Armitage Files - Playtesting Session 1

I think this session went very well. I had a lot of fun, and my players did too. We went in and out of humor, but when the in-game goings-on got intense or suspenseful, the mood was appropriate.

Generalities out of the way, here's some details on how I felt about things:
1. I felt less prepared than I would have liked. This is partly due to the nature of how I am going to run the campaign: improvised. I have not run a lot of fully improvised games before (one - as a play-by-post). I was not sure how to prepare, and so I decided on reading and rereading the MANY entries for people, places, and things in the campaign material.
1.a. I made awesome notecards (see below) by typing up very short notes about some of the entries (the ones most likely to be encountered in the first session) and attaching them to old Call of Cthulhu:CCG cards.

1.b. I think those worked out really well, but for the rest of the cards I may try to add more info and leave room for adding notes during play.

2. The material. I feel like there is a lot going on in the first two documents. There are some leads mentioned in passing in the documents that my players picked up on that are not covered in the corresponding document keys (Document 1 examples: the Hornets, the Red Box). This contributed to my sense of under preparation, since I hadn't readied that material.
2.a. I used Olaf Olson's sinister mode. Wasn't sure how to deal with him at the military base. I think I may have mishandled that. Redo? I would have said the military had no record of him, since it hadn't happened yet, and tried to hint later that he wanted to join the military to better/redeem himself?

3. Future plotting. I'm a little nervous about keeping all the details and plot-lines straight. I have audio from the game to review, so that will help. Though I'm a little nervous about maintaining a clear progression.

4. This should have been #1. LISTEN TO WHAT THEY SAY WHEN THEY TELL YOU TO HAND OUT THE DOCUMENTS AHEAD OF TIME!!! This ate up a TON of time and dragged everything down in terms of pacing. Either send it ahead of time (Note to Simon: include with purchase of game .pdf handouts for the documents) or bring multiple copies to the game (Note to Simon: layout the documents so there are not two documents on the same page. ie. use page breaks).

5. The material is excellent, and I can definitely see myself running the same material through a completely different lens and getting another wonderful story. I hope I get the opportunity to!!

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Notes added during/after listening to game audio.

Document 1 - The players all felt that the document was very rambling and incoherent (it is! it's supposed to be). But they felt that it was very difficult to weed out the useful/relevant information. I suspect that this problem would be alleviated or minimized by giving the players the documents ahead of time, thus giving them more time to absorb and filter.