Well, we've arranged for a character creation session this friday, then I'll probably try and start an actual game the friday after that. The scheduling is a bit uncertain because my group doesn't want it to cut into either of our regular weekly games. :-)

If character creation goes super-fast, I suppose we'll go through one of the example towns that same night... how long has character creation taken most folks? I'm expecting a group of 3-4 players.

Should I anticipate having time to run an actual session the same night that folks make characters?

I've done character creation and a first town in one session a couple of times. More often it's been character creation and half a first town. I generally expect character creation to take an hour and playing out a town to take 3 or 4 hours. I have no earthly idea whether that'll turn out to be typical.

-Vincent