Listen to this episode here.
Pregens! They're not just a tool to get started playing quicker, they're also a way for a designer to take you by the hand and guide you to a very specific place, and they're a shared language across every table that picks up your game. Today, Aaron Lim and I break down all the joys and beauty of pregens, up to and including Aaron's meme charts.
Aaron’s Kickstarter
Ithaca in the Cards: Second Expedition and What Should We Have Tomorrow? Full Course
Ad Links
Growing Thylacine: A Pamphlet Zine TTRPG
Further Reading
Last Train to Bremen by Caro Asercion
Caro Asercion on Dice Exploder
Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast by Possum Creek Games
Lady Blackbird by John Harper
Larp Design and the chapter BASICS OF CHARACTER DESIGN by Juhana Pettersson
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This episode was edited by Chris Greenbriar and Sam Dunnewold.
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Transcript
Sam: Hello and welcome to another episode of Dice Exploder. Each week we take a tabletop RPG mechanic And ask it to put on a name tag. My name is Sam Dunnewold and my co-host this week is Aaron Lim. This is an episode about a topic very close to my heart, pre-generated characters.
I think many people dismiss pregens as clunky and annoying. At best an onboarding tool for new players if you want to skip the hours it takes to do character creation and show them what the game is like, or maybe a necessary evil if you're at a convention and don't have the time to make characters for your own.
But I love pregents, especially when they're baked into the design of the game. they're a way to let a designer really take your hand and guide you to a very specific place
and they can be a language by which every table that picks up your game communicates with each other after they've played.
There's something I've wanted to talk about since this podcast started, and after I got to play Last Train to Bremen by former Dice Exploder co host, Caro Asercion, I knew it was time.
Last Train to Bremen is a game about four musicians who've made a pact with the devil for fame and fortune. Now he's coming to collect, and Cockerel, Cat, Hound, and Mule have caught the Last Train to Bremen in a foolhardy attempt to outrun fate. And I just love these little guys, especially Mule. wanted to talk about Mule as soon as I played the game, but it wasn't until I got home and saw Aaron Lim posting meme charts featuring the cast of Last Train to Bremen that I knew exactly who I wanted to talk about them with.
Aaron Lim's games include a favorite of mine, An Altogether Different River. He also organizes Playtest Zero and every other week Design Meetup on Discord. And right now, he's crowdfunding revised editions of two games at once. Ithaca in the Cards, Second Expedition is a blackjack driven story game about doomed travelers on a perilous journey home, inspired by the Odyssey. And What Should We Have Tomorrow, Full Course, is a solo journaling game about managing your pantry and cooking a week of meals for your loved ones, inspired by What Did You Eat Yesterday. There's a link to all that in the show notes.
But Aaron is a great talent, he's a pleasure to play with, he's one of the first playtesters on Last Train to Bremen, and he's great with a meme chart. So let's get into it. Here is Aaron Lim, with Mule, from Last Train to Bremen.
Aaron Lim, thanks so much for being on Dice
Exploder.
Aaron: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Sam: Yeah uh, what have I corralled you here to
talk
about today?
Aaron: we are going to be talking about Last Train to Bremen by Caro Asercion.
and with art by Connor Fawcett. The quote unquote mechanic that we are talking about is the pre generated characters, and I think we are focusing on the Mule today?
Sam: Yeah, today, our
mechanic
is Mule,
Aaron: That
boy!
Sam: What's he like? Yeah I guess these characters don't have pronouns, but I am going to use he him pronouns for Mule because that's how I identify with him. Yeah, we're talking about Mule.
So let's back up and discuss the game first. What's the deal with Last Train to Bremen on a flavor side?
Aaron: So Last Train to Bremen is a game where you play four musicians, members of a band, together and They are the cat, the mule, the rooster and the hound? Yeah, I almost said dog, it's actually hound.
Sam: Well, it's, Cockerill, not rooster too, which we can get into, but I think it's like also a nice little detail that is a little bit more flourish y even than rooster for that one.
Aaron: Yeah, and so it's, based on like, you know, the, classic, four musicians of Bremen. But in this one, they've made a deal with the devil, and he's coming to collect. They've come out of a tragedy, the place where they all got started, the black barn burned down, and they are running away, they are trying to get out of this contract, or save themselves from this contract with the devil, and they are taking train together.
I think, relevant to our conversation that the Mule arranged for, And while they're there, stuck, thinking back on, like, all the decisions that led up to this point. In, believe, in the fiction, and then in the game as the players are doing, you're playing, like, Liar's Dice. and reflecting on, like, you know, the road that and like, where you're going, right? Like, you're not necessarily going to Bremen, even though that's what the title of the game is
Sam: maybe you're going straight to hell.
Aaron: yeah
Sam: but yeah, we're all like on a boxcar. We're playing Liar's Dice The game is told through flashback as we sort of sort out our petty grievances with each other on the way to Bremen.
And yeah, gameplay is Liar's Dice. I think this could be a whole other episode unto itself, right? Like, Liar's Dice is this existing dice gambling kind of game. It's a fun strategy game. It's kind of like Skull, if you've played that, or a bunch of other bluffing games.
Aaron: It's known as Perudo
as well
Sam: Mmm, cool.
sort of knew about this game before I started playing it here, but I I love the way RPGs in total have started taking more and more mechanics from board games and figuring out how to sort of like drape a story on top of them. but. That's for another day.
The key thing here, I think, is that it immediately sets the tone of this is going to be a little bit of a PvP kind of game, right? Like, this is a game where the characters are competing with each other, they're at each other's throats, there's conflict within the characters of the game.
And we're here to talk about the members of the band, as we have said, so let's walk through, like, what are the components of one of these characters? Let's look at Mule.
Aaron: So before we even get to the character sheet, this is the thing that I love about like presentation of the game as is that layout and the design, brings to mind like old timey posters like for performances, and There's a little bit of like a circus y vibe as well.
Sam: And a little bit of, like, black book, like, you immediately understand, Oh, yeah, there's devil involved here. From, like, looking at the line art.
Aaron: like the idea of like the playbill, there is a Dramatis Personae which puts all four, characters and just gives them like a couple of lines to introduce themselves, and that's like really cool. Like it's always nice to have um, brief introduction for each character.
Sam: Let's read these because I feel like the mules ones here just do so much heavy lifting right out of the gate And and they only work when you read them all in my opinion.
Aaron: In order as well.
Sam: In order, yeah, yeah, fact that the characters have a really strict order is really fascinating and like, is used in this game in interesting ways.
Okay, so:
Cockerel. Fiddle and PR. The face.
Aaron: Cat. Bass guitar and manager. The Brains,
Sam: Hound. Lead guitar and lyricist. The heart.
Aaron: Mule. Drums. Treasurer.
Sam: Yeah, that's it. I love just like everyone else has like the thing that they are, they're kind of positioning themselves, lead guitar and lyricist, there's a little bit of Bleeding Heart there and Hound of the Mule is just drums, treasurer. Let's get down to business. Let's go. And you like, you feel it immediately,
like the artwork too is It's just beautiful. I love everything that Connor does. But they all have these, like, little lines coming off of them that just feel like sort of artistic flourishes to fill some space around the characters. And Mules have these, like, little lines that almost look like whiskers, like, coming out of the side of his, snout, as it were.
And I see them as like an exasperated exhale, right? Like someone else might see them as like he's talkative or like he's shocked or something else. But when I see mule, drums, treasurer, then I see those lines. I immediately just go
And I feel like that like fits the character as then described and you get all of it from a few lines and and just Those two words. It's amazing.
So then, each character gets a little, like, paragraph long character description, too. And, Oh, I'll read this out and then maybe I'll cut it if it's long.
Uh, Can't take these fuckers anywhere.
Aaron: Strong start.
Sam: STRONG START, that's in caps too, leave it to them to dig a hole they can't climb out of, leave it to them to drag you down with them, leave it to them to bring trouble to your door in the dead of night, watch the Black Barn go up in fucking flames and beg you to bribe some asshole at the train yard to look the other way, so that they can leave you hauling their instruments into the back of this overstuffed rickety ass boxcar while they all piss and moan. They're assholes, goddammit. But what are you gonna do? Leave them out to dry? This train is your last shot at breaking free from the devil's grip once and for all. This better be worth it. They better be worth it.
It's so good, it's so fun, it's so dripping with the tone of the game right away.
Aaron: would encourage you to just find the game, go read it. We're not going to try and read the whole game this episode.
But the writing for some of the other ones are not so direct, right? There's a little bit of a remove. Like the way where you would write a memoir you know There's a little bit of like fictionalization and a remove going on you're trying to like tell a story and then You come to the mules and say no fuck these guys. There's a very direct blunt thing in there.
Sam: And that does two really interesting things. The first is that it immediately is like, okay everyone else has been like telling it their way, but like these are the cold hard facts. We're gonna summarize at the end, remind everyone what's the premise of this thing and just walk through the truth of it.
But also coming on the heels of all the other characters editorializing what's going on, it's like Mule is presenting himself as as the cold hard facts, I'm blunt, I'm simple, I'm down to earth, but like, he's just as much making it up as everyone else. It's just as much his point of view as everyone else, and that sort of informs him as much as his description informs everyone else.
Aaron: This is one thing that I love about the premise of the game, right? Like, just to take look at the overall thing. Like one of my favorite things when like, like Caro pitched the game to us was like in the touch to the inspiration, just like, no, no, this is Fleetwood Mac. This is like fucking messy
Sam: Yeah. Yeah! Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Aaron: So the next step here is to introduce the relationships, and why I bring up the Fleetwood Mac thing, because, like, this isn't a game about you escaping the devil. Not really. It's a game about like, figuring out what are these four like, fucked up people doing? How did they get here? And like I said, it's all a lot of flashbacks. So these relationships are really, really important. 'cause that's kinda like the meat of the game, right?
Sam: and that's the thing that like , to take another step back, that's the thing that pre gen characters allows you to do with a game, is to ensure that you get a really juicy set of characters who are perfect for the juicy situation that we've come up with, right?
Like, you can make a version of this game that's like you're four members of a band, you've sold your soul to the devil. Now you're going off, you're we're playing the liar's dice, and you like make up the characters. And we have rules for that. And I think it would just be worse because I, at the table, I'm a good writer, like, I could've written this game maybe, but I certainly could not sit down at a table and write it in two hours, right?
Like, me and the three people that I'm playing with are not gonna come up with something nearly as good as Caro did with design and a design process
Aaron: Yeah. Yeah, because I think writing, like the act of like playing the game and like creating the characters 'cause that are together and like, quote unquote writing is fun and good. But like the benefit of prej characters is editing, right? Like, you can come back, the first pass, second pass added to like, make sure that all of these have juicy relationships that reinforces some of the themes of the games and would push towards some of the things that are really really interesting about the dynamics of Liar's Dice.
Sam: So the first two right are like cockerel asks mule Which of my petty vices do I insist on passing off as a business expense?
Aaron: Yep. So you, you, already know, like, the typical band stuff of like, oh, money is going to be a
Sam: We're doing this shit and like that's the conflict between those two people and then Cats like, Cockerel, Why did I beg you to take on our press and publicity? Oh good. That's interesting Cats may be a little more subby to cockerel. Whatever. Okay, cool We're still doing messed up.
And then hound says to cat.
Aaron: What did you see in me when we first started hooking up? It's like,
Sam: Yeah that we're fucking doing it. It's not just business. We're making it personal right like
Aaron: yeah,
Sam: yeah, we're a bunch of hot messes.
Aaron: So it's, I think players could have come up with this themselves, right? Like and this the thing about like, you have safety tools, you have like palette setting at the start, and like you're setting up expectations like, hey, how much do we want like romance and romantic relationships?
And I think very specifically the phrasing hooking up is , well, Important to my point, is that, like, how much is this game about sex and, intimacy, right? What the pre generated characters provide here is that, this is about, that kind of, like, messy relationship, There's a Little bit of a way where you can kind of like, shirk responsibility to the designer and say like, look, that's the game,
Sam: it's alibi is the LARP term for this, right? It's it's your excuse. It's your alibi for getting to engage with this content. It's like I'm not the one who brought up the hooking up like the game did it So we're doing it and it also then allows you to opt out if you don't want to do that.
Aaron: Yeah, yeah, yeah, so it's introduced early enough, you actually can kind of like, like, Self select out if that's like, want to be here to see the mess, but I don't want to be the one in the mess. Or I want to be in a mess in a different way. I want to, embezzle some funds over here.
Sam: Yeah, yeah, exactly, you two can hook up, but that it's fine if it's at the table, but it's not for me. I could just be over here and judge it and like that's fine. Yeah. Yeah, totally.
I think there's hmm. We were kind of like gesturing in there the idea of of Players being able to come up with this and make it their own, right? That my mule is not going to be the same as your mule. My hound is not going to be the same as your hound.
And I really love, in this game, the metaphor of the playbill of this being a play that we are putting on. Both because it sort of sets the tone of, like, feeling a little more Old timey, like I can see the set of the play almost, but also because it introduces that metaphor of we're like casting the game.
That like, in the same way that my Hamlet is going to be different from your Hamlet, my Mule is going to be different from your Mule. And it's still going to be Hamlet, there's still going to be that through line between every time we play the game, but just like I'm interested in seeing Hamlet more than once in my life, I'm also interested in playing Hamlet. Last train to Bremen more than once in my life.
And I like that metaphor as a way to put some proof out there that Pre gens don't necessarily put you on rails, right? There's still a lot of room to play with and to find and to make this game your own Even though you're being given a pre gen to start with.
Aaron: Yeah, yeah, because these aren't framed as facts about the characters, these are questions that you answer, right? And you can answer them differently. You might think that like, to you, it's obvious, there's only one or two ways to answer it, and then someone else comes up with the answer that surprises you, The randomizer is the human experience. we're looking at the same image, we can have different interpretations of it.
Sam: Yeah, cool.
So, the next thing we do is we go through and we choose each character's secret. which you kind of said earlier is sort of like the character's relationship to the group. Almost.
Aaron: Yeah, and all of them are juicy,
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Aaron: And I think the one that you highlighted is, is really good. which is, I lied about our destination. This train isn't going to Bremen, it's going straight to hell, right? it does double duty in that like, it's about the relationship to the group you've kept the secret because you've, you're kind of betraying the group, right?
But it also kind of like, sets the tone for the game and like the setting of the game. It's like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, in this one, we are truly doomed And it bringing, like, up more of those themes, right? Like you know, the supernatural element of like the deal with the devil, Whereas I think I highlighted that one of favorite ones from The Mule is that Hound's brother and I had a scheme to fleece the rest of band blind, which is a much pettier and Y'all going to hell. Why are you, like, keeping this secret that, like, you tried to, like,
Sam: Yeah.
Aaron: cheat everyone else out of money, right? And it's, like, a more, like, practical, realistic, uh, human instead of, like, a, yeah, more grounded of, like, I don't know, I'm just here to, like, get money out of this band,
they, they suck.
Sam: Yeah. Well, I love putting All of these on the sheet too, because they become all things that Mule probably has thought about doing, right? It's like, maybe you pick one and that's the like actual secret that you're keeping from the band, but the rest of them still like worm their way into your head and kind of get added to the soup of your version of Mule.
Aaron: Yeah, yeah, it's part of, like, the potential, like, the potentiality of the character, it's part of the, personality, right? It's like, oh, they would do this.
Sam: Yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah.
Aaron: time, but they would.
Sam: They totally would, yeah And the last secret I think is interesting, it is the devil made me a proposition to revise our contract, but I didn't trust it not to backfire.
And that one is sort of like safer right, like I'm not a hundred percent sure why that's secret necessarily because you can see a less antagonistic version of that secret in a way that is not true of the other two.
And I believe all of them have one like that, where you can pick a secret that is a little bit less confrontational, a little bit more dialed down. And in that way, the, like, choosing of the secret lets you sort of dial that for yourself, too.
Aaron: Yeah. There's Ways for the game to let you regulate the experience that you want, either by choosing particular characters, or how you interpret and answer some of the questions, and then also in how you choose the secrets, that can ratchet how hard you want to go with the PvP aspect of it.
Sam: Yeah. So the last component of each character is some memory prompts. And these are really short. These are like the first time you lose a die while playing Liar's Dice, it's a Liar's Dice thing there's two prompts. First impressions, a lingering glance. And you would take one of those two, or you would take both, and you set a little memory, a little flashback, a little scene around that prompt or prompts.
And that's it. That's all they are. Once again, these, I feel like function almost like pre generated scenes. Like all the stuff we've been saying about pre gen characters also kind of applies to these things as like things that are gonna happen but that you are really gonna get the chance to put your own spin on and your interpretation of.
Aaron: Yeah, yeah. They're almost kind of like, the way moves function on, like PBTA playbooks, right? like, Oh, this is the kinds of situations that you would put yourself in, and, what you would do in that situation, Like the, the kinds of ways that you would get out or make those situations worse. and like, so in PBTA, Games, there's more of like, craft the situations to, to when these things come up. and in, Last Train to Bremen, it's like, oh, they're here, and they're going to come up, you just have to choose how they are going to come up.
Like even random tables, for like OSR style games are kind of bounding like the possibility space of play and trying to like shepherd it towards one where all the players have a higher likelihood of reaching like a shared understanding of what you're doing.
Because tabletop role playing games are so much in the imagination and in ways where like, we are kind of like trying to increase the sharpness of the image that we are forming of these characters of the game of the game world the fiction and everything like we're trying to like dial that in the longer we play. Is where people talk about like session zero setting expectations talking about like the social dynamics of like play as well , not just about like game mechanics.
But when we do have to lean on game mechanics, then these are some of the ways, right? Like the Pregenerated characters for a lot of games are the settings, right. Uh, The world is a character. And so like you're accepting some amount of like pre generation there. And then why is it that pre generating a world is like cool and fun for a lot of people, but characters are, oh, you're restricting my freedoms.
Sam: . I do feel like I understand lot of complaints about pre generated characters, right? Like, I asked on Blue Sky in the prep for this episode, if you don't like pre gens, why don't you like them? And got a lot of really interesting answers, right?
Like, people like that ownership, they like even if the setting is fixed, what's your character arc gonna be inside of that setting? Is something that I, is very, it feels very distinct that like you might want to have that kind of ownership over and really want to control more.
But I love a really tightly bounded experience because I really want to kick things off quickly and smoothly. Like I think the best part of games is like when we can get into the fucking thick of whatever's happening and pregens get us there so much quicker. Like, it's so hard to get started playing so many games, I feel like, that so many games you sort of fumble around and figure out, okay, how does this world work? Who are these people? Like, how do we function as a playgroup, what's the dynamic here exactly? And once you get a couple of sessions in, they feel great, or once you get two hours into your one shot or whatever. But when you start with really clear characters and really clear drama and a really clear starting point, it's just so much easier to get there. So quick.
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Aaron: So this might be a hot take, right, but I think a lot of styles of games profess to not be about story. like Jay Dragon, like says that Wanderhome is not a story game. And OSR games, or like that dungeon crawly style of play, is not concerned with story, but about, like, discovery and The experience of, like, going through a place.
And I think, yes, that can be true, but, like, I think story is still a part that you can't Ignore as much as like you can say like that's not core thesis of the game. But because story making, I believe story making is like a very human thing, right? You are trying to make sense of the world and often the way you make sense of the world is to tell stories about it and define what you think the story of, of the world, of the people around you, what kind of stories they are, right? Like the simulacrum of the thing that allows you to, to understand it, And a lot, for a lot of us, that's narrative and story.
and so I think like what pre generation does and why it can come up against those other styles of play is it feels like it is like prioritizing story. Like you are pre writing parts of the story when I think one of the things that it's trying to do is just get to kickstart that process.
Story making is like a technology that allows you to quickly understand and like form a shared language with people. So speaking the same story language allows us to kind of, like, shortcut or, like, get to similar spaces to, like, understand, Okay, here, here's the thing that I'm interpreting, this as, which helps You then. Put the other stuff that's there into context. Like, oh, okay, then why is this place built this way? Because it ties back to the story.
So, it forms like the irritation in the nacre that lets you build a pearl around it,
Sam: Yeah. Well, I think I mean if rules in role playing games are about injecting something into the conversation that we would not have all come up with on our own by just like doing free form roleplay, then like Pre gens are just another avenue by which to do that.
They're just another source of surprise or alternative starting grain of sand to build the pearl around. Like, the thing that pregens bring to the table is like, someone else's completely different idea of like, what kind of story we could be telling and engaging with tonight.
And like, I'm seeking that out, cause like, I know it's in my head. I want the like, thing that is coming from someone else. I want to engage with art to like get their artistic vision, not to sort of just like, live out my power fantasy or whatever kind of fantasy.
And that's not to look down on like that version of engaging with art but like I love pre gens because I really want a really strong voice from whatever the game is that I'm picking up
Aaron: Yeah, and that's because like, you're looking for like, a slightly different experience, right? Because if you play a lot of games, , then you start, like, realizing that, I understand myself and what I want.
Or like, if you have a lot of creative outlets where, you know, it's like, okay, if I don't get that creative expression in a game, I'm gonna go write a book! I'm gonna go, like, play music! Right? But I think for some players that is their primary way for them to express their creativity. And so, it feels like taking a tool away from them.
Which is just, you know, like, different contexts for, like, why you are using those games, and why you are using those particular tools to get at the style of play that you want. Or the expression that you want to get,
Sam: yeah, and I keep I'm like shadow boxing this person that like we're making up here but
Aaron: Making up a guide to get mad at?
Sam: yeah, exactly like the other reason I love pregens is like I don't want to have to do that work. Like, I just want to like sit down and start fucking going. Like, I want to play these games at a dinner party with my friends that haven't played a lot of RPGs. , I want to just sit down on a call with you and whoever, two other people we're playing this game with, and just like immediately be into it and into playing and not have to sit around and take 90 minutes to come up with our characters first, you know?
I, yeah. And I'm
Aaron: to interrupt, but I think a lot of that is about context of play, right? And, for example, I understand that, and I do love a lot of games that are like that. And I also want to sometimes, hey, can we just sit for two hours talking and just make up the character?
Sam: Yeah, totally, totally.
Aaron: is also like really fun, like the meandering style of like play and imagining without like a quote unquote purpose of like building coherent story together,
Sam: Yeah,
Aaron: is also something that is valuable and depends on the context, right?
So if I only get to play So this is the thing that I think I brought up online as well. It's like, if I only get to play a game once a month, then I might be looking for something where it's like, hey, like, just get me into, like, the, good shit straight away.
Whereas, if I get to play once a week, then it's like, oh, it's okay. I want that slow release. I want the that build up because I will have the time to, to do that. And I think it's something about the way different people are approaching games from, like, different contexts and game mechanics are, you know, contextual, right? There's no one right game mechanic for everything, like, you make the game to fit the purpose, or, like, the, use case that you are trying to go for, right?
And I think this ties into something that we have kind of like skirted up against is like how or actually, sorry, something that I think you brought up in social media that I want to bring up again is like how certain styles of games are like being designed for like different play contexts, like thinking about how PBTA they designed Apocalypse World to, like, cut to the action in that way because they started having family and kids and the context of their lives changed such that they had less time to play or like, you know, a way where like, Hey, if I need to go away and like take care of the kid for a bit and then come back, I can still like get into it and not need to take so long to like ramp back up into the game, right.
something that I was talking about with like a friend who's in Japan It's like, there's more emphasis on like exploring characters. There's also a lot of like, like short play times but there's a different response there where it's like more about like, exploring characters rather than space.
So there's less like dungeon, let's not say less, but like some players in Japan like have responded to that by like doing a lot more character work than exploration work, right? So more internal explorations of like character dynamics and relationships because I don't know whether it's just like, oh I don't have time to do like world building stuff? Let's play in Call of Cthulhu and set a lot of things in like mostly modern world because then it allows us to like jump quicker into like those internal or character things because we all have this shared language of like how the modern world works with the supernatural layer on top of it, so we don't have to kind of like, world build that kind of stuff, right?
So I, yeah, not trying to like, characterize like Japanese gamers, but it's just like a play group's response to like, the limitations that they have, right? Like, might, change types of games that you're after.
Sam: Yeah. We've been talking a lot here about like pregens as a tool. And how that tool is to some people's taste or appropriate to some context and not to others But I want to get into more details about like what is the context in which pregens is really great? And like we've done some of that right like short time frames when you want to just like get right into play and stuff. Or Or, like when you want to introduce content maybe, like the, the alibi that we were talking about earlier that maybe players would not introduce on their own.
But I'm curious, like, are there other contexts that you can think of or other reasons to really deploy pre gen characters where they're at their best?
Aaron: I think I was kind of talking around this when I talk about story as well.
So like, archetypes, Or characters like the idea of certain character types or like horoscopes. Something that came out of like the the Last Train to Bremen playtest is we made meme charts for, for each of the characters. And we had a lot of fun doing that to the point where I, I ask Carrie, like, can you just like provide us with like a clean icon for each character so that it's easy for us to just, like, cut and paste to put, move them around, like, these charts.
And, those kind of archetype thing is, like, really, really strong for not just at play but that really important part of after play and, like, sharing the play or the story. what some players might call, like, the after story of the game,
Sam: yeah. yeah. Like the, place where like, you have played your version of Last Train with Bremen, and I've played mine, and now we're comparing notes. Pre gens are like a shared language between the two of us. And there, even like a, a culture that might build up around the fan community of the game.
And like the meme charts are amazing for that, right? Like you posted on blue sky these like meme charts of what these characters are like in the game and people were coming out being like Yeah, just like that. Like I recognize that part. Like I get it. It's that that connection is built
Aaron: Yeah, yeah and then you can talk about, like, the characters and, like, see how other people play the game and like, it becomes a lot more transparent. like, oh, this is how you, interpreted this character that's different from, from me. But I see how you got there because we both have some other parts of the character where we have shared understanding, where we overlap and agree on, right? And say, okay, where's our points of agreement and where are our points of departure here?
It becomes really useful, easy to do that, and then that forms ways for us to kind of like imagine and connect with other people through like that, play um, I'm using a different sense of the word play in the play of the characters, right?
So other games like Yazeba's Bed and Breakfast, like, comparing like, hey, how did my Parish do versus your Parish? Like, how did they end up, right? Like, Parish is the frog, you know, Chef, right? Am I remembering? Yeah, so it's like, oh, had a game where they were like, really a chaos gremlin because they got to like give up their responsibilities for a night and like, You know, usually they were responsible and like, they got to explore a side of themselves.
So it's like, that interpretation of that character and like, seeing how other people like, play around with that and, and form different versions of their characters is also really fun.
Sam: Yeah, it's interesting to compare back to stories into like, fables, or like uh, I'm thinking like Norse mythology or Greek mythology, right, where like, Loki and Thor have a particular relationship in like, old Norse mythology, and they also have one in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and there is like a through line there, but they're also completely different, like, they are in conversation with each other, and they, there is like a common language to speak there, but also like radically different interpretations at the same time, and that is interesting.
Yeah.
Aaron: Yeah, I love that you brought up fable because going all the way back to the original, point of discussion with Last Train to Bremen, Caro used the four town musicians of Bremen, but you don't need to be familiar with the actual fable, the actual story, right? Because the characters are animals and because we have so many animal fables we kind have kind of like built up characters like characterizations of certain animals.
Like you brought up the difference, like what's the difference between calling them a Cockrell or a rooster, right? Like even the term that we use for the character imparts like a different story, a different interpretation of that character.
Sam: it's really interesting. Yes, I really wanted to talk about animals as pre gen specifically here, too because I think like if you just take cat
as you were saying like we all have this idea of like a cat who's just gonna walk by and not give a shit About you and like knock a mug onto the floor, right? And like that's a version of a cat. But we also all have in our heads a version of cat who's like an orange cat. Who's probably fat and like purrs loudly and like very lovable and kind of a dummy. And Those are both like very archetypical cats. And so there's like difference there, but they both like they're cat. You know, there's there is something that is shared fundamentally about
Aaron: Yeah. Yeah. Can I tell you, like, in, in Malaysia they're called oen, like orange cats. Oen, like
Sam: Yeah, yeah, yeah incredible.
And like, animals as pregens is also such a useful tool if you're thinking about making a game with pregens because you can shortcut so quickly to personality by just like putting the animal name in there.
Aaron: yeah. Because we have like , we have uh, anthropomorphized animals. Like we've given them human trait, like we talked about, like the mule as the example, right? Stubborn as a mule is like a common saying, and so that stubbornness is like something that can just come really quickly when you just say like, oh, this character is the mule, right?
Because when you make a human character, you might describe them as mule like because of their stubbornness, right? So that kind of common language and stereotype, I guess, is useful to like shortcut certain things.
Sam: And the other thing it does is give you something to push off of, too, right? Like a stereotype that you can lean into or play against. Like, if you are not like a normal cat in a particular way, then that, like, stands out more. That's, like, your interpretation. And you can kind of see those contours.
And, like, I feel like that's similar to, I think you brought this up in our show notes with Dungeons Dragons, Like, the same way that how is my mule like a mule or not like a mule? You have like, how is my fighter like a fighter or not like a fighter? And how is my elf not like an elf or like an elf? And you get to balance off of those shared language.
And that's where your creative expression comes in, right? Like that's where your interpretation of Mulel or your fighter comes into play as you get to be like, well I'm like the stereotype this way, but I'm also like in conversation with it this way Like I'm different in this way, and I love that Baseboard to jump off of that a pre gen gives you
Aaron: Yeah, yeah, you don't have to write like 200 words to say like, oh, my character is good at fighting, they can use a sword, they can wear armor. No, I'm a fighter, right? like when we talked about meme charts and all, like, it's a very common thing in like D& D, all those like D& D shitposting meme accounts, right?
And I think that's one of the big Like, advantages, that D& D has as like a cultural object rather than just as a game object, As a cultural object, it has all of these signs and signifiers that allow people to kind of like identify with each other and like identify certain other things with like D& D and like, spread its influence.
Sam: Yeah The other thing that I wrote down in our notes to just like hit this same point from another angle is like pre gens feel like Comedia del Arte, right? There's this like established set of characters, every story interprets them kind of differently and there we go.
Aaron: Yeah, yeah, I think when we talked about like, animals as well, right? Like there's the, I think I also brought up Astrology signs and then like animals are also part of like the Chinese zodiac and also part of like that kind of like personality divination in like Chinese zodiac so like oh people born in the tiger year are a certain way, right? Everyone wants kids that are dragons because they are supposed to be driven and like type A and successful.
Sam: Yeah.
Aaron: Yeah, that kind of stuff is part of like the mix in there that you get with like pre gens. Like you can lean on a lot of like cultural things rather than do that work of world building that is unique to your game, and it's like, no, you can lean on like these like signs that are already existing in culture.
Yeah.
Sam: This is something that you said previously, and I just really want to underline it as we're kind of like heading into the end of this conversation. I really feel like the strength of pregens is giving everyone at the table a shared language to talk about the game and the story. And that's like, everything from setting expectations so we all know what this world looks like, but also like just giving us a baseline that we are going to play on.
Like the pregens get to be like a really clear jungle gym that we can then run all over. And I just love that. I love that about them.
Aaron: Yeah, yeah, that's why I actually really love the word scaffolding, right,
um, yeah, because like if you've seen like actual scaffolding, they are practical, they're built to be practical and yet in their practicality, their similarity to like Jungle Gyms and like affordances that they have, they can be playful things, right? You can jump from them. You can build like parkour courses from like scaffolding. watched like World Chase Tag and like see people jump through like holes in in like a rail or something to escape someone and it's like you can see that there's play in like very simple forms. And so like pre gens being scaffolding or like, tools pre gens and like pre generated settings being like that and even rules for games, right? Like being scaffolding is, to me, like, really resonant.
And, I think, even without Liar's Dice, without the structure of the game if you've just given the character sheets for Last Train to Bremen, you could play something,
Sam: Yeah. Yeah.
Aaron: right? might not
be the
same game.
Sam: Yeah.
it's not the same game, but we're all sitting around this train car and we're fucking yelling at each other and we all have a secret to yell about. Like, of course, I can play that immediately. Yeah, I know what to do.
And I, I want to just, cause I was going to bring that up too. I want to just, like, underline. At that point, are we LARPing? We might be LARPing. Like, this whole conversation, like, I, we're about to enter on Dice Exploder a, a series on LARP over the next couple of months. And, something that is, like, underlying that whole conversation and medium is that, the vast majority of LARPs have pre made characters and people love it. It's just like, it's not a questioned part of the medium. Like, there are LARPs that I've played where you're making your own characters, but it is just the default norm that you're coming in with pre gen characters, and then you're all gonna sit around as those characters and yell at each other. Or whatever it is that the game is asking you to do.
And There's a reason for that, right? It's, it's just really, really effective. Like, they, the characters themselves can, in a lot of cases, be the entire game.
Aaron: Yeah, and I think specifically in LARP, because of that embodiment, there's a thinner veil between yourself and the character. So having that level of remove, of using a pre generated character where like you said, that term from Blark is alibi, right? That helps a lot to kind of like, build that wall between the character and yourself, right? Because Not danger, but like It gives you instead of draw you in, a potential handhold to get yourself out, right? Yeah, of like decompressing out of the character and says, okay, that's not me.
I didn't create this. I played it I inhabited it and then I can put it away now,
Sam: Yeah. I think just kind of riffing off my head here, too, I feel like in tabletop games, you can always sort of like go back and rely on like a central resolution mechanic, like the Liar's Dice here, or like the D20 roll in D& D or whatever it's gonna be. And LARP usually doesn't have something like that. You're just sort of embodying the characters and you're there doing the thing.
And that's interesting to me, that like, LARP maybe has less space for, not no space obviously, but less space for relying on that kind of play, and so maybe needs to rely on the pre gen characters a little bit more to make up for it.
I don't know if what I'm saying makes sense, but
Aaron: you don't have that tool, then you want to, you want it to be much more clearer that yes, this character in this situation would do this. We don't need to randomly decide something. We don't need to like, do a skill check, it's like, your pre generated character has those abilities or has that personality that would inform how you would react or how you would perform in those situations.
Yeah, maybe. Hmm.
Sam: Okay, is there anything you want to wrap up with, Aaron? Any last words you have about pregen characters at large or our best boy, Mule, in particular?
Aaron: Yeah I think the main thing here is recognize that it is tool, right? Like,
Sam: Mm
Aaron: really, really useful in certain contexts, but they are also they don't fit. Everywhere, right? As much as I love pregens I also love coming up with our own characters and figuring out, like, characters through play.
And you can do that with pregens as well. So, think the thing that I'll come up with is like give them a try, and try to play them differently, and see how other people play similar pregens differently. I think that expansion of the possibility space of what stories, what people can be, a really, really me, a really important part of tabletop RPGs as a medium. And so I would highly encourage that, and pregens provide a framework to be able to do that.
Do that. Yeah.
Sam: Yeah.
Aaron: Yeah.
Yeah.
Sam: I,
Aaron: Cool.
Sam: I am often as many RPG long term players are. I'm often accused of playing the same one or two characters over and over again, and one of the reasons I love pregens is for the opportunity to stretch, to push beyond my comfort zone and to experience something different and to try on a new skin, you know, try on being mule for a while when I'm usually just playing cat, and
Yeah, I also, I just love the kind of tight focused experience that you get out of a game with pregens, and I really encourage everyone to just give 'em a try if you haven't. If you don't think that they're your thing the games with them can go really quickly so
it's not a huge time investment. Yeah, pregents. They rule. They're a tool. Use them in the right place.
Aaron: Yeah.
Sam: Alright, classmates, our homework this week starts with some reading. Check out the free book, LARP Design, at the link in the show notes, and read the chapter Basics of Character Design, by Juhana aPettersson. It lays out a practical process for writing characters for your game. Maybe walk through that process on a game you're working on, or follow it through on an existing game you love, whether or not it has pregens.
Just, I don't know, see where it takes you. It's a good chapter. Then, here's a discussion question. If pregen characters help establish a shared language around a game across a play community, what are some other ways that games might be able to do that besides pregen characters?
Alright, thanks again to Aaron for being here. He is still kickstarting Ithaca in the cards, second expedition, and what should we have tomorrow? Full course, right now on Kickstarter. You can find Aaron on BlueSky at Aaron Lime, E R H O N L I M E, and his games are at AaronLyme. itch. io.
As always, you can find me on BlueSky at DiceExploder. com, and come on down to the DiceExploder Discord. You can order my design memoir, Dice Forager, at DiceExploder. com, And you can find my games at sdunwall. itch. io, including We Three Shall Meet Again, my brand new game about witches.
This episode was edited by Chris Greenbriar and by me.
Our logo is designed by Sporgory, our theme song is Sunset Bridge by PurelyGrey, and our ad music is Lilypads by my boy Travis Tesmer. And thanks to you for listening.
As always, see you next time.