When running one shot convention games, do you take the time to create characters, or do you bring in pre-gens? If you make fresh characters, do you step them up a few levels, or stay at 1?
When running one shot convention games, do you take the time to create characters, or do you bring in pre-gens?
When running one shot convention games, do you take the time to create characters, or do you bring in pre-gens?
I always have people make first level characters.
Don’t skip character generation. It takes 5 minutes but it but buys you so much.
I like to have people make 2nd level characters, that way they get to also choose an Advanced Move, but it does increase chargen time a bit.
Level 1 characters in DW have a tremendous amount of agency. I generally don’t level them up, even in one shot scenarios.
Thanks guys! I have a con next month, and I’m going to give DW a shot. It’s been great in my home group; let’s see how it plays out on the fly with strangers.
Never use pregens. Give everyone a chance to do the level up move at a mid-session break.
What little DW I’ve done like this I’ve had people make 1st level characters at the table (it’s quick, easy, and 1st level DW characters are pretty competent), and plan (or force) on Level Up during the game – just so the players can have that experience also.
I’ve never used pre-gens. Every con game I’ve run of DW has been with 1st level PCs that get created right at the table. As other people have said, character creation barely takes any time, so why not do it?
One scenario I ran seemed like it would be fairly tough, so I gave all the characters 3 points of Bolster right from the beginning rather then levelling them up. It worked pretty well.
I used pre-gens at GenCon, and wish that I hadn’t. I’d had bad experiences with making characters for other games, and wanted to give the players as much time “playing” DW as possible since I had a lot of newbies.
I created 3rd level characters, and left the alignment and bonds up to people at the table. I also provided a brief back story and then included a few questions around the backstory that would allow the player to customize further.
Who gave your first instrument and why?
Did your parents give you away or sell you?
Why wont you lead when everyone looks to you?
After starting a few other groups, I think I would prefer a first level scenario (the characters are really quite capable), and have a simpler scenario with more twists. Next year at GenCon I guess.
I use half pregens, they fill out the 1st page while I assign 3 powers on the second. This is because I use custom classes off of Drivethru for Cons and sometimes they can be esoteric/crazy.