DM Forcing Characters on Players

[WCrawford]

I DM'd the DL series of mods back when I was in middle school and had the players choose the pregen characters, we had a blast.

I've played in new systems (to the players) where the DM gave every player a basic character, it was a blast.

I've played a couple of the RPGA's Classic mods and had fun with the pregens.

Pregens need to give the player a little leeway and the players need to be mature enough not to complain and go with the flow.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

As a player, I had one DM that gave my group the option of playing pregenerated characters, and one member of the group bit. I like making my own characters. I keep a notebook filled with characters that I have made up but not yet played. Whenever I game in a one-shot, all I need to do is look in my notebook for a character, okay it with the GM, and give the character a name. Campaign characters I like to develop as much as I can.

 

[Fenes]

Seeing as my campaigns run for years I would absolutely hate to play a character forced upon me. For a one-shot I have prepared some characters, once, and let the players draw or choose, but for anything else I would neither play nor DM forced characters.

I generally observe character creation of new players entering a campaign quite closely, to make sure the character meshes well with the party, style and direction of the campaign, but that is more like "Playing a cleric of this war god will lead to all sorts of problems, why not play a cleric of the native war god?" than "Here is your background."

 

[Liolel]

I voted mixed opinions. The first fact is that I would never want this to happen in a real campaign when the character given is yours permenently. However their are times when it could be a good idea. Giving the players characters for a oneshot isn't such a bad thing expecially if its trying out a new system. Also given a player a premade character after they die in a adventure isn't such a bad thing as long as its a temporary measure until they character could be raised or they could bring in a new character.

 

[Undead Pete]

I've played and DMed such games as all-day marathon one-shots, but never as a campaign. In my campaigns, I always give suggestions, but never force anything on anyone.

 

[Thomas_wendland]

I have done it once....I guess I was tired of them playing the same things. So I gave them complete opposites to play. I guess the group loved it (they played them from 1st to 23rd level!)

 

[Umbran]

As with most gaming things - it's all in the details. I've seen such tings done well, and I've seen it done poorly.

The most common problem I've seen with such games is plaer resistance. If the player does not want to accept a character that isn't of his or her own creation, the player will not play the character well, and will not enjoy the game. A player having a bad time can and will ruin things.

Normally, I allow players to develop their own characters. When I do ask them to accept something other than their own design, I expect them to give it as good a shot as they can, withi as much enthusiasm as they'd put behind their own design.

 

[soulcat]

I hit mixed reaction.

I've played with a pregenerated character, but it was out of expediency, I'd been away from gaming for a while and wanted to join an existin group at a game club, the DM offered me a pre generated character and I said yes. She became my best loved character and a focus for the game for a while.

I would never want to be in a position where the DM was saying it was a prerequisite or anything.

If its my choice then its fine.

 

[eris404]

I had an idea for campaign that I never got to use. The idea came from an article in Dragon about a legion made up of mercenaries who were monsters, criminals, whatever, who had their personalities and memories erased magically and their alignment turned to Lawful Good. It is also inspired by the Planescape: Torment videogame (to this day, the only videogame whose story was so engrossing that it actually made me cry at certain points in the story).

What I thought would be fun would be to make 20 pregenerated characters at 1st level (numbered 1 through 20) and have the players roll a d20, with the result being the character they got to play (the players would have no prior knowledge of the characters and of course, duplicate rolls would be rerolled). They would find themselves in the employment of the Nameless Legion and had no memories at all. Though the characters start as a paticular class, gender and race, the players would be welcome to take any class/feat/etc. as they progressed. Also, each could slowly change their character's alignment based on their actions. As part of the reward system, at certain points in the campaign they could chose to describe a a person, place or thing that was important to the character, but the character could not remember exactly why it was important (so a player might be able to describe a beautiful woman, for example, but not know whether she was the character's mother, a teacher, whatever.)

My job as a DM would be to work in these snippets of memory into the game; the player would be free to figure out the details of his character's history, though as DM I would reserve the right to change some of the minor details, just to keep things interesting. Eventually, the characters' memories would come back and they would remember why they joined (or were forced into) the legion in the first place.

I thought it would make for interesting role-playing, especially if a good-hearted character suddenly remembers he was once an evil, murdering criminal. And does it make a difference to him that this change of heart was brought upon him against his will by magic?

I still think it's kind of a cool idea, but there are so many other games that people want to run that I don't think we'll ever get around to it.

 

[AFGNCAAP]

With mixed success, I'd say.

I've offered pre-gens for new games, & sometimes people went w/ it--mainly because the identity wasn't really established, but the stats were.

I've played in a game (actually, it was during the Night Below module) where players had severely limited character generation options, not to mention times when the players could only use characters whose players weren't present. The game was memorable not because it was so enjoyable, but because it was a bit of an arduous process (it had it's moments, but the non-moments far outweighed those IMHO). But, then again, I think that the game was doomed from the get-go, w/ real life issues & whatnot being a key issue.

However, I have run stuff where I hand a specific pre-gen to a specific player & have them play that. The character typically is designed for that player--I mix in aspects of that player's personality into the character, as well as that player's preferences as well (for example, the PC may be of a particular race of class the player often selects/plays/prefers). The PC names are a typical Gygaxian letter-jumble of the player's names. The PCs' ALs are ones that the players often play (not necessarily select, but play--there have been times when a player selects CG for their PC, but actually play the PC as CN).

The big catch is that these PCs & their adventures are part of a side game that directly/indirectly affects the main campaign (and the PCs that the players have created). It's an effort to do a bit of "meanwhile" work, as well as a fun way to create interesting plot twists: the PCs get to town, looking for an ancient text, but another group of adventures beat them to the punch--the pre-gens, who just happened across the book while on a mission of their own. So, in essence, the players literally have themselves to blame for making their own lives harder.

For the most part, these pre-gens were a hit, because it had its own fun, weird dynamic: for example, 2 brothers who are members of our group were depicted as a half-orc rogue (the elder) & a halfling fighter (the younger). The half-orc was adopted by the halfling's family (which isn't far from the truth, since the elder brother is an adopted child), & it was a funny-to-watch dynamic to see played out. A husband & wife pair were a dwarf sorcerer (him) and an elf barbarian (her). One player wasn't as amused (didn't care much for pre-gens as it was), but all in all, it worked out better than I expected: the only reasons why is because I more or less tried to match the characters to each player's preferences & natures, & because it was a recurring side-game rather than the primary campaign.