I ran my first one-shot of Night Witches.

I ran my first one-shot of Night Witches.

I was nervous reading over the material before the game.  I wasn’t sure if I was familiar enough with the setting, or how I was going to choose threats, and when I did, if the threats were going to be interesting enough to carry a whole game.

We used the cards to create characters, and mapped out the duty station and answered questions about our characters, and pretty soon it became obvious which of the threats I was going to pick.

Then before I knew it, moves were snowballing, and the game was going places I was not sure I was comfortable with it going.  Things kept spiraling into this dark and horrible crescendo…

and then we took a minute and looked around and thought “Where the hell could this game possible go from here?”  before we realized it was dusk and they better get their briefing under way and get those birds in the air and face the whole unrelenting horror again.

It was heartbreaking; but one of the best one-shot gaming experiences I’ve ever had.