Thanks! I had a good time running it too. There was definitely a lot of "infodumping" because both the system, and the setting, are a little complex at first. But, I think it's one of those games/settings that pays off the more you put into it.

With the steps, the step number is approximately the average of the dice that you roll at that step. (Well, it's higher, but dice being able to explode pushes it up.) So it basically means as you rank up, your rolls improve in a consistent way.

I was wondering if the dice roller didn't just slow things down since we had to work between multiple windows. Probably would be easier just to roll real dice and call it out. We can track initiative on the battle mat too. Also having stuff printed out/written down will obviously save lots of time as well.

I forgot that you work Tuesdays. What about Wednesday nights for everyone? I'm hoping to do short sessions twice a month or so (say, on the 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of the month).

(Also, I was thinking about what you said about Myke being a Nethermancer and that sounds plausible -- they have a spell called Experience Death that sounds a little bit like what you remembered.)