@Eric Person Yes! Thanks for reminding me.

I really like taking notes, so I tend to over-annotate and over-prepare, I think. But for me, the essential ingredients to have are the master list of player goals and the master list of faction goals. These live on their own pieces of paper in my physical notes and a synced block in Notion for my digital notes. So that's step 1. Then, for each session, I have a new page (physical or digital). I look at the player goals and at the faction goals and run through my whole encounter-design checklist, meaning I think about the people/places/things that these goals have in common and where they'd come into conflict. Then I write out 3-4 encounter ideas, each in their own section on the page, with resources I'll use if that encounter comes up. Each encounter "block" (in Notion they're literally blocks, but in my physical notes it's just a quarter or a page or so) has the relevant goals listed and a brief description of how they'll interact. Then, depending on the encounter type, I'll list a few details: Combat: enemy types, stats, general tactics they'll take. In Notion, I paste a map. Social: what the adversaries will settle for, any relevant skill modifiers/DCs Exploration: a blank skill challenge, failure penalties, failure state If you'd like to see what these look like, I made a video walking through a bunch of complete encounters. Here's the link, if you haven't seen it yet: https://www.skool.com/game-masters-laboratory/classroom/93ffc811?md=dfc8eb429ecd4cfaab74c52ad772f4bf This is better than an image, I think, because I scroll around.

Hey Nick, welcome! Glad to have you here. Would leave to hear more about your game if feel like posting updates.

Hey Michael, welcome! Glad to have you here. You're already gotten great advice so I'll just hold off on that and say hi + welcome. Sounds like you're in the right place.

@Alex Newman For those reading this later - this is a very good character creator and should only take a few minutes!