#from pregenancy
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batfambrainrotbeloved · 7 months ago
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HI!!! Here’s a fun little fact for you! Your brain is constantly eating itself!! Fun lil fact for you, maybe I’ll return with another, maybe not.
- 📕✍️
O H!!!
Did you know when you blink the reason you don't see black or that weird "Light through flesh" color is because for that split second your brain turns off your eye receptors??
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yellowmagicalgirl · 7 months ago
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Hello, fellow D&D players of tumblr! Do you have an Eberron campaign coming up, and the official subraces just aren't cutting it? Do you look at ordinary planetouched, and wish that they had more of a connection to their mundane, non-human parent? Or have you looked at planetouched and wished they had more of a connection to Eberron's planes? Consider using one of the 31 subraces in this book! These have been created for aasimar, dwarves, elves, gith, genasi, gnomes, halflings, and tieflings.
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If you're looking for more character inspiration, consider checking out one of the premade Eberron characters I have created - all are 100% RAW as per Rising from the Last War and the 2014 Player's Handbook.
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vintagerpg · 3 months ago
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Oh, hey, Vecna. I find it strange how the arch-lich looms so large in the history of D&D. His artifacts — hand, eye — first appeared in Eldritch Wizardry, the creation of Brian Blume. His first real appearance in the game was in this, WGA4: Vecna Lives (1990). It’s interesting.
It is very much in the mode of ’90s, focusing on the story unfurled through a series of interconnected, predetermined Events. There’s some dungeoning and city exploration, but the scenario is far more focused on investigation and explosive narrative happenings. It is not connected to the Falcon modules, though it builds on their use of the City of Greyhawk. Nor does it meaningfully connect to the imminent shake-up of the setting’s status quo that plays out in Wars andFrom the Ashes (though if the players fail to defeat the lich, the note on the resulting horrors of Vecna’s rule do seem to anticipate what actually happens to the world after Iuz triumphs).
I’m not sure in sum the adventure is worth the squeeze, though there are interesting bits. For starters, players take the roles of high level pregens: members of the sorcerous Circle of Eight and their associates. Vecna’s key henchmen are pretty fantastically weird — a humanoid with an eye for a head, and another with a hand-head. That it’s kind of…obvious and cartoonish, maybe, but then Ken Frank’s illustrations really sell the concept for me. They’re great and horrible and I would totally use them elsewhere. Third, I really like this Greyhawk that is full of standing stones and dangerous myths. Gygax tends to get all the credit for making Greyhawk an interesting place, but I don’t think it actually becomes interesting until around now, and I think it is ironic that Zeb Cook, who many at the time viewed as a great Gygax betrayer, was instrumental in this. Oh, and Easley’s cover is pretty great, too.
Vecna, defeated, at least in “canon,” winds up it Ravenloft for a while, and gets a big adventure at the end of that line’s lifespan, Vecna Reborn, but I’ve never read it. Nor have I read Die, Vecna, Die!, which ushered in the transition from 2E to 3E, much the same way as Eve of Ruin did for 5E (I guess that parallel depends on whether you think D&D Forever or whatever they are calling it is a new edition or not).
I don’t really understand where this idea that Vecna is one of the great D&D villains came from, though. He achieves far less than Iuz and even Acererak seems more accomplished. He keeps popping up in sourcebooks across 3E and 4E, but he only really amounts to anything in a Critical Role storyline (is that canon?) and as the source of a nickname for a villain in Stranger Things? I dunno, gimme Strahd any day. 
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thydungeongal · 8 days ago
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Here's a fun question for you. My temple wants to run a TTRPG event each shabbat, but we're not allowed to write anything down. Assuming pregen characters, do you know of any good beginner-friendly (and possibly kid-friendly) games that don't need to write anything down?
Oh this is is a really sweet ask! :D Okay, so games that require zero note-taking so you can run it without anyone needing to write anything down?
I think that Lasers & Feelings and most of its hacks could easily be run in such a way. They only require keeping track of one number (which never changes), the game runs rather abstract so there's no keeping track of HP, equipment, and so on. Lasers & Feelings is, by default, classic adventure sci-fi in the style of Star Trek, so I'm not quite sure how well it would go over with most people who aren't already somewhat immersed in nerd culture. But it has a lot of hacks out there and they're very easy to find.
Here's a fun one: RISUS. RISUS is a pretty traditional simple dice-pool game and it does necessitate players keeping track of some changing numbers. BUT the fun thing is that in RISUS any damage to a character goes into their dice pools instead of a separate pool of hit points or something. What this means is that if you wanted to you could have players set an appropriate number of dice on their character sheet equal to each of their attributes and then literally take away those dice from their attributes if they lose them.
I'm struggling to come up with any more right off the top of my head, but hopefully my followers can think of some :)
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theresattrpgforthat · 9 months ago
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Protect the Child: Digital Glitch
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It was supposed to be a simple job. Get in, get a sample, get out, don't get caught. You didn't expect there to be a kid, locked up in a room like a mouse in a box. She says the corpos stole her away from her parents and stuck her full of needles. Now she's in your arms, hands over her ears while the alarm blares, and security drones are blocking your every exit. What do you do?
Digital Glitch is a new, cyberpunk setting for Protect the Child. It includes 7 pre-written characters, all members of a group of cyber-runners, criminals who go on high-stakes jobs to rob the mega-corporations called zaibatsus in order to keep themselves alive. Unfortunately, the lab they were attempting to rob also happened to hold a girl, whose genetic code has gave her super-senses and a hyper-sensitive nervous system after IrisLabs tried a new experimental procedure.
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You need the rules for Protect the Child in order to be able to play this game, but right now, since PtC is in playtesting, the rules are free!! Currently downloading the game gives you access to a Google Sheets play-kit. There is also a pdf in the works to be released at a later date.
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This play-set was designed for both the Kiwi Jam 2024, and the Dice Exploder Pregen Jam. It's list of inspirations include Hamixh Cameron's The Sprawl, Cory Doctorow's Unauthorized Bread, and ZebraMatt's 24XX Dire Pulse. It contains themes of Infertility, Exploitation, Police Violence, Capitalism, Disability, and Medical Horror.
Check it out today!
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your-fav-is-plural · 1 month ago
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Aang and Korra being Pregenic :D (and i guess all of the other avatars too but that's a lot to do so. u dont gotta do all them)
Aang, Korra, and Every Other Avatar from Avatar; The Last Air Bender and Legend of Korra is Pregenic!
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A Pregenic system is one where many, all, or individual members came from a past life
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anim-ttrpgs · 2 years ago
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Annoucning the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club!
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The original idea was from @thydungeonguy, but he let us take care of it provided we do most of the heavy lifting to make it run smoothly.
Message either @anim-ttrpgs or @thydungeonguy and just ask to get an invite! It’s free, you just have to ask! Or, you can visit our website and find the discord link there.
Here’s the short version.
We’re running a club that treats (indie) TTRPG-playing like a book club. There’s a nomination period for RPGs, then a vote to decide which RPG we play, then scheduling discussion, then everyone who can make it(we may split up among multiple groups depending on the number of sign-ups) plays the same adventure with the same RPG(usually a 1-2 session adventure, 3 sessions if it has to go on longer), then we discuss it.
Then, repeat.
The purpose of the club is to play indie tabletop role-playing games that aren't D&D5e, bringing new games to people’s attention and getting to experience how those games work in practice. It’s an encouragement to step out of your comfort zone and try new games with enthusiastic people who love them, and even step out of your comfort zone and learn how to GM a game if you’ve never done it. The way we set up the structure of the club makes it very easy, forgiving, and supportive for GMs even when playing a game they’ve never played before—it’s really not as hard as it seems, especially since we use adventure modules, the greatest GM tool ever devised.
Join up by sending us or @thydungeonguy a message or ask, and maybe you’ll even get to play the full version of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy for free! That is, if it gets nominated and wins the vote. Even though we’re running the club, our own games aren’t gonna get special treatment.
Despite, and perhaps especially since, our games aren’t getting special priority in the club, and because the A.N.I.M. team is doing everything to organize and support novice GMs and fellow indie TTRPG authors, organizing and running this club is a good amount of extra work for our very small team for no direct profit. We ask that if you enjoy this club, you kindly leave a tip for us on kofi or support us on patreon. It'll keep this server running smoothly and keep us creating TTRPGs, plus with a patreon subscription of at least $5, you get the prerelease rulebook as well as future updates, two horror adventure modules, and two short stories and a novella taking place in the Eureka world!
Join up by messaging either us or @thydungeonguy, or finding the discord invite link on our website!
Even if that’s not your thing, visit our website anyway to pick up a free copy of the Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy demo, complete with a free starter adventure module and pregen character sheets!
This is gonna be a blast.
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milf--adjacent · 10 months ago
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Worried about getting your girlfriend pregenate? Follow this one simple easy solutions. Simply take the take the um the bottle simply take the bottle of calk from your shelf and put it in the contraption. After cut the tip of the bottle the contraption easily pushes the caulk out of the tube. You will be surprised to find that after cut the tip of the bottle the contraption um easily pushes out the caulk out of the tube. You will be surprised to be surprise to find that the tip of the contraption is cut from the tube 心水弓戈尸. Simply insert the cut tip of the tube into the end of the penis and squeeze the contraption. The simple caulk flows easily into the penis, making it impossible for you to impregnate your loved one. In several um simple um surprise you will be surprised how effective the contraception. Xiaohongshu!
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jennamoran · 1 year ago
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Can you- Can you become a Mystery - - out there, on the Far Roofs?
You can!
So, first, I should admit that "Mystery" is not a scientifically defined term. There are rats that are serious students of the Mysteries, of course, and more generally a significant body of scholarship, but it's still a soft science with a heavy ideological influence. It's not like astronomy where a respected body can decide that something is or is not a planet, or the French language where if one day the Académie Française goes rogue and eliminates "éclairage au gaz" from the language they'd probably get away with it. It's much more like sandwich discourse:
You can argue that Rick Astley is a Mystery, or that Hedge the Fang isn't, and what matters isn't whether they "are" a Mystery, but whether you and the people you're talking to accept your claim.
There are definitely plenty of corner cases.
All that said, you can definitely become a Mystery on the Far Roofs. At least one of the pregen PCs has that trajectory. Game mechanically, an advanced enough PC looks a lot like a Mystery. In setting, it's an explicit risk of going up to the roofs that you may become a legend or a god.
How does that work with the fact that Mysteries are correlated with experiences, or connect by name and nature to the "Abhorrent Weapons" of Nobilis and Glitch? In one sense, it doesn't have to; the rats are perfectly capable of deciding that you correspond to whatever experience they want to correspond you to, and engaging in the appropriate sandwich-style discourse if they must. In another, there's probably something that happens along the way to bring new Mysteries into alignment with that stuff, but ... you'll have to play to find out what!
The Far Roofs is 305% funded with 43 hours to go!
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nullandvoidgames · 9 months ago
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I released a small, simple little game for the Dice Exploder Pregens game Jam.
Matty Groves is an “Annotate Your Own Adventure” game where players recontextualize a story from an old folk song by adding imaginative new details.
Pay what you want for it
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thecoppercompendium · 9 months ago
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Current TTRPG Jams
My trawl through itch.io's game jams continues (see this post for my first find). I wanted to highlight a few more currently running TTRPG (or inclusive of TTRPGs) jams, particularly ones that aren't linked to a particular system. I've also chosen jams that don't rank entries, as a personal preference.
Here's the shortlist of what I found, listed in order of how long the jame has left, shortest time to longest:
The 2024 TTRPG Pitch-in Jam!
This jam utilises a bunch of titles/pitches for games as inspiration for those who join. The idea is that you take that title/pitch and make a short TTRPG using it.
Time left (at time of writing): 4 days, 10 hours
Dice Exploder Pregen Jam
This jam asks entrants to create a TTRPG/adjacent game revolving around Pregenerated Characters, that is, characters who are integral to the game itself, such that the game would not work with a different cast. They've provided a bunch of names for characters if you struggle with that kind of thing.
Time left (at time of writing): 4 days, 11 hours
Pride in the Fall Jam!
If you're in the TTRPG space on Tumblr, you've likely already seen this one floating around. @efangamez launched this one, focusing on (and I mean focusing in an incredibly broad sense here) the queer community/experience. For a TTRPG (or other piece of media) to be included, it must involve queerness in some way, be made within the past year, and you must fall under the 2SLGBTQIA+ umbrella. That's it. Go wild.
Time left (at time of writing): 8 days, 10 hours
Wordsy's TTRPG Jam - Autumn 2024
Nice simple set of requirements for this one. Requirement 1 - incorporate the theme of "Autumn". Requirement 2 - be a TTRPG or physical game of some description. Requirement 3 - be made within the jam duration; and lastly Requirement 4 - not be bigoted/discriminatory or use AI. Sounds like a good time!
Time left (at time of writing): 1 month, 5 days, 10 hours
10 Minute TTRPGs Mega Jam
Final jam of this batch, and no need to hurry with this one. For this jam you'll need to jump over to the 10 Minute TTRPGs show on Spotify or YouTube to grab a prompt from one of their episodes. Armed with this prompt, you're ready to go! There's no need for the game to be made in (or played in) 10 minutes, but you can if you want. The only other rules are that it must be a TTRPG, and that it must be free from bigotry - standard stuff.
Time left (at time of writing): 58 years, 9 month, 18 days, 4 hours
And that's the list! I'm sure I'll do this again at some point, but for now, go check the jams out! Make something cool! Find something cool!
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meatball-headache · 2 months ago
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Welp, it's official. My Caves of Qud playtime has surpassed Warframe. Warframe, which I've been playing since, what, early 2022? Qud, I've only been playing since 1.0 came out... but it's basically been one continuous session. and im nowhere near the end of either of them lol
Caves of Qud has hit me like no other game before. Once MMOs came around, I glomped onto them really good, because I was enamoured by their broad scope and perplexing depth. I'd see high-level characters with powerful gear and wonder where it came from, I'd see people shouting for parties to do this or that, not understanding their shop talk. Whereas the old-school JRPGs which I'm used to, even the ones that had all this massive size to them, since I'd mostly played Final Fantasies, those are almost visual novels with some combat between scenes. Stuff like Wizardry or Ultima, those had the same kind of impenetrable depth to them, where I never really got far, but they didn't have the same kind of mystique as MMOs.
—my point being, excluding MMOs which have an innate grasp on me by default, no game, no single-player, offline game has grabbed my attention like Qud has since Disgaea in '03. When I first played Disgaea, I played every day for 55 days straight, which was at the time a record (yeah, I keep track of this stuff, sometimes, because I'm a nerd :p) Usually I'd get a new game on a weekend, play it nonstop that weekend, think about it all the next week while at school or work or whatever, play a little of an evening, and when the next weekend rolled around, play a lot but get burned out by Sunday night.
Not only that! I'm not just playing Qud. I'm using mods—which I generally don't do, I generally like to play games "pure", but, in Qud's case... well, Qud is special. So I've already installed a lot of cool mods to change the experience, not in any overpowered way or anything—but also, I'm looking into making my own mods. Turns out it's really easy to bring in your own sprites by making a custom pregen. It's also pretty easy to create a custom subtype (I made a "Soft Heart" that starts with no weapon lol) and also custom items, creatures, quests, areas... I mean... I'm working on something, don't get too excited, it's a long way from presentable, but here's a sneak peak of the placeholder thumbnail:
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ehehehehehehehehehehhe :D
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vintagerpg · 1 year ago
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This is Fez II: The Contract (1983), the 2nd installment in the saga of the time-traveling wizard Fez, which was neatly concluded at the end of the first module. Many things repeat — Fez has spent time setting the stage for the adventure but is, for most of its duration, asleep. The players and their characters are then required to find their way through a skein of Seven Impossible Tasks in order to ensure Fez gets the bound service of Mephistopheles, which is integral to the events…of the first module (time traveling wizards gotta do things out of of order, I guess). They also do not know their character classes, thanks to some amnesia.
Unlike the previous module, most of the PCs are from the real world. There’s a football player, a curator, a rabbi, an engineer. The adventure is as much about figuring out the pregen character identities as it sorting out the Seven Impossible Tasks (especially since the authors suggest that player actions adhering to their class that are used in service to the quest should auto-succeed their rolls). There is a little calculator gizmo that can tell the players their attribute values, and Fez’s trusty robot, Warrior, hands out class-hinting weapons before sending the players off.
The players have to pick their way through a dungeon and a chunk of wilderness before they get access to the Tasks. That’s where things get interesting. The tasks are all very riddle-y and all have multiple possible solutions, one almost always being an annoying perversion of the spirit of the thing. Like the Third: “Destroy Spring.” You can travel to the monastery and defeat the Grandmaster of Spring in combat, or, you know, you can just find a mountain spring and drop a boulder on it. “Defeat the Beast of Antiquity” implies combat, but just winning a game of chess will work too. And so on. The success of these modules is going to depend largely on your personal tolerance for such smug cleverness. I’m generally here for it.
Solid art by Victoria Poyser throughout.
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ladytabletop · 11 months ago
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running another game jam :)
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theresattrpgforthat · 7 months ago
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Mint Plays Games: What Pre-Generated Characters Can Do For You.
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From July to October of 2024, the Dice Exploder Discord Server ran the Pregens Game Jam, a game jam all about using characters that have been created for a specific table, or that have been created to streamline the process of learning a game.
Incidentally, at the same time, I was setting up the playtest server for Protect the Child, and, primarily inspired by Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast, I decided to run my play-tests using a pre-gen format: I’d run a series of sessions using pre-generated characters, that could be picked up by various players depending on what games fit their schedules. I did this out of necessity - my hours are all over the place, and I can’t consistently run games at the same times on the same days.
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As we started play testing, I noted some interesting things happening among my players. The first thing I noticed was that the players latched onto the pre-generated characters fairly easily - and their attachment caught them off guard. More than one person told me that they were surprised that they could care so much about a character they didn’t write themselves.
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The second thing that I noticed is that players were really excited to take ownership over a character. Certain character story-lines or backgrounds resonated with them, and as a result some of my play-testers are making a real effort to come back so they can see the next chapter of their character’s story. It’s really gratifying, knowing that there’s something in these pre-gens that has them coming back for more - it feels kind of like having a favourite character in a tv show or book. Since I’m the one who wrote those pre-gens, I won’t deny it does a good thing for the ego!
For folks in the Dice Exploder server, this might not come as a surprise, as I’m sure experiences in games like Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine and Eat the Reich have both been hot topics in the ttrpg podcast sphere recently. These kinds of games are likely one of the reasons why the pre-gen game jam was such a hot event.
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However, I think there’s some more potential that could be pulled out of this. I think embracing pre-gens can do a number of really interesting things for your ttrpg experience, both in one-shots, as well as in longer campaigns - and I’m going to digress about that, after I talk about four games that I used as experiments over the past month.
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Lady Blackbird
I ran Lady Blackbird for the Open Hearth this past month. It’s a game that is exquisitely designed, because it makes the on-ramp for new players so easy. The characters written for the game are well-defined, with explicit personalities and goals that are designed to mesh well together and give the group reasons to both work together and engage in character friction. It’s also got some really stellar advice on improv, which was invaluable to me back when I was a first-time GM.
So much of the game asks you to turn to the players to build on the world around them. How does Captain Vance feel when Natasha talks about her pirate lover? Is Snargle intimidated or enthralled by Naomi? What kind of jail is the group stuck in, and why does Kale know a way out? From the get-go, the players are encouraged to throw in bits and pieces of the world, and the GM can then pick up on those bits and pieces and turn them back on the players, making the world relevant to the pieces that the players are interested in.
The group who ran it was great: everyone was willing to add to the world, and riff off of what had already been built. The characters sought out connections with each-other, and I found it rather easy to work in the elements that folks had indicated they were interested in - primarily butch lesbians, magical mishaps, and rebel activity.
The players also have a lot of creative control over their characters. You don’t have to stick with any of your characters’ pre-written goals: Natasha can give up on the search for her lover, Naomi can forego her quest for vengeance, and Snargle can choose to stop their witty banter whenever they like. As a reward for a big change in personality, the player immediately gains access to a new goal that tells us what they prioritize, and still rewards them for leaning into it. Every time I run Lady Blackbird, the players’ interpretations of their characters is different, and that’s what makes the game so re-playable for me.
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Subway Runners
I also ran Subway Runners on the Open Hearth. Similar to Lady Blackbird, Subway Runners uses pre-generated characters, but these characters are randomly generated: their motivations, skills and equipment can be used to develop a personality, but those personalities aren’t customized with the narrative in mind. Of course, the narrative isn’t really planned ahead of time either - your characters will always go on missions in the subway tunnels and come across strange critters or magical problems, but the details of any given foray are also randomly generated.
This doesn’t really stop the players from making some really strong choices. One player noticed that both his character and another were looking to find the cure for immortality, so they turned it into a rivalry. Another player noticed that his character had been given a spider-silk suit, and made it a key part of their character’s presentation. The randomly generated mission told me that it would involve a bunch of raccoons in a Death cult, so I wove that together with the monster description to make the monster the raccoon’s interpretation of Death.
Overall, the pre-generated nature of Subway Runners is incredibly useful in making it a no-prep, easy-start game. I don’t think I’d recommend it as a first-time game in the same way I’d rec Lady Blackbird, primarily because I think the GM needs to have a strong understanding of Forged-in-the-Dark rules to keep the game running smoothly. However, I think Subway Runners definitely solves the time problem - you don’t spend precious game time creating a character, and a busy GM can still have an adventure put together in five minutes.
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Blades in the Dark
I wrote up some pre-gen characters in Blades for my home group, pre-selecting the Smugglers crew, and taking a one-page mission out of Hour of Chains, a series of unofficial Scores written by A Couple of Drakes. The players showed up, chose a character from a pile, and wrote in their name, background, look, and a few pips. Their core stats, connections, and abilities were all chosen for them, and I told them that while they had to start at Brisco’s Noodle Palace, they could decide why.
The players had a lot of fun coming up with shenanigans, but at the end of the session, one player told me that they would have appreciated a fully-created character, complete with backstory. Another player told me that they weren't sure whether or not they were “allowed” to do something with the lore, as Blades has some lore built into the setting, and it’s hard to parse what is immutable and what is up to interpretation. I personally love coming up with the canon on the spot, but for folks who are new to this style of play, it seems that having some of that lore pre-defined might give them some confidence when it comes to determining what their character “would do”.
Compared to Lady Blackbird, I think this observation makes sense. Since Blades uses playbooks, I think the choices when it comes to motivations are made when the player choose a playbook. I had the ability to select the playbooks that I thought made the most sense for the Score I chose, but there were still enough playbooks available that all of the players had multiple options to choose from. Out of all of the sessions I ran with this experiment, I think that Blades was the weakest, and I think the reason for that is because I left so many pieces of the set-up undefined.
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Apocalypse World
For Apocalypse World, I wrote up a very specific setting, and designed the characters using the Mad Max series and the Silo series as primary inspirations. The post-apocalyptic settlement was an underground bunker with levels sectioned off for various jobs. I chose a series of playbooks that resonated with the setting I had in mind, and pre-selected gear, followers, stats and abilities. I also wrote up three threats, with loose ties to at least two playbooks each, with the expectation that I could pick up whichever threat made sense for the playbooks my players decided to engage with.
In short, I did exactly the opposite of what the Bakers recommend in the game: I planned nearly the entire thing beforehand.
That being said, I think the session was a really strong one. The players were quite happy to pick up the characters and play into the conceits I’d designed into them, for the most part, although one person did a bit of toggling with their gear to more suit the character they wanted to play. It took a little bit for folks to warm up to the confrontation mechanics, but when they realized how much the game encouraged turning on each-other, we were off to the races.
We ended the game with scenes that pointed to a snapshot of a larger story, which felt fitting despite the fact that I typically see PbtA systems as games that really reward you if you stick with them for a multi-session campaign. However, I went into the session expecting to play a one-shot, and we got a really fruitful experience out of it.
The Takeaway.
While I can still see the merits of creating your own character, and I certainly won’t stop running games using that format, I think that I’ve developed a newfound appreciation for pre-generated characters, whether they are built into the game, or they’re made to make the game easier to learn.
Pre-gens also solve a lot of problems that can be common in new tables: your characters already have a reason for working together, you can learn how to play the game using a template that’s built to work well, you have more time actually spent playing together, and you can engage with a story that your character is designed to be relevant to.
Pre-gens also give the GM a chance to build their own desires and boundaries into the story from base one: in Lily’s Angels, a pre-gen setting for Protect the Child, I was able to bake in the themes about transphobia, religious violence and state violence into both the setting and the characters. The people who sat down at that table sat down because of those themes, not in spite of them. In all of my one-shot games, regardless of how much of the character was written beforehand, the nature of the game meant that the players still had agency over who their characters were and what they did. The background was a jumping off point - it gave everyone a base to work from, and as time went on, they found their own reasons for engaging with the story as it was presented.
Additionally, in all of the games where the characters had strong backstories and well-defined personalities written into them, the players found reasons to really care about what was put there on purpose. A player who picks up Cyrus Vance in Lady Blackbird might pick them up precisely because they’re in love with Natasha, and a player who picks up Sal in Yazeba’s B&B probably wants to engage with the artist’s struggle to find his signature style.
If you go the extra mile, I think you can use this set-up regardless of the game. In Apocalypse World, the work is a little more than normal, but I don’t think it’s terribly much. In Rotted Capes, World of Darkness, or Call of Cthulhu, I think that it’s a substantially bigger ask, but traditional games are also very likely to have pre-gens as part of the book, built for starting adventures - it’s just a question of whether that starting adventure is actually right for the kind of game you want out of that rule-set.
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When it comes to my own game, Protect the Child - I made the pre-generated settings primarily to make play-testing easier, but I think I’ve stumbled on a little goldmine by accident. Using setting packs for a new table takes away a significant amount of set-up for the GM, and gives new players concrete characters that communicate the goals of the game without having to struggle through a series of character choices first.
Oh, and I also wrote a setting for the Pre-Gens game jam: Protect the Child: Digital Glitch. It’s a game designed to talk about disability, corporate subscription models, and questions of ownership, and I think it’s pretty rad.
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your-fav-is-plural · 9 days ago
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hope from el goonish shive is pregenic! (i think that's the term) she has some of the memories of pandora chaos raven but has largely forgotten + has a barrier around some memories that she has to convince pandora to let her access + has different personality traits/morals from pandora
Hope from El Goonish Shive is Pregenic!
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A Pregenic system is one where many, all, or individual members came from a past life
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