Pregenerated characters for newbie one on one

[ramrod]

Hi guys,


My wife really wants to get into d and d, so I've decided to run her through the basics and get her to generated her own character, or not if she prefers not to at that point.

I'm going to run her through the sunless citadel campaign, I'll play one of the characters, probably party face skill monkey class so that she can see possibilities and she can play two other characters, cleric and melee class would perhaps be ideal.

If it works and it is fun the we will continue on with it in spare time, before letting her create her very own real character for a campaign with the local gaming club. If it doesn't work, then at least it will be an intro into how the system works.

Either way, I have seen a few websites with some decentish starter characters, but does anyone have any PDFs with level 1 or 2 characters on, really basic ones? I could use the ones on the websites that I have found, but I know I won't have much time tomorrow to just put characters into proper sheets and what not!

[Stoneback]

I strongly suggest against putting two sheets down in front of a first-time player.

Rather than a module, run a few RP situations to let her build the character side as well as use her skills, interspaced with one or two simple combats.

I would suggest playing one character as her charater's "buddy" who can compliment her abilities. If she's not a rogue, play a rogue. Your instinct toward skill-monkey is a good one; a rogue also teaches flanking and the various types of actions in a combat round.

Once she has some small sense of the various kinds of activites and how they are resolved, throwing her to the wolves (a regular gaming group) is a good next step.

EDIT: continued.

If you intend to plop a character down fully formed in from of her, makee up a fighter sheet, a rogue sheet, a cleric sheet, and a wizard sheet. Explain what they are in brief, and ask her what she's like to try first.

Or, read together with her over the 11 core classes and go from there. Generate stats. Make suggestions but let her pick. Fill in the derived stuff like BAB and saves. Have her pick skills- again, suggest but let her decide. If the character is a caster, you can guide her choices, but let her pick spells.

Giving her some agency in developing the character sheet provides two benefits: first, the numbers mean something immediately. Second, it gives her the option of building a character of her own, and ownership is an important step toward adopting the hobby.

My wife was a baby when we got married. She never played D&D. Now 13 years and two kids later she is the chief nerd and we all play together.

It started with her completely gimpy gnome rogue/illusionist and his friend, a Xena clone. And I think at one point, I wore a cooking pot on my head to RP the gully dwarf King.

[ramrod]

Some awesome help, thank you :)

Still, does anyone have any pregenerated characters?

[ramrod]

I think that it was successful! We ran through the basic races and classes. My gf picked out wizard, which I advised against due to them not being as effective at low levels, I doubted that a wizard and melee class alone would survive long.

She asked if she could play both a wizard and a rogue, which was an awesome idea. She got to experience skill monkeys, melee and spell lists, which again she read and picked out herself.

After we had set up an eleven rogue, gnomish wizard and human paladin we did the first part of the sunless citadel campaign, got a bit of roleplaying in town, gathering information, sweetening people up etc before heading off, being attacked by some twigblights, dire rats and doing some trap finding at the entrance to the keep.

By the end of it she was independently making sure her rogue snuck around up front, searched for traps, was flanking and using all the right words... She did well. I just hope she enjoyed it enough to do more :)

[weckar]

Wish I had seen this earlier. I have a set of staple characters I keep around for running demos you could have used.

[Stoneback]

Wow, awesome result! She picked it up really fast then! You picked a good girlfriend LOL

[ramrod]

Yeah, the next step is just to try and get a beginners campaign set up at the local geek club and get her in there!

We ended up rolling characters from scratch and it was for the best, so she could see what the characters did and how/why they did it.

[weckar]

very true. Good luck in the future!


(Also, Geek Club? Unless you guys bite the heads of chickens, that's quite inappropriate.)






[And if you do, it may also be inappropriate according to the chicken]

[ramrod]

Geek club? Am I missing a malice cooper reference or something? It's just what most of us call our local war gaming and roleplaying club

[weckar]

Original meaning of the term 'geek' is someone who bit off the heads of chickens as a circus freak :smallwink:

[ramrod]

As far as I knew geek just me fool, jesters hat or to fool someone... Never seen any connection to chicken abuse before lol

[Palanan]

Geek club sounded fine to me.

I only wish I had one in my area...I'm living in a geek desert.

:smallfrown:




Originally Posted by weckar
Wish I had seen this earlier. I have a set of staple characters I keep around for running demos you could have used.

Same here--I have a stable of low-level characters I've worked up for various campaigns. Alas, the time difference across the Atlantic meant I wasn't able to get them to you, but it sounds like you and your wife had a great time regardless.


Originally Posted by ramrod
My wife really wants to get into d and d....

I hope you realize just how insanely lucky you really are.

:smalltongue:

.

[ramrod]

I've never met anyone that has played d and d and didn't like it! People that mock it, just haven't played it lol.

I found some cool website with some pregens on, but they weren't exactly what I wanted, so made my own over the last few days... Wish I had done them on the PC now instead of by hand!

Have you tried meetup.com to find a gaming group? I do feel quite lucky having found our gaming group, the guys that run it travel long distance every week to use facilities in my home town, due to the late ending, I don't think I would go if it wasn't local. I went on a hunt through meetup and asked every local person on the site who showed dungeons and dragons as an interest if they know where games were going on. They pointed me to two groups, the one I'm at is less specialised in rp games (lots of tabletop) but there are probably 50 members!

Falling short, you could always set your own group up!

[Stoneback]

There's a really nice bookstore/nerd heaven ten miles from my house. They play every tabletop game plus a lot of TCGs there. But I'm an old person with kids, so my gaming club is my wife and two kids.

It's so much better this way :)

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by ramrod
I found some cool website with some pregens on....

Which site was that? I wouldn't mind taking a look.


Originally Posted by ramrod
Have you tried meetup.com to find a gaming group?

Thanks for the suggestion, I appreciate it.

As it happens, I've been trying Meetup for the past year or so, with mixed results at best. For some reason my area just doesn't support much of a gaming community. All too often games are started, run briefly and fizzle out.

:smallannoyed:

.

[ramrod]

I found the same thing through meetup, which is why I started contacting everyone that showed dnd as an interest, that's how I got my hits! Not being able to find people to play with is the most frustrating part of the hobby... A lot of people conceal it, and a teacher, I don't tell anyone that I work with. If the kids find out I'll end up being followed around by all of the overly keen gawky kids lol. I don't mind everyone at home knowing I'm a massive geek, but I don't like it getting in the way at work..

I can't wait for my daughter to be interested in games, it I probably have another 8-10 years to go... She is only two lol.

As for generated characters, this is the best one that I found for my own purposes, I took a paladin from it. http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/characters/characters.html