Wednesday, May 7, 2014

List of Preparation for Warring States Campaign

Here is a list of stuff I tend to prepare for my games. If there is any question why I set up a game in 4 months in advance this is why it takes a while. I have a month and a bit to go and I've found 2-3 people who can probably make the schedule - my usual is GMT+8 7-11am on a Saturday which translates to Friday night in the US. 

I'm trying to wrap up my Crusades game in 1-2 more sessions so that I can proceed to taking a season break and running another Game. My Campaign Endurance Survey is a bit right on how attention and energy goes down for most gamers after 4+ sessions and I have many aspirations to run many other games and settings before real life will force me into hibernation again. 

I'll have something ready by the end of may for The Warring States Campaign.
  1. Setting Situation Research with a Fact Sheet that is easy to read. 
    1. A similar Setting Primer like the one in Q:tWS but even more summarized.
    2. a list of sources and bibliography
  2. Dress up the Map and Prepare it in Roll20
    1. Prepare the all the macros
    2. Prepare all the map templates, Scale and Dynamic Lighting (includes prep for Mass Combat)
    3. Prepare all the Tokens - Dynamic Lighting and Scale.
  3. Modifying my GURPS Low Tech Lite Crusades for tWS would take about 10-20 hours.
    1. more notes on metal use and availability.
    2. Notes on Mass Combat and figuring out how to ease players in learning Mass combat and GURPS Combat. 
    3. Remake the Templates for 4C BCE China. 
  4. Make a bunch of Actor and period portraits. A lot for NPCs and Extras.
    1. I typically gather about 60-70 portraits per campaign, about 5-10 per week (which is why my off weeks are important). Dont worry about getting lost, I typically put it in a session notes who's who and would explain it if need be again.
I try to keep games short 1-5 sessions, so that we dont run into diminishing returns and have left over material that can "stew" for a new batch of adventures. Even as a GM I am the audience and immersing myself in these strange and forgotten historical worlds brings me great joy and excitement.  

Sadly where I come from History is a rare and a poorly understood subject, revisionism is rampant as propaganda tries to muddy the issue (you know them by their lack of sources and very poor grasp of basic statistics). An appreciation of history through games hopefully allows it to weather the storm. 

Note there are many inferences you can make about Campaign Endurance regarding how People enjoy games and why the number of Chances vs the Endurance vs GM's own finite ability to be consistent may infer some depressing hypothesis. (I just need a way to test it). 

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