Lessons Learned: May Lumberton

I try to sit down after every event and go through the things that I thought went well, the things that I thought needed work and the things that seemed to be pretty middle of the road. This last Lumberton event definitely felt like it had a lot of good stuff, some bad stuff but very little middle of the road type stuff. I think I will start with the stuff I would like to improve and then move to the stuff that went well.

There are always things that can go better, I am more focused on things that I personally can do better. So for starters, I have to learn to trust my staff more. I love fightings so I want to be involved in all of my modules but as plot sometimes just have to let your staff run the module so that you can focus on the roleplay. Sometimes you need to marshal the effects on a module so that they run smoothly. I have a hard time delegating but I really need to remember that I have some great people working with me and I need to let them do their jobs.

The second thing that I noticed really needed work was my presentation. Last year my plot presentation was accomplished largely through before game roleplay, which worked well. This year due to a variety of circumstances I did not have as much time to do that and my plot was not as well presented. I felt like due to my lack of foresight the PCs that were trying to get involved were floundering a bit and I think that I can make this better before the June game by reinforcing some of the concepts that I laid down in May with between game actions.

Fortunately for all of you players, the good far outweighed the needs work at this event. First off, my fellow plot people set up the bomb for the weekend. They had finely crafted a feeling of tense security throughout the weekdays and prepped the PCs for maximum drive on the weekend. I was amazed when I arrived on Friday, usually long events have a lazier pace than short events but this event felt like it was primed to explode. Because of that feeling, the plot team was able to crescendo the weekend action to a higher peak than is generally achievable in a 2 day event which was pretty awesome.

In addition to that, everyone on the plot and staff team was able to come up with several distinctive modules with interesting effects and ideas. The amount of thought that went into crafting a number of the modules that I experienced and heard about was very high. I know that plot teams tend to gel together after a few events but I must say that Dave, Jenn and I have gelled much more quickly than I would have thought, probably due to the fact that we are all close friends. I cannot wait to see what the remainder of this season brings, I think it is going to be awesome and I think it would be a shame to miss it.

Let me know what you thought we did well, or what we need to improve on. I promise no retaliation.