Do any pre-gen characters exist for Dungeon World? I’ve been scouring the net but have come up empty handed. Trying to run a casual session and want to get the players right in to the adventure.
Do any pre-gen characters exist for Dungeon World?
Do any pre-gen characters exist for Dungeon World?
The unfilled character sheets take ten min to fill out… max… if you need to teach them to read first.
What Jon said, mostly. Chargen gives a guided tour of the sheet, necessary to play the game anyway.
Making characters is like 10 minutes. I’d advise not skipping this important step. The character sheets are, themselves, little worksheets with limited choices.
True, but I’m trying to put this together as quick as possible. And I’ve found that handing a role to a player (new or veteran) has been helpful to ease some of the bumpy intro transition where they’re trying to feel out a personality in a one shot. I thought it would be cool to have some premades for them.
If you really want them to see premade characters: print out the sheets and make your own. It’s not D&D so you’re not going to teach them “bad builds” with however you make your demo character.
Having them fill out the sheet, describing the immediate scene, and asking what they do is way easier and just as fast as giving them character descriptions to read through and then try and conform to. I’m serious.
There is a community that is pretty small at the moment, but really awesome.
https://plus.google.com/communities/109277703028467374403
The point of the group is for people to make pregens for different systems that can be used as PCs or NPCs
So the consensus is to not water the experience down with premades. A valid point to consider for sure. DW deserves some attention then. Thanks for the tips Matthew Bannock thanks for the links to the characters! No DW though. So maybe that’s more validity…
It takes like five minutes and the questions you ask as GM are just as important to the first session as any prep you might do, probably more important
*World style playbooks are pretty much an intermediate step between pregen characters and full character creation. You hand someone a booklet, they make a few basic choices right there in the booklet without having to reference a rulebook, and you start playing.
I ran a one shot the other night with four people who had never even seen the game. It took maybe 10 minutes for them to run through the sheets and for me to ask my questions. It was one of the best sessions of any game I’ve ever ran.
A point of advice is to ask your players not to front-load their characters with a lot of lore. Instead, have them create it in real time as they play using bonds and moves. Make sure to do bonds, as I think those are such an essential part of making good characters.
Good point, Kirby Bridges. Too many times I’ve seen players stumble over their complicated character stories. Maybe one of the reasons I was looking for premades. They tend to be more cut and dry. Looks like I’ll definitely be doing character creation at the table with a stronger emphasis on driving succinct ch. stories.
+1 to Kirby Bridges I ran a campaign for 7 of my duaghters 10 year old friends for her birthday. Most of them had never played a tabletop RPG in their life. giving them copies of these: http://nerdwerds.blogspot.com/2013/05/dungeon-world-playbooks.html from Patrick Henry Downs. Char gen took 30 minutes, with most of the time coming from the bonds sections and rules explanations. (What is Charisma? ). In fact Bonds with these guys was a HUGE thing. They created some awesome stories right at the table. I let them ‘pass notes’ to each other, as long as they told me what was going on (in a note to me). It was truly a fantastic experience.
I think part of the genius of the character sheets is that they basically contain everything you need to know to play the game. That plus the basic moves booklets and bam, complete beginners rule set.
Matthew Allen Awesome! We were playing Dungeon Planet and one player chose to play as a robot (Emergency Mechanical Medical Assistant, EMMA 14). Well, another player, playing a human, chose The Psion and chose EMMA for the bond, “I have seen EMMA’s dreams and they are disturbing.”
Everybody was pretty interested that a robot could have a dream, and that fostered all kinds of world-building. I love bonds so much!
I wouldn’t recommend making pregens, character creation is pretty important step in Dungeon World and tells you what players are really interested in.
But if you absolutely must, just reskin Lady Blackbird.
Kirby Bridges Bonds aren’t just character creation, they’re world creation.
Joel Watkins So much so that DW has changed the way I GM forever. I refuse to come up with a plot before a first game now. Instead, I just ask tons of questions and build the world from what the players answer!
Kirby Bridges Yessssssss…. I’m actually excited to run a trad game again. 🙂