GM Confidence: 4/5. Despite the seemingly-Herculean effort it took to get the ball rolling again after the Pilot Session, and beside the usual surprises and mistakes, this session went relatively smoothly, and I’m pretty happy with the results. Given the evident delay in my writing this AAR, it seems the motivational blockage has remained in place long afterward.

What Came Before

Re-Zero

Part of the process of recovery from the Pilot, as previously discussed, was to do a “Re-Zero” session. I had gotten a head start presenting many of the changes and questions on our forum, some weeks in advance. There were scheduling problems from the start, resulting in delays. I ended up deciding to execute the Re-Zero absent one of the players, just to get it done and move forward. When it finally occurred, much of the session revolved around some rules tweaking and changes to the handling of the characters, but the reduced roster cleared up a lot of problems on its own. With some session time left over, I put the PCs present through a fight with some vampires, just to see if any additional changes became evident in the process—there were some.

The Path Forward

I wanted to get the campaign back on track from where the Pilot ended without invalidating what had happened before. My compromise, as mentioned: a non-do-over do-over. Essentially, I would start with a new fight (like last time), and end with the investigation “demo” and declarations for where to go next (like we were meant to last time). My intention was to start the campaign-proper immediately, the week after the Re-Zero. But we continued bumping into scheduling delays trying to get all four players involved, until I finally threw up my hands and decided to move on with the players that were available. Maybe a day after I pulled that trigger, the player with the scheduling issues decided to drop out entirely—down to three, at least, until Eddie’s player returned from his work-hiatus. Fewer PCs will always be easier to manage, so I wouldn’t complain. Now clear of the scheduling obstacles, we could actually move forward.

What Went (Mostly) Right

As tends to be the case, when the session works out as expected, there’s not a lot to say about it. It would carry on from the point we previously left off. I deliberately tried to keep this one simple, consisting of three parts: the combat, the investigation afterward, and the establishment of PCs’ future intentions. Overall, I enjoyed the PCs’ interactions and the narrative that emerged—no complaints there.

It was during the last-minute prep that I realized all three PCs present had Charitable and/or Selfless Disads. I mentioned this in Discord so it would be on the players’ minds, but it also meant that, for my purposes, the PCs staying behind at the scene of the previous session to help out would become “Plan A” rather than “B.” I wanted the prelude to the combat to be brief, but it ended up being a little more involved, and a lot more improvised, than I intended. Specifically, I wasn’t prepared for splitting the party—a classic GM blunder—which led to the usual scrambling to get all the PCs in the proper place for the main event—another classic error (and one that shouldn’t occur in future installments). We got through it without a fuss, though, so it’s all good.

The fight at the safe-house went pretty smoothly, overall. I decided not to use Fantasy Grounds’ line-of-sight feature; I feel it would have been a little too clunky for the tight confines, and too little value-added, when just hiding the enemy tokens would do. There were a couple of instances of “disarming” I wasn’t fully prepared for, and had to improvise a little (and clear up afterward).

Post-combat went less smoothly, though not badly—more on that in the next section. For the most part, the PCs did what I had expected in the immediate aftermath of the fight. And technical issues aside, I felt like the investigation part landed the way I wanted, and the establishment of next-steps got me what I needed to move forward.

What Went (Nearly) Wrong

• As previously mentioned: I didn’t consider splitting the party.
• I had forgotten, in the moment, that Eddie was at the storage-yard scene in the beginning, and could have said, “You guys go on ahead; I’ve got things covered here!” which might have mitigated the above.
• I needed some kind of visible countdown-clock, to build tension and keep actions organized; players could see it ticking down and know how much time has passed during their actions. It’s a bit like using a combat map for non-combat situations; players automatically orient themselves accordingly, whether you mean for them to or not. This applied to both pre- and post-combat. I have some ideas on that for the future.
• The PCs were a little more reluctant to commit to act than I was prepared for. This usually stems from a lack of information, but, at the moment, I’m not sure what info was missing.
• I started to get the players to declare their “combat/mission objectives” at the safe-house prior to execution, but we got distracted and didn’t complete the process. I don’t have a good feel for how/when to do this yet, but it does need to happen.
• I missed granting of Tactics-related Prep Points. These could have been used for things like “handcuffs.”
• I should have reminded myself how Detect worked before we started. I got it wrong.
• I wasn’t prepared for the Disarm(s). I probably should have seen that coming, in which case, I might’ve checked that against Fantastic Dungeon Grappling handling before the game as well. Similarly, parrying a (short) longarm should have been a quick lookup, but I looked right past it and never saw it until afterward. “Standard” GM fails, there.
• I totally forgot about the Achievements during the game; at least a couple should have been awarded.
• The technical issues with the city map and the clue-board were nothing I could have prepared for, and it threw me off my rhythm. Fortunately, that bug in Fantasy Grounds got fixed in the next patch, so it shouldn’t recur.

Miscellaneous Issues

• “The railroad ends here.” I led the PCs by the nose to get them to this point, but from here on out, they’ll have to sort things out themselves. At least, that’s the idea…
• There was quite a bit more last-minute character tweaking/refactoring than I wanted, but the three remaining players at this point were the most “communicative” of them, and it didn’t end up being a problem. Likewise, after the session, there were some additional changes that needed to be made. (As of this writing, I still need to get the final stats posted on the wiki.)
• Minor issue revealed during the investigation segment: The PCs don’t currently have any real “medical expert” contact, so I had to fudge something at the time. I have an NPC that can be elevated to the position, though.
• Part of a GMing paradigm shift for me, of late, is to stop “re-narrating” PCs’ actions—I know I have a habit of doing that, especially when I (think I) have a more detailed understanding of the matter-at-hand. In short: it robs players of their agency. I was focused on breaking that habit here, though I don’t know how well I succeeded. I do recall one instance, but I consider that more of a “clarification.” This will be a long-term effort, I expect…
• Something I want to start asking the players regarding their impending actions is “how do you see this working (out)?”—I can tailor the consequences to suit the player’s vision, if I understand it more specifically.
• Something I’ve been working on as GM is a way to incorporate some “unforced errors” on the part of the opposition during combat. Bad guys tend not to make stupid mistakes as often as they realistically should, but how to deliberately work that in? Still working on that…

Parting Shot

It’s probably worth (re?)mentioning that the difficulty I experienced getting the ball rolling again after the Pilot Session has continued unabated. There are a lot of reasons, but more recently, a really crappy couple of months this year have sapped my enthusiasm for doing the necessary work. It’s resulted in my having to (temporarily) table it to work on something else. Quite often, switching campaigns can spark a fire that can be carried back—that’s my hope here; I’ve seen it happen before. I really do want this campaign to take off properly, but I can’t say for certain, at this point, when that might be.