a full share of the load of entertaining the players. (I made active contributions to the entertainment of ... thirteen players, I think, counting the module-buddies and the ones targetted by NPCs I wrote briefings for, and incidental contributions to the entertainment of another dozen or two. Out of 120+. I pulled in five NPCs to help with that at various points, for up to a couple of hours each, possibly more for the ones with long briefings. I took over 1.5 small cabins -- definitely more than my fair share.)
I'm not sure where I'm going to make up the difference. I'm much happier talking to one to three people than to a mob, though I can try harder to be talking to several people instead of just one. (I think some of those one-on-one chats were being eavesdropped on, but I'm not clear that counts, and it wasn't deliberate on my part.) I will be working on larger modules with more repeats, though in the short term I'm shooting for 7-10 players (and 4-10 cycles) instead of the two players and three cycles I ran this time. I don't want to move into larger combats until I'm comfortable managing small ones. I should redesign a costume or two for faster changes -- if nothing else, the button on Ainslie's shirt that grabs my hair & takes ten minutes to untangle every time has to be replaced with something less irritating. More practice and some streamlining should make resetting mods faster. Finding players and waiting for them to assemble their teams (it takes time to assemble and equip even a two-man team) is hard to streamline, especially when I can't promise them I'll be back at time X, though that may get a little smoother as I get a better feel for how long to expect modules to run. (I should probably start carrying a timepiece and checking it a lot while trying to learn this, as my time sense is lousy.)
On the up side, I think the mini-repeater I did run worked pretty well, and I could set up something similar-but-different next time with less stress and overhead (especially if the last-minute shuffling of spaces can be avoided). I know that thumbtacks are the way and the light, and will get several hundred more for my "I can count on it when I'm panicking" mini-mod kit. The three NPCs I wrote up RP briefings for all came back with positive-sounding reports, and none of them bemoaned giant gaping holes in their briefings. (For one of them I'd failed to anticipate one major potential topic, but it was one it made sense for the character to be unaware of.)
That may be a space where I can add something: putting solid briefings behind NPC faces. Not every NPC wants a crash course on Madrigal history, but actively supporting NPCs who like the face characters they play and rebuilding the stock of minimal-background roleplay plotlets could be a useful thing. If nothing else, given the organized mealtimes at the new camp, having more faces NPCs can wear to dinner with which to have interesting conversations with the PCs appeals.
That's just the opposite of the mad improvisational skills that some of the staff have. I have *no* idea how I could go about acquiring those.
Lots to learn, and lots of laundry to do ...
ETA: That sounded whinier and more self-pitying than I meant it to. I was shooting for self-critique and thinking how to improve things, honest!
I'm not sure where I'm going to make up the difference. I'm much happier talking to one to three people than to a mob, though I can try harder to be talking to several people instead of just one. (I think some of those one-on-one chats were being eavesdropped on, but I'm not clear that counts, and it wasn't deliberate on my part.) I will be working on larger modules with more repeats, though in the short term I'm shooting for 7-10 players (and 4-10 cycles) instead of the two players and three cycles I ran this time. I don't want to move into larger combats until I'm comfortable managing small ones. I should redesign a costume or two for faster changes -- if nothing else, the button on Ainslie's shirt that grabs my hair & takes ten minutes to untangle every time has to be replaced with something less irritating. More practice and some streamlining should make resetting mods faster. Finding players and waiting for them to assemble their teams (it takes time to assemble and equip even a two-man team) is hard to streamline, especially when I can't promise them I'll be back at time X, though that may get a little smoother as I get a better feel for how long to expect modules to run. (I should probably start carrying a timepiece and checking it a lot while trying to learn this, as my time sense is lousy.)
On the up side, I think the mini-repeater I did run worked pretty well, and I could set up something similar-but-different next time with less stress and overhead (especially if the last-minute shuffling of spaces can be avoided). I know that thumbtacks are the way and the light, and will get several hundred more for my "I can count on it when I'm panicking" mini-mod kit. The three NPCs I wrote up RP briefings for all came back with positive-sounding reports, and none of them bemoaned giant gaping holes in their briefings. (For one of them I'd failed to anticipate one major potential topic, but it was one it made sense for the character to be unaware of.)
That may be a space where I can add something: putting solid briefings behind NPC faces. Not every NPC wants a crash course on Madrigal history, but actively supporting NPCs who like the face characters they play and rebuilding the stock of minimal-background roleplay plotlets could be a useful thing. If nothing else, given the organized mealtimes at the new camp, having more faces NPCs can wear to dinner with which to have interesting conversations with the PCs appeals.
That's just the opposite of the mad improvisational skills that some of the staff have. I have *no* idea how I could go about acquiring those.
Lots to learn, and lots of laundry to do ...
ETA: That sounded whinier and more self-pitying than I meant it to. I was shooting for self-critique and thinking how to improve things, honest!