I realize my gato doesn’t qualify as a tuxedo…

Hi, gang! Finally throwing in!… I went from an elaborate Mind Node and accompanying Evernote folder with gobs of files and notes, to a one-page in Google Docs. Now I have my stack of index cards that I really just look through before the game. Let’s see…. Here are some Star Wars Evernotes… and some pictures of the folder. 50 Dream Sequences / Hallucinations / Visions / repressed memories 90 Brainstorming: Star Wars Season Three Scratch Here’s the link to the GM prep one-sheet, which got laborious with a 12-game campaign: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DWiSHjIpw8aadGYtREpmpNNU-iuwl_UllylJl3e0IWE/edit?usp=drivesdk And now I have a new set of card templates in Canva that I print off just once per campaign. CATS, setting data, all that stuff lives in a deck and I review it before the game… sometimes. 😄 https://www.canva.com/design/DAG5dJ0LrJY/X3f-DM78uoz5tXs2YQ7jIQ/edit?utm_content=DAG5dJ0LrJY&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton I’ll include a picture of what I’ve got going in “The Ether Frontier” for now, with a deck from another game (“The Chrysalis Revolver”) closes alongside it for reference.

@Tristan Fishel : Card stock out of my Ecotank. The colored index cards are a Dollar Tree purchase.

Welcome to the fold! We’ve got a lot of wisdom, here, and we’re honored to have your experience to meld with ours in the collective. I think setting communications preferences and a gaming schedule in the session zero is a great idea. Our Fall of Delta Green game finished, and we still send silly texts to each other. 💚

If folks want to chime in, I will happily take examples of ancient magitech relics as macguffins for the sessions. 😁 Kind of a Warehouse 13 vibe, returning to home base when they’re done, à la One Punch Man.

Session One: Our first full session opened not on the mainland as they said last time, and rather on a pirate tower at sea. Okay, fine. 🤷 Glad I didn’t prep. It ended up being a nice, tonal on-ramp before the frontier proper. The party navigated social encounters with a pirate crew and their captain, Captain Twelves (a simia with an immaculate poker face and an even better plume), ultimately booking passage toward the mainland rather than fighting their way out. Capt. Twelves required they build their own rowboat, as he’s vowed to never set foot on the mainland again. His price: Deliver a message to Queen Marzipan, a Firbolg of the northern mountains. (I’m thinking a ballerina in a music box) We closed the session on a quiet but heavy note: as the ship pulled away from land, the pirates began singing together, “something you don’t yet realize you will likely never hear again.” That moment did a lot of tonal work for later themes around silence, fear of expression, and why bards are hunted in this world. Key character hooks emerging: - ID-10T carries a key to the Spire and is beginning to feel pulled toward something he doesn’t yet understand. - Harry Bigtoes wields a warhammer forged from a fragment of the meteor known to his people as the Twin-Tailed Comet, a god that “came home” when it struck the world. - Metacomet is positioning himself as a seeker of knowledge, hopefully setting up future pressure around what knowledge costs, and who decides it matters. (That’s my big lift.) - Finnick quickly established himself as the group’s social lubricant and complication generator. It’s fun having him know someone everywhere. Player feedback was good. Worldbuilding landed. Next they’ll get to see the contrast between the Scar — rampant wilderness vs the wastes, — and the mountains beyond the forest. Next session opens with a dream for Harry, an escape from a sea monster, and landfall at Lost Lantern Cove at the last path on the road along the Scar at the beach. I’ve got reskinned scorpions on the one hand and reskinned clank skeletons on the other.

Ah! If we’re going to mine sourcebooks for other games, I think Ken Hite’s keeper section in Trail of Cthulhu is one of the best I’ve ever read. I’ve heard great things about the wardens’ handbook for Mothership. I’ll let you know… And if you want to slingshot your GMing, listen to Fear the Boot (been going for almost twenty years), find a group with a rotating GM, and get some folks together to play Laser Kittens.

@Martin Voncannon : Okay, I’m biting… The first book? All five of them? The blog?