The road ahead is pre-generated

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I’vebeen listening to a few episodes of The Sons of Kryos this week. One of their segments was on character creation sessions. Both on SoK and on innumerable threads & blog posts around the web, I hear about these great character creation sessions that get everyone excited to play. Everyone pitches in, gets interested in each other’s characters, and is anxious for the looming conflicts.

I’m listening and drool is leaking from my lips. That sounds good. I want that. I think. Then, I do a reality check. With the exception of a few MLwM one-shots, that’s never really worked for me. In general, character creation has always been a chore to get done before you’re allowed to play. You use skills in building a character that never get touched on again. I’m reminded of a post I made last year about “pregame prep is a bug, not a feature.” I still believe that.

The next SoK show had a segment on pre-gens! That’s what I’m going to do: throw character gen to the wind. On Mondays Kat and I will have some pre-gens ready to go for something we feel like running that week. If something goes long, we can pick it up the next week. If people are excited and want to play more, but with a different character, then they can do the whole character generation thing. Thanks, Sons of Kryos!

We’ll see how it flies in real life…

6 thoughts on “The road ahead is pre-generated”

  1. I love pre-gens. They save time and provide a challenge to play a new role. The GM is often more aware of the characters capabilities, thanks to the pre-gen, and can tailor content to the individual characters even more effectively.
    Definitely my choice for 1-4 session games. I think leading with the pre-gen and then letting folk build characters is a fine idea, and it certainly gives them the advantage of feeling out a system they’re not already familiar with before diving in (if that’s the case).
    Have fun! 🙂

  2. I love pre-gens. They save time and provide a challenge to play a new role. The GM is often more aware of the characters capabilities, thanks to the pre-gen, and can tailor content to the individual characters even more effectively.
    Definitely my choice for 1-4 session games. I think leading with the pre-gen and then letting folk build characters is a fine idea, and it certainly gives them the advantage of feeling out a system they’re not already familiar with before diving in (if that’s the case).
    Have fun! 🙂

    • Personally, I believe that if character creation is experienced as a chore, then the character creation wasn’t designed properly
      I’ll agree, but only with the caveat that there’s different strokes for different folks. I’ve read about great, fun, excitement-generating Burning Wheel character-burning sessions. It works well for lots of people. When my group tried, it drained our intial enthusiasm for the game so much so that we never actually played.

  5. Personally, I believe that if character creation is experienced as a chore, then the character creation wasn’t designed properly
    I’ll agree, but only with the caveat that there’s different strokes for different folks. I’ve read about great, fun, excitement-generating Burning Wheel character-burning sessions. It works well for lots of people. When my group tried, it drained our intial enthusiasm for the game so much so that we never actually played.

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