Game Prep Stuff

As any GM knows there's a lot that goes into game prep. Running in a sandbox world means a LOT of prep since there's never any certainty the players are going to go with what you hope. Unless you make it REALLY COOL but that's another post.

I had less time than normal to prep this time around. Because of life we had to switch the weekend schedule. One player's custody weekend got swapped to the game weekend. I put it to the group (without him in the email chain) with the three options. The player knew all the options going forward.

1. Switch weekends
2. Keep the weekends, play while he has his four kids at home
3. Keep the weekends, player would leave the game.

I sent the email without stating a preference. I know I get one vote like everyone else but the GM's vote has the unfortunate tendency to carry more weight with some groups. I figured I would be a tie breaker if needed.

Unanimous vote to switch weekends. This was a pleasant thing to relay.

Next hurdle - more life. We couldn't play on Saturday but everyone could make Sunday. Ok. Fine. My weekend gets a bit screwed up but I can handle that.

I also met with a potential new player who was recommended by a current player. He seems to understand and accept the house rules and started coming up with a nice character.

And then to prepping. Lots of prepping. Things I would have had a week to do I had to complete in two days. Along with the extra burden of introducing a new PC to the game. No pressure, right?

I'm trying a Rocketbook after hearing good things about it from the Twitter GM community and it makes sense. You can click the link for more info but it's plastic pages you write on with special markers. When you're done you use the app to take pictures of the pages and they get uploaded to any one of half a dozen or so storage sites. The best thing is that several of them do OCR as you upload. That's what got me. The post office messed up my delivery so I had less time to play with it than I would have liked but so far it's been good. I took this game's notes in it so crossing my fingers I don't have to rewrite them all in my spiral bound notebook.

I made magic items for two of the original players based on their backstories. Turns out I did really well in picking the right one for them going forward. At least that's what they told me. I always offer to make or pick something else if it doesn't feel right and have yet to have someone take me up on it. I wonder if they really do like it or if they don't want to make me feel bad. GM insecurities.

Finally I needed to make taverns and inns. I have a wonderful deck of cards that has taverns with menus so I could use those. Except when the PCs are only going to be in the area for a day or three I don't want to 'use up' one of the good taverns. 

Enter Infinite Menus from Inkwell Ideas. I love their stuff. I have all the Infinite series products and adapt them as I see fit. In this case I decided on limiting the fare available in these taverns since they're all out in the wilds. Those taverns aren't going to have a selection of dishes. You eat what they serve. The instructions help you with determining random numbers of dishes and I did try that. Once. Now I'm doing one choice meals. I may get fancier later.

Add onto this reading material that I would probably/hopefully use in the game, making notes for what I need to ask each player, and all the other things that go into prepping for a game and it made for a long two days.

But I think it went well. I'll write up the game itself after I've had a chance to let my brain recover.

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