Altered State Prep - Constructive Feedback

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#1

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So I’m prepping my first Altered State session and I’m hoping to get some constructive feedback. My personal prepping goals as the GM are to practice only planning one session at a time and to keep my notes to one page.

I’ve got my first draft of that one page, but I wanted to throw it out to the community to see how I could improve, how to make it clearer, should I tweak any of the notes. I consider it a bonus if anyone has any general ideas on how to improve the session from what I’ve written down.

I am excited at the chance to play Altered State. I think the action is going to be intense!

#2

Overall it looks good, man! You’ve got some good locations and opposition lined up. The only things I’m not clear on are:

What are they trying to retrieve from the isolated server in the apartment?
Where are they taking it after they get it?
What’s the time limit for this critical info from the heist?

I think answering those questions will strengthen the reason for each of your locations. Give the Runners a reason to hit that apartment for the intel. It’s definitely something important enough for rival runners to try and stop them, forcing them into the bar which seems close enough for the fighting to move to as they fall back. Then moving to the freeway chase feels like maybe there’s a timed fail safe code written into the info and they need to hurry to get it decrypted or delivered before the data is useless.

You’ve definitely got a great foundation setup, just add in a hook. That’s my two cents anyway. :blush:

#3

Hmm… that makes sense. I rolled up the premise of this from Create Your Campaign section but I can see that I hadn’t delved deep enough!

From your suggestions, maybe a fellow runner friend of the team had recently been murdered and the last time they spoke, she had mentioned she had found some strange strands on the SISTM that she was following up on and the team went in to see if they could find anything on her isolated drive, which is when the other Runners show up.

I’m not sure where they are taking it yet, but I just have an image in my head of the team and runners falling through the floor during the battle into the bar and then the runners taking off with the data drive they found on the computer and the team has to give chase. Maybe I’m thinking backwards and the team is being chased by the other runners.

Thinking… Processing…

#4

Oh! That’s awesome, man! I didn’t see that it was the enemy runners that had the data with the PC Runners giving chase. That’s fantastic!

Also I love the idea that the PC Runners go there on behalf of a fallen friend to investigate the reason behind their death. That’s a great hook.
:metal: :herocoin:

#5

Looks awesome man!! Super fun. I wish I was playing in there. And the notebook one page looks great. Unless I’m missing it is there a timer for the rooms? To push it and seem urgent?

#6

Thanks and I haven’t figured out the timers yet. This is their first foray into Altered State so everything is new and unestablished. I’m hitting a roadblock of what my players should do with the information or where they need to take it so I’m not quite sure how to add urgency to the session. Ideas?

#7

So I realized that I was an eager beaver and jumped the gun when I started planning the first session. Before I can plan the first session, I took a step back and followed some advice I found in the following videos from Runehammer and PDM of Dungeoncraft to flush out some basic campaign ideas and then session prep was much easier:

Now I have a single page for my general campaign without any of the details fully flushed out and then a single page for the first session to get my players started.

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#8

Nice! This looks great, man! :herocoin:

#9

Flushing out a few vague campaign ideas was going to be my suggestion but you beat me to it! I’m trying to do this same tactic for my planning. I have some ideas floating around with when I want certain plot points revealed but I plan only 1 session at a time. Its been challenging but also extremely rewarding. Several times the players come up with something I didnt forsee and I’ve been able to quickly incorporate it into the story.

My personal style is a bit messier since I like to brainstorm a lot before committing to some key points. Thanks for sharing!