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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Doug McCrae" data-source="post: 5606225" data-attributes="member: 21169">Be careful about spending a lot of precious time on background material the players may never see. Only do that if you enjoy working on it and have plenty of free time.Otherwise focus on content that will immediately engage the player characters, and players. Ryan Stoughton has a system for this he calls <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/192201-rys-threats-rewards-assets-problems-traps.html" target="_blank">TRAPS</a>, designed to maximise limited prep time. It may be of use to you, though it's more appropriate for D&D than Mage. As a general rule, you should focus your prep on details you find difficult to improvise.Personally I would create a world with some interesting NPCs and conflicts, then connect the PCs with those conflicts thru plot hooks. Or vice versa, you can create material specifically to interact with a particular PC or PCs. Pay more attention to important NPCs. Create a reasonable number of plot hooks in case the PCs don't bite one. As to Chekov's gun, I think false foreshadowing is fine in an rpg. I actually use backwards foreshadowing - I just throw out a bunch of stuff, then I connect later campaign events to earlier ones. I don't care if a gun shown in Act I is undischarged by Act III.But that's advice for a fairly unstructured campaign, you may well want something more structured.</blockquote>