My ‘interview’ one shot to recruit some new players for my upcoming Stars Without Number (‘SWN’) campaign went live last night. I enjoy reviewing my sessions after as it allows me to keep track of notes as well as areas where I can improve, so this is more of a personal exercise than a public one, but hopefully, there’s something in it people could find value in.
After a year of running tabletops, I’ve really started refining my vetting process. Not everyone works well at every table (even I would be a terrible fit for plenty of games out there) and being picky and thorough with who you play with is important. Along with private text-based ‘interviews’ (read: me just asking them questions about tabletop I find important), I like to actually play with folks once or twice in single-session games to get a read on how they’d be long-term. Additionally – if you find that you don’t gel with someone at the table, the idea that not being able to play games with someone isn’t reflective of your relationship outside the game is a pretty darn healthy attitude to have. After a handful of horror stories and my desire to maximise fun and minimise the amount of work I have to do, I feel that while my vetting process is a little lengthy it’s always worth it in the end for formal campaigns.
This was my second time running this particular scenario, ‘Free Rain’ by Dominic Moore, (while I made several amendments and additions to make the transitions and plot a bit easier, I do recommend the module!) and so the prep was smooth as butter. Honestly, with the amount of work I put into it and having run it with my playtest group previously, I had all the info I needed and more to get into the game.
As for mistakes: I kind of regret being lax on the character sheets – I let folks come as they were and created them at the table, but it’s faster if I can punch them into Foundry ahead of time. All was fine because one person was going to be an hour late (talked in advance, all kosher) so I had that hour to do character creation with everyone else, but it still slowed a little when I got to make their one PC. In a campaign, doing character creation together is important (maybe I’ll touch on this later, though it’s been done before) but for one-shots, I find that getting characters done slightly ahead of time is just always better (unless you know the system front to back). You can still do connections as a group, but having the stats nicely done up makes things easier.
Since we started late I had to cut the session a smidge short, but I just had to narrate what would have been the last like 20 minutes in 30 seconds, so no fun lost or anything. The pacing was very good on my part in terms of how long the one-shot was supposed to be (~3 hours, we had about 2.5 hours of actual play-time), though I might have let the introduction roleplay drag on a bit too long (but folks were having fun and I don’t want to curb engagement this early).
Also pointed out by one player, I should have explained my house rule side initiative better – I sort of glossed over it and skipped its tactical benefits. I do wish I was more familiar with my system’s toolkit as a whole too – I’m still somewhat new to SWN’s ruleset and I’ll need to work on it. The narrative/improv one-shot prep was there but I definitely ought to brush up on the game rules so I never have to even think about glancing at the book or making stuff up on the fly. That said – things went… great! Probably in the top 10 sessions I’ve run. I slowed a little during the combat section (but it was also the very tail end of the night) though that ties back into knowing my toolkit and having more headspace to focus on the narrative.
As for players – I had THREE quiet background players and TWO brighter louder players. I mostly was interviewing the two spotlight players and one of the quiet players, so the focus was on them instead of the two players I had already. This meant my existing two quiet players that I already vetted sort of fell by the wayside. I’d definitely pay a little more care to them in a formal campaign but I can see where the dynamics would go in a full group, and it’ll take some talking out to make sure everyone has equal screentime (or, equitable screentime). I also didn’t love running for five people – it’s a fair amount of extra handling, and with my preferred higher rate of conversation-based roleplay, the more time every individual has to talk during the session the better. It definitely confirmed that when I pick my final players I ought to go with four, not five.
All in all, an 8/10 session, and I have a lot of good information for moving forward with the campaign proper! For future entries in my campaign diary series, I will probably do proper session summary notes with little jokes and storylines, as well as future scenario ideas. My players ought to probably not read those, though! ;]
Slice of Beef 