Creating characters for your players (one shots)

[Foxolicious]

Has any one run a one shot where the DM has created the characters and the players choose which one to be?

My usual DM is out for a week so I decided to create a 1 shot which takes place in the universe that I had in my campaign which ran about a year

All the players will know the characters because they were the town's folk and other NPC's

Has anyone tried this before and was it a successful game?

Was there any complications and what should I look out for?

Details
Level 5 characters
Exploring a dungeon while there usual PC's are out of town on a adventure

[Unoriginal]

I did. Also used pre-made from the books. Though not for 5e.

It worked well. One piece of advice, though: create a couple more characters than there is players, so that no one is stuck with one character because the other players already chose.

The only issue is when a player is interested by none of the characters, but the only two times it happened at my table was because the person was trying out playing RPGs and wasn't interested by it (the second time I even made them a character the way they requested but nope, still no interest).

[CTurbo]

I've done a similar thing except I random rolled 6 characters for 5 players. The players rolled a d6 and the highest got to go first. They each rolled a d6 to see which character they "won". It was a lot of fun both making the characters as well as DMing the characters.

I random rolled for race, then class, then stats, then background, and then a free feat. The players got to choose their subclass, spells, and weapons, etc.

The Minotaur Abjur Wizard with Sentinel was especially fun. The Lightfoot Halfling Vengeance Paladin with Magic Initiate too.

[DMThac0]

That is a fun one shot setup, always has been, don't stress over it, you'll do fine.

The fact that you're taking NPCs and bit characters from a recognizable game should make it very fulfilling. There will be those memories attached to the characters they're playing. The only complications I see may be continuity if one of them ends up dead, and expressing how they went from classless NPCs to 5th level adventurers. However, this is D&D and we are all very willing to suspend logic for a good story! Do remind the players that when their regularly scheduled program begins, they don't know anything about these NPCs going off and having an adventure. Take lots of notes for your MIA DM, maybe what you guys do will spin off into the other sessions.

Have fun!

[Unoriginal]

Also, since it's an one-shot, personally I advise you to just print out the NPCs' statblocks and given them to the players, rather than translate them into PC classes.

It'd be a much funnier and novel experience, IMO.

[Foxolicious]

That is a fun one shot setup, always has been, don't stress over it, you'll do fine.

The fact that you're taking NPCs and bit characters from a recognizable game should make it very fulfilling. There will be those memories attached to the characters they're playing. The only complications I see may be continuity if one of them ends up dead, and expressing how they went from classless NPCs to 5th level adventurers. However, this is D&D and we are all very willing to suspend logic for a good story! Do remind the players that when their regularly scheduled program begins, they don't know anything about these NPCs going off and having an adventure. Take lots of notes for your MIA DM, maybe what you guys do will spin off into the other sessions.

Have fun!

Lol they're from a level 15 campaign and they were part of a rag tag mulisha the PC's put together to defend the town in there absence so I think level 5 is reasonable and hopefully no one dies this time!

[Tawmis]

Has any one run a one shot where the DM has created the characters and the players choose which one to be?
My usual DM is out for a week so I decided to create a 1 shot which takes place in the universe that I had in my campaign which ran about a year
All the players will know the characters because they were the town's folk and other NPC's
Has anyone tried this before and was it a successful game?
Was there any complications and what should I look out for?
Details
Level 5 characters
Exploring a dungeon while there usual PC's are out of town on a adventure

Just did this a few weeks back. I DM my regular group on a fairly irregular basis.... :D

One weekend, my group was doing a camping trip, but not everyone was staying the whole night. So I printed out the 5e characters on the WotC site (all level 1), and took it with us camping. I had everyone just create a name since everything else was already pre-done (race, class, stats, etc). Made up an adventure on the spot, revolved around several monsters in the MM, and a farming village - and we actually had a REALLY good time of it. Because everyone knew it was a one off, so no one was super concerned about the actions their characters were taking - and I was allowing for some silly one off actions. The next night, some more folks joined us (who had never played D&D but heard their friend talk about my campaigns) - and I gave them some characters to choose from (all pre-made from WotC site) and had them join. It was a really, really, really good time.