I said last night that I felt like I was at the point of constantly doing homework. Well, I decided to share the wealth and assign some homework to my players. I asked them to think about their characters and answer a couple of fairly simple questions. I figured this would be an interesting exercise, because none of them really know anything about the world we're playing in, and only my wife has even played RPGs before. The questions were designed to help me figure out how to introduce the players to the town, and what I might reveal to each player privately before we're all together again.
So here's what I asked: Is your character from Sandpoint? Did they grow up in the town? Or are they from near here, so they might not know the town very well, but would know the general area? Or is your character from far away and ended up in Sandpoint to start adventuring? What kind of life did your character have before becoming an adventurer?
The last question brought up the topic of age. Only one of the PCs (player characters) are human, and a young elf would be at least 100 years old before setting off on an adventure. So I gave them some general ideas and the suggested dice rolls for determining a character's age.
So far, the only answer I've received was from my wife. It was just the sort of thing I was looking for. It was only about three sentences long, but enough to let me know what to tell her in advance, with some ideas on how to create or adapt some upcoming adventures that will be personal for her character.
Tonight I spent some time pulling together some of the loose pieces I've created, and things are starting to take shape. The next adventure (which started with last weekend's cliffhanger) is ready to go, and I know where I'll take the PCs after that. So now I just need to set up introductions for a couple of other adventures, and I'll be in a good spot, at least for a couple of days.
And then it's time to kick it up a notch. It looks like we'll be having a couple more people joining us for a session soon, and at least one is an experienced player. That should be interesting, too.