I'm feeling better about my preparation. My son-in-law brought me over some printouts of the character sheets, but he only brought six. I really need at least eight, and preferably twelve, so I'll probably have to pick up some printer ink this week so I can make more printouts. I'd also like to have printouts of the psuedo-PCs images from my Hero Forge collection. These were done many months ago, long before face customizer, for instance. I think that they're still fine; I actually haven't done much Hero Forge since face customizer launched, and all of my Dark Fantasy X images (well most of them; I did go and update a handful) predate it. I think having the images will make the pop cultural reference pretty obvious, but that's OK. What's the point of having a pop culture reference if your intended audience doesn't get it? Just to amuse yourself? So, I've created a new image where I superimposed Gavin Shagford over Dog, giving me four images for four players. If I put them on a single sheet, quartered, I can print that out, cut it (or not; I don't really have to if I don't want to) and they can have a visual representation of the character that they'll be using for the initial run. I've posted all of these images here many times (including in my last post) so I won't do it again, except for the new combined image of Shaggy and Scooby.
I also started transferring notes from my blog posts to my campaign notebook, starting with the stuff I'll need for the pseudo-PC business. I'm pretty much done with that, but I won't stop until I've got the entire prologue information in the book. I don't think I want to go any further than that on principle; because a lot can happen during the prologue that may make changes to the outline—vague though it already is—for the rest of the campaign. Just because I've developed a whole 5x5 Front matrix doesn't mean that I want to start engaging it right away. The old Dungeoncraft rule, by Ray Winninger is "never force yourself to create more than you need" paired with Professer Dungeonmaster's best quote: "the most important session of your game is the next session" apply well to how I run, and I don't want to get ahead of myself on planning, just because I have a vague outline.
A few more printouts. Some characters for the PCs to use for the pseudo-PC episode. Maybe a backup couple of characters in case someone bites it midgame. And the transfer of a few more notes about names and likely activities during the prologue, and I'm good to go. I even have all of my ideal material; I've got my coke can sized blue tooth speaker, I've got notebooks for all of the players to keep notes in, I've got loads of dice (I'll have to let at least two of the players use mine, because they don't have any), dice trays, etc. I've got a hardcopy version of my campaign map. I'm truly ready to run with just another hour or two worth of minor work to go.
The only intensive thing that I'm going to do is rework the patron aspect that I came up with for this campaign into something that's more "backstory friendly." I may use a lot more of the characters from my Contacts Lists (I, II) and rework them as pickable backstory elements rather than simple patrons. I actually like the idea of the patrons as someone that they wouldn't meet for the first time until after the prologue is over, so probably a session or two (possible three) into the game. I'll see about working on that today, and post my updates when I get 'er done.
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