Wise Turtle Publishing

Hi all,
So this summer I'm running a let's play for OVA at a con I'm staffing. The plan for the campaign is to do a one off bringing in magical girls from different shows and mangas into one setting (thinking school campus). The thing is, not only have I never GMed a game before, but I've never written a campaign either! I'd really like to do well with this, so does anyone have any advice for writing and running campaigns? Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

So, first off, and I have no idea how much time you have to prepare, but if this is a one off game at a Con, premake the PCs. Secondly, pick a location(s) that you want the PCs to go. Keep it small, like three to four locations, tops. School, mall, local Ramen shop and park (for example.)

Most Con games have a time limit to the session, so also base the encounters around it.

If you haven’t already, take a look at the Game Master’s Section and peruse the advice there. It’s not exhaustive, but it’s a good crash course on common pitfalls.

As Chris said, for a convention game, try to keep the scope small and the goal obvious. You don’t really want to railroad your players, but if it’s pretty clear who the big bad is and where to find it, you likely won’t deviate too far off your expected adventure. Besides, for a magical girl-themed game, the monster-of-the-week shoved in the heroes' faces is typical.

Premade characters are also a good idea. Making characters is fun, but even in OVA where it’s much faster and easier than many RPGs, it’s a significant chunk of time you can spend playing. If you have a lot of prep time on your hands, you can even go so far as making something similar to the OVA Player Books that also explain the rules and Abilities used by each character.