Sample Characters: Great RPG Mechanics
#RPGMechanics: Week Nine
I guess this week I’m going to be focusing on meta-aspects. Not exactly mechanics, but mechanics-adjacent. I talked about the beauty of Glossary Indexes yesterday. Today I want to cover another utility tool. And it's one I have come around on.
Early on, I’d say pre-2000s, I thought pre-gen and sample characters were a waste of space in books. Mostly these were characters presented as walk-throughs for character building. For example Harvey Walters appeared as the example investigator for multiple editions of Call of Cthulhu. He was not only used to demonstrate the process of making a character, but he appeared in most of the examples of play, usually illustrating how hapless he was.
And just as most of my bad-attitudes and dumb ideas about play came out of arrogance and unearned confidence, I decided that because I could not imagine utility for me these things couldn’t be useful for anyone else. I got over that. At least in this case.
I eventually realized sample characters help illustrate the play possibilities of a game, they show the expected range of stats & skill numbers, and they make it easier to pick up and play. The second edition of Eclipse Phase does this particularly well– with a wide range of pre-gens with different sets tuned to the different campaign styles. And these aren’t relegated to the back. They’re early on, designed to give both the players and the GM a sense of what the world’s like.
I run a lot of short series to try out games– two shots and four shots usually. I have a ton of ttrpgs I want to play– arising from purchasing too many bundles, getting review copies, or having extra affiliate credit on DTRPG. A four or five shot, a monthly game, is an investment. On average that’s 18-20 hours committed to that game including creating the character keeper, reading rules, sketching out play, making a cheat sheet if needed, and running the game itself. That’s equal to bingeing several Netflix series.
So games which make that easier: clear materials, interesting starting incidents, reference sheets, etc., go to the front of the line. The decision’s even tighter for running an online two-shot. That’s really equivalent to a substantial four-hour f2f con session. If I have to spend time having the players make up characters– even with the easiest system, that’s at least an hour lost from play. A game with sample characters cuts that down. I can point players to a pdf, let them spend time tweaking some details, sketch out the mechanics and get to playing.
Some game systems offer exceptions to this. PbtA and FitD games often offer quick approaches but the process of CC is as much play as anything. Doing these as a one or two shot often kills me because they players come up with great characters that I want to know more about. Another approach is in-play character creation. Fate as well as several Modiphius games offer this, notably Dune. You set a couple of things, but then pick most of your stats and talents during play in response to events. It can work, but it does put a heavier cognitive load on the players. Some lighter PbtA and FitD games can work with this approach.
Quick Starts, a great innovation, are great for sample characters. They provide an easy way to access the content. They can also be tweaked in presentation to make them tighter and more focused on the scenario. But designers need to do is make sure everything referenced on the sample characters actually appears in the quick starts. A couple of times running these I’ve stumbled when players ask “what does X talent do?” only to find that information doesn’t appear in the materials anywhere.
These sample characters don’t have to be in the core book, taking up valuable real estate. They’re often in intro adventures or quick starts mentioned above. But one of the easiest ways to do this is simple to offer a free or cheap collection of characters as a pdf. White Wolf did this for several of their lines; Star Trek Adventures has collections of famous characters from various series. These resources are especially good if you give a couple of formats (text only and complete sheet) and if you leave room for the players to shape and tweak names, genders, ethnicity, etc.