You've driven across numerous state lines, subsisting on convenience store burritos, Pop Tarts, and Mountain Dew, to get to BigCon. Once there, through some miracle of mis-scheduling, the organizers manage to put you into one of the games you actually requested. Luck is on your side as you find the table amongst the sprawling mass of similar groups, braving the curtained labyrinth to find your game group.

You arrive in time, and settle down, pulling out favorite dice and your copy of the rulebook. Three hours and forty five minutes to play this scenario to the bitter end. With a herald of trumpets, the Gamemaster arrives, bulky backpack nearly dwarfing him. He draws out the rulebook, and then, you twinge as he pulls out a sheaf of blank character sheets. You look at your watch. Character creation can take an expert an hour in this game, and you see some of your fellow players don't even have rulebooks with them.

As if rubbing it in, you hear a dozen other games roaring by, already immersed in adventure as you begin to roll dice. You find that familiar refrain bubbling to your lips...

"Best three out of four, right?"

Creating characters ahead of time for a roleplaying convention game session should be a matter of common sense, though few Gamemasters seem to bother, thinking that they'll just do it on the spot.

For campaigns at home, with time as an ally, and among friends who know what the campaign will be like in advance, this is fine. In campaigns, Gamemasters should advocate letting players think about their characters for weeks before things begin. Ideally, the characters should be drawn into the campaign by elements in their backgrounds, their interests, and their weakness. es. These kind of campaigns are usually the most rewarding.

Trouble is, not so many characters created on the spot at a gaming convention are original, interesting, or have any thought put into them other than to kick butt for the next three hours (That's right, three hours now! Time is running, running, running ... ).

They tend to be one-note characters, without much depth or reason even to be involved. Sometimes, the adventure itself requires characters to have skills or abilities that weren't brought up in the character generation process, which means that the characters can accomplish zip.

Have you ever been in a group of characters who, upon the final confrontation, realize that none of you had thought to take Ancient Ugaritic as a language skill, and thus are unable to translate the magic scroll of Ilthyrian Death Crawfish Banishment, watching helplessly as the horrendous mutant crustaceans stomp all over downtown Chicago, sky sizzling behind them?

In the history of role-playing game conventions, has anyone ever slugged a Gamemaster who forgot that one of the characters had the supernatural ability to detect ambushes which would have warned all of you of the ambush which destroyed half your group? Or slugged the player whose character had this ability when they remember about it an hour after the battle?

How many times have you seen a struggling Gamemaster try to incorporate a soldier of fortune, a stand-up comedian, a jaded alcoholic pri. vate eye, an IRA terrorist, a computer hacker, a death rocker, a priest, and a bounty hunter into a murder investigation amongst bums in New Orleans?

Have you winced to see a player new to a game who has no idea what to do for a character half an hour into the character creation time? Ever wish that convention organizers, while sorting schedules and reservations for games, would enforce the "Novice/Intermediate/Expert" classification of player experience with brute force and superior firepower?

Ever wonder why all player character groups seem to have an inordinate number of people with high weapon skills and the wherewithal to use them indiscriminately, or if the Gamemaster limits them, how many seem to have the maximum allowable skill with firearms?

Ever just get up and leave when the Gamemaster hands out those character sheet blanks for a game as character-creation-intensive as Kult, or Nephilim, or any of the World of Darkness games? Traveller? Shadowrun? RuneQuest? Ars Magica?

Even a good Toon character takes about ten or fifteen minutes to create out of thin air, especially if the rulebook is being shared by more than one or two people.

Or even worse.... How many times have you been having a great time, only to have the Gamemaster suddenly speed things up to a ridiculous pace due to time constraints? Or suddenly end the thing unsatisfyingly because he's got a game of his own to get to? Or, even worse, adding insult to injury, when the Gamemaster calls things short and then has the audacity to tell you what would have happened, as if that fills some perverse desire for "closure?"

An important note to any game designers hoping to exhibit, sell, and demonstrate their games at conventions: forcing large numbers of people to go through a complex character creation process in a system no one has had time to even read once, or owns a copy of, for a two hour game session is an exercise in futility.

Having sample characters ready, perhaps even ones featured in rulebook examples, speeds things up immensely and might even help sales. Let them have the character sheets as a freebie, and they might reciprocate by buying a-copy of the game. Heck, for that matter, if you're not planning on selling the adventure to another source, why not give players a copy of the adventure they just went through? So many new games are coming out without initial adventures, and source material is often a long way away, that these kinds of efforts can create loyal followings for the cost of a few photocopies.

Gamemasters aren't the only culprits. Players should even try to help out, or prepare beforehand.. If you, as a player, know you are going to be in a specific game, then maybe creating a quick character beforehand would be a good idea.

If you know that the adventure is going to be set in, for example, Wild West America, then spend a half hour before the con, or in the car over, writing up a basic cowboy character who can be plugged into an adventure. Give him some background that shouldn't conflict with the Gamemaster's plans, a name, and a list of some sample gear.

If those blank character sheets come out, then show the Gamemaster your character and get the jump on everyone else. Maybe you and another player who did the same can begin the adventure, bringing the other characters in when they're created.

Ten Tips

So, ten guidelines for Gamemasters and players for campaign characters:

1. Always bring pregenerated characters for a game that is not open to pre-existing characters. Even if it is a game where players use their characters, bring a few pregenerated characters who would be suitable for the scenario, or allow some NPCs to be turned into player characters.

2. Bring a few extra pregenerated characters, and maybe even a few that are only mostly done for players who insist on customizing them. Leaving things like name, appearance, gender, and other surface characteristics open are all acceptable means of giving players some input without slowing things down.

3. Overlap characteristics enough so that even if all the pre-generated characters are used, they will have the resources, abilities, and skills to accomplish the goal of the scenario. This also means that they should have abilities which will enable them to survive if someone is killed, incapacitated, or just isn't able to do the job they set out to. Sometimes, the character necessary just isn't in the right place at the right time. Rather than crush them flat for that, give other people the skills necessary ahead of time so you don't have to improvise lamely. This allows everyone to think that there is still a chance of failure.

4. Pregenerated characters should have the advantages of being customized for the scenario, already familiar to the Gamemaster, and with strong, easy to role-play personalities. It takes no work at all to create characters rounded enough so that people can get into character fairly easy, rather than having to breathe life from a vacuum created by exhaustion, caffeine frenzy, and fatigue from carrying a backpack full of books around all day.

5. Offer a wide variety of character types to please everyone, making sure each has some business being in the scenario. Even with a little bit of preparation, the above-mentioned motley crew of characters can be dragged into the same scenario. Well, make that a lot of preparation, but it could be done.

6. If you have the ability, clip a picture from somewhere or draw it yourself to give the character an appearance. Maybe even make photocopies of character sheets and give players the copies, for keepsakes and in cases where you are running the same game more than once. A picture or sketch of a character says a lot more than a description would. If you must provide a description, say something like "She looks like a younger, blackhaired Susan Sarandon with glasses." Using a famous person as a guideline is a trick that suggests character quickly and painlessly.

7. Try to offer some variety in race, age and gender in the pre-generated characters if those are specified. Though it might seem as if role-playing conventions are inhabited solely by overweight, bespectacled, bearded men, someone else might show up. It's also a matter of simple common sense and good manners to use some small measure of taste in creating these characters. Why not an elderly, ethnic Chinese private eye? How about a black errant knight, converted to Christianity from Islam? Instead of your standard horror-movie staple Catholic priest, how about a rabbi?

8. If you are offering some variety, don't always assume that females want to play female charac. ters, males want to play male characters, or even the reverse. These are tricky times; why not let people choose the gender of the character they want to play rather than having it shoved down their throat!

For that matter, why bother to specify gender or race on the character sheets until it becomes necessary? Unless the character's background story specifically calls for their gender, it's usually not important to decide this before playing.

9. As a player, bring at least one new character created for the con, and maybe bring yours from your own campaign if you play that game at home. Use the description of the event in the convention catalog to come up with a character, or at least write down a half-dozen or so ideas for characters. Use the standard rules. Try not to come up with any weird permutations of rules or things which the Gamemaster might not want to use.

If you've got more than one character, offer one to another player to speed things up if character creation becomes necessary. And remember, even if your beloved character gets iced at the convention, it doesn't really have to have happened in your campaign back home, just as booty and experience earned onsite should be jettisoned. There are some exceptions to this rule, such as Amber Diceless Role-Playing, which routinely sucks up characters from alternate versions of the same universe and throws them into play together. But that's an exception.

One Gamemaster trick for modern-day RPGs which could serve well here concerns names. Before setting off for the convention, just jot down a list of about twenty names picked at random from the phone book: both men and women.

Customize them, mix and match, and so on to have some good instant character names. Gamemasters can use lists like these to come up with instant monikers for NPCs created when characters want to talk to someone you didn't expect them to contact. A really useful booklet is The Everyone Every-where List, from Magic & Tactics Unlimited, a cheap and inexhaustible source of authentic names from dozens of ethnic groups and languages. There are also computer programs with the same abilities, and any baby naming book could serve the same function with Western names.

10. Above all, relax, have fun, and roll with the punches. If a player turns up with a character that they really, really, really want to play, let them. If it's a pain, then there are plenty of ways to put power-hungry, or trigger-happy players in their places. If a player shows up with a character with the proverbial "18/00" Strength (or the equivalent), then let them use it, but adjust the head baddie's henchman up to Strength 19 or 20, or put a Ring of Weakness in someone's hands. Why not do both, and let the character be pounded on like the proverbial 98-pound weakling for a change?

One More Rule

Finally, one unspoken rule for Gamemasters which can be freely ignored if it conflicts with your style of play is this one:

11. Let them win. People come to conventions for fun. They usually don't get a second shot at the scenario with different characters, the way your home gaming group might. They've come a long way, in some cases across the world, to have a good time in your game.

Ending the game with them failing, however hard they tried, is usually not the best way to leave a good impression, unless the game itself is one where failing in a mission is part of the fun (Paranoia or Toon, for exam, Pie). Whatever the outcome, give the players the feeling that they did something to affect things for the better, or directly changed the world positively.

Still, make them feel like they've earned their victory, through foreshadowing a means of success, or by making someone unbelievably lucky at the moment of crisis, or by a reversal of fortune with the villain suddenly inconvenienced or showing some weakness. Before the game, create a few ways that they might succeed if things get really bad, and drop hints for each of them in the game's early stages, such as a random comment or an minor action which turns out to have incredible potential.

If the players don't need these "helps," don't use them. Nothing is more annoying than having your butt pulled out of the fire in the last few moments via some form of deus ex machina, but a one-in-a-million shot from a character with described as "Lucky"in a description might be all that is needed.

To use a weird analogy, gamers come to conventions for the same people eat in buffet restaurants. A lot of different types of food, all of it ready, and all of it just waiting for you. You want something exactly to your specifications, then you stay home or go to a different restaurant.

What you want at a con is a lot of choices, fast fun and furious all, and you want gaming in quantity. Quality doesn't hurt, either.

But most of all, you want it NOW!