Hi,

I've teamed up with a roleplaying partner of mine to conduct a series of RPGs demos in a store in our hometown of Lisbon, Portugal.

This month (at the 28) it's my turn to run a demo and I choose Spirit Of The Century and I have a few questions about how to conduct it. I'm expecting 4 to 5 players (some I now, some I don't), plus me, and some of them will have their first contact with the game and other with RPGs in general.

1) I really like the way SOTC (and Evilhat games in general) handle character creation and I think everyone should make their own, it's a crucial part in enjoying and "getting" the feel of the game, but I'm affraid that it will suck a lot of time out of game play. How have you dealt with this in demos?

2) This point relates to the first, I would like to ilustrate to them the full power of the pick-up game, in witch we create a story arc on the spot using their Story Aspects. Is this the wrong way to demo the game or should I bring some concrete ideas to the game conected with the pre-gens?

That's about it for now, thanks in advance for your input everyone.

- Diogo Curado

#1

There are a few strategies. 

Strategy A: do a "character creation demo" as a stand-alone demo session.  Tell people that character creation is a mini-game by itself.  But don't make it part of your main gig.

Strategy B: pregenerate characters, but don't fill in their last 4 aspects or guest star phases (phases 4 and 5).  Otherwise fill in everything -- stunts, skills, etc.  Then, at the start of your session, have everyone do the guest-star thing and fill out those four aspects.  That gets you a lot of the character creation thing without the time consumption of stunts, skills, and first three phases.

Strategy C: Just provide fully pregenerated characters and suffer. :)

#2

Nope, that's a great idea.  If you really want to be a "rock star", put everyone's aspects on cards, and have them either randomly hand you one of their cards each, or have them pick one and hand it to you, then build the adventure based on what they've handed you.

Thanks for doing the demo!

Thanks for the quick reply!

1) I really like strategy B, and I have thought about it before but wasn't sure if it was kosher.

I'm going to make some pre-gens, maybe using some of the Icon character that come with the book, but just to make it more flexible I'll leave some skills in blank for them to choose.

2) Wow, that rocks my world! especially because I'm using a similar system in a D&D campaign I'm running to generate adventures using the Hero's Banner character map.

Great tips, I'll post an AP after running it and let you guys know how it went.

- Diogo Curado

iago wrote: If you really want to be a "rock star", put everyone's aspects on cards, and have them either randomly hand you one of their cards each, or have them pick one and hand it to you, then build the adventure based on what they've handed you.

One final thing.  I find it VERY useful to make sure the effects of stunts are summarized on the character sheets.  You definitely don't want to "speedbump" your demo by pausing to reference the text in order to figure out what a particular stunt's effect is -- and by putting it on the sheet you end up enlisting the players to stay on top of that and see when it can be applied.