How do you hand out Pre-gens?

[Carl Gleba]

How do you hand out pre-gens at cons? Just wondering if everyone lets the first guys that show up get the pick of the pre-gens or if there is some other technique used?

[JimmyB]

Well my games this year are for Chaos Earth, and everyone is a Peace Keeper of some sort.
So I came up with something new this year. I have 24 different modular Pre-Gen characters
that allow the players to make choices. Literally hundreds of combos.

I also have random tables to determine what "base" character everyone will have.

[Braden Campbell]

I put a sticky note with a very general descriptor on each one, like "Wulfen heavy weapons guy", "human soldier", "Noro computer expert", and the like. Then, when everyone is seated, I spread them out, and let them pick and/or negotiate with one another.

[zyanitevp]

1st to sign up gets 1st pick, etc for me typically. Not 1st to arrive at the table- however, I do not ever start late, so if the 1st to sign is late, they go to last pick...

[Damian Magecraft]

I keep a file folder full of Pre-gens and present double to triple the number of pre-gens to participants. And it runs as First Come First Served. (I do try to have multiples of the most common tropes though.)
And none of my adventures require the "classic" team build to succeed.

[Bill]

I have a stack of file folders, each containing one character; just for my own amusement there are duplicates in the stack. First come is first served. If somebody takes a duplicate character, they're the same character from an alternate timeline, the near past or future. I enjoy it and I think it highlights some of the strangeness of Rifts earth.

[FatherMorpheus]

I have a Rifts based game, and 10 pre-gens for the game. I'm going to try and print out 4 copies of each of them so each player can take their copy after the game.

Of course, I built these about 18 months ago and slowly tweak them before each time I run the game.

[ingexthefuryhunter1]

I have a stack of pregens and a cheat sheet of there skills and general attributes, I let the party pick from and then tailor the game to fit.

[Warshield73]

I try to have at least 2 or 3 extra characters for people to choose from and I try to have some sort of brief description. Robotech is easiest here as all most characters care about is the mech. They get to choose in two groups.

Group 1: are people who signed up in advance and that is first come first serve.

Group 2: Last minute players get to choose at game time and it is a toss up, first to grab the character gets the character.

[Phaze]

For my Game 2 on Friday night at Gencon, (Robotech RPG) I am going by an unmarked sealed envelope that contains the character, special instructions, and player 'Kit' (like a quick reference). These will be place randomly at each seat available. Players arrive and have a seat. I will allow a second or two at the opening to have the players review thier characters and if they would like, they can trade with another willing player. Role Playing will be highly encoraged as the characters are diverse in ethnicity, gender, and personality. There are NO (at least none functional, Hint Hint) mechs in this lot...only foot troops on a rescue mission as all of the mech units are fighting the Zent invasion of Macross City.

I play a hard style of GM... I look for a lot of laughs and fun, but I am not afraid of letting the dice kill a character off. For a game like this where people pay to play, this can be a bit of contention. So I have a fall back pool of NPCs (that they have met in game) that are part of the storyline that are colorful and fun, and for the remainder of the game, that player can run one of these NPCs.

For example, in one of my other gaming sessions the following happened:

Ross (Heavy weapons specialist) and his team were engaged with micronized Zent warriors sent to infiltrate the base. He was killed when he left cover to directly assault an enemy. The next round, from out of the smoke of warfare stepped the barracks Handyman with a pipewrench that finished off the enemy (GM intervention) that killed Ross for a very dramatic moment. The player then took control of that NPC, and had a better time with the Handyman and the pipewrench than he did with the original character.

[Grendal270]

Last year when I ran GURPS at MACE West the youngest player got first pick. From there it was just a free for all, I had basic roles on each character folder so the players had an idea of what type of character they would be getting. You could aways use dice rolls to determine an order as well.