Thoughts on Esoterrorists

Last night we played Esoterrorists for the first time. bluegargantua, bryant, foxtown, jeffwik and peaseblossom were there. Bryant, Jess and Jeff have already written about this on their livejournals so I won't go into the player's side.

For me it went pretty easily. There wasn't the stress of what should be exposed when and I never felt like I was drowning in exposition or pulling teeth. Which was nice.

Prep wise I'm worried this game would be hard to run long-term, I'm also worried that it lends itself more to serial play than I like and there would b some difficulty in having long-term NPCs an big plots, both of which are favorites of mine.

I think I very much underestimated the amount of stuff necessary for a story or a night. We ended just before the end of the first arch (I planned three thinking I'd need it). I actually think the one arch would have been fine and I should have paced things better. That said what we did do was very fun.

Still curious how the action mechanics will work, and especially stability. Next session will see more stability checks (I could have required a few for the research going on but didn't think of it until after I wrote the thing).

I think with practice I could get writing adventures down to 1:1 with gaming time. Which may be more prep work than I've done in a decade for a game.

And I'm with Bryant, next time I run this I'm bringing a tack board (I have a nice foldable one at work) and letting the players arrange clues all Wire style.

Speaking of next time, is there interest in continuing? Wednesdays work very nicely for me.