Monday, February 08, 2010

New Campaign—Character Creation Thoughts

We held our character creation session for the upcoming Deadlands: Reloaded Campaign this weekend. P's wife and kids were sick, so he was unable to attend. I think things went relatively well, but we didn't get to the portion of the character creation that I wanted to make sure happened.

So we have: Matthias Wilkinson, a Gambler that got caught up in some women troubles in New Orleans and took a slow boat to Shan Fan; Ada Pearl, southern belle with a nasty case of wanderlust; I didn't get Tiffany's Character's name (I don't think she chose it yet) a Bounty Hunter, and ... Not exactly fleshed out, but the numbers are on the character sheet; and P's character (He's probably got a great name picked out—but I don't know it yet), a Law Dog that had a Falling out with the Texas-Rangers and is now working as a free agent.

The one thing I wanted to get to was finding some connections between the character's past lives—before they were hired by their mysterious benefactor. I have an Idea for a connection between my wife's and Tiffany's characters that I need to run by them.

I'm looking forward to playing a game with more fleshed out characters. I think Tiffany's would be further along, if we could talk her into hopping onto Google Wave with the rest of us.

I'm a little torn now about the invitations that I send out for each session. During Zombie Run I had a group of fifteen people and no more than five ever actually showed up. Characters were a little more two dimensional, but I think that was okay for the setting, and for my first campaign as Game Master. I was hoping this game could be a little more fleshed out, so at this point I'm considering changing the invite to only people that have fleshed out a character, however, I'm of the opinion that the more the merrier (even though I think I'd panic if fifteen people showed up to a session). I don't want to Exclude anyone that just wants to show up some random week—but throwing together a character in 5–10 minutes like we did for Zombie Run is not what I had in mind for this campaign. I'm not sure what to do...any thoughts?

3 comments:

  1. I'm not sure about your dilemma, maybe have some PC's already drawn up for use of random people?

    To further explain my character: I learned all my nifty skillz from the young slick Foreman of my family's plantation. I always thought there was something out there I was meant to do, but didn't let the wanderlust take over until I came of age and the Foreman expressed no interest in courting me. After years of looking up to him I felt spurned and left to go on to hopfully bigger and better things.

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  2. I think that having a couple of pre gens is an excellent idea. I think that I have a pretty good character name. Though at this moment I can't recall what it is.

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  3. I also like the idea of a couple of pregened chars.

    I also think that people who are hit and miss should play characters who are a more subsidiary role. That is until the show up consistently.

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