You should start a blog right now. If you need a reason, Tim Kastelle has seven great ones. His post also touches on Sacha Chua's top 10 reasons not to blog. The blogrimage is a great opportunity to overcome many of those excuses. It's not too late to join in, you'll just finish up a few days later. Pick a challenge and write about it every day for 30 days. Go!
One of my biggest takeaways from last weekend's Pathfinder sessions was that I need to be better organized. Yes, I need to spend a little more time studying the details of our current adventure, but if I can't keep it all straight when the swords are swinging and crossbow bolts are flying, I'm sure I'll have regrets.
I mentioned in Tuesday's post that I'd been digging around for some old 1st and 2nd edition character sheets, but that's not all I found. I found a replica AD&D 1st Edition Dungeon Masters Adventure Log on Mad Irishman. I remember seeing DMs using this to keep a handy reference of party details. I was smart enough on Saturday to write down some basics, but this sheet, as old as it is, gives me a better idea of what I need to know. In some ways, it's even more helpful than the Campaign Sheet I downloaded from the Paizo resources page.
Tonight's research session led me to a simple but useful idea in a post about the Pathfinder Beginner Box on Zombiecowboy's Game Blog. Zombiecowboy is also running a kids campaign using the Pathfinder Beginner Box, but unlike my two teenagers, he's working with a group of nine kids that are 7-10 years old. The character sheets are overwhelming, so he copied the necessary details to 3x5 cards, and it made the encounters run a lot faster and smoother. I've been in love with 3x5 cards ever since I started listening to Back to Work with Merlin Mann and Dan Benjamin, so I'll definitely be adopting a similar strategy.
I also found some other downloadable forms along with more useful blog posts and forum discussions. I even found an app to generate characters and print character sheets. I bookmarked a lot of them for future reference, and saved even more to my Instapaper account, which of course means I'll never actually go back and read most of them.
I've been thinking a lot about how the sessions went last weekend, and the encounters coming up next. I've got some pretty specific ideas of things I want to do to make those encounters a bit more enjoyable for my players. So tomorrow night is final prep time and then we'll be ready to play on Saturday afternoon. I'm really looking forward to it!