Tonight, I’m focused on a crucial, and often underrated, part of the game design process: the pregenerated character. For a game built on a brand-new ruleset, pregens are the fast track to the fun. When you hand a player a pregen, you aren’t just giving them a sheet of stats. You are giving them a key to the game’s core experience. They get to immediately embody a classic monster archetype and dive into the narrative.
(Often times, I’ll consider character creation an entirely separate thing to playtest – a session all of its own.)
This also gives me, the designer, invaluable feedback. I get to see my mechanics in action without the distraction of character creation. This helps me pinpoint where the rules might be clunky, where the balance might be off, and most importantly, where the game is truly exciting.
Playtest 4 Pregens
As I work on the next playtest release for Hexingtide, I’m revisiting the pregens I’ve shared in earlier versions. The default setting has moved back nearly a hundred years: from the pulp-inspired 1920s of Call of Cthulhu to a more Gothic early 1800s inspired by Shelley, Stoker, Poe, and Irving.
So previous pregens like a telekenetic Iron Lung and Succubus Flapper don’t exactly fit.
With the next release, I’ll be rolling out an initial set of five pregens at both Level 1 and Level 3 (those Level 3’s are aspirational on my part: my home game is getting into those levels, but I need to pressure test the higher-level experience more widely).
The goal is to represent each of the five Coteries: the Undead, Nature, Sorcery, Dogma, and Artifice. I also want to showcase the different sizes of Inhumanity Dice (d6,d8,d10,d12).
My design philosophy for this initial set is to use classic, instantly recognizable Halloween tropes to let players feel right at home with the game’s core theme. This first set will be the “Classic Halloween” collection:
- Undead: The Vampire
- Nature: The Werewolf
- Sorcery: The Witch
- Dogma: The Demon-Possessed Innocent
- Artifice: The (Clockwork) Scarecrow
Here you see how the sausage is being made – a very boring looking spreadsheet I use to ensure a balance in how the XP is spent between the five:
Future, Additional Hexingtide Pregens
I’ve also been developing a second set of pregens, which I’m tentatively calling the “Gaelic-Gothic Folklore” set. My hope is to provide a more unique flavor of monster for those who feel the tropes are played out – while still adhering to the Coteries and Inhumanity Dice goals.
This set functions the same as the classic ones but provides a more distinctive aesthetic.
- Undead: The Bog Body Revenant
- Nature: The Red Cap
- Sorcery: The Wicker-Man
- Dogma: The Lingering Shade of a Long-Lost God
- Artifice: The Cursed Executioner with Beheading Axe and Hangman’s Rope
However, these just might not make it in the rulebook.
Why? My long-term goal is to tie these pregens to specific setting snapshots in the final game. My current concepts look like:
- The Ghoul Hills: Classic Gothic, European folklore and adventure
- Ectotropolis: Contemporary-ish urban fantasy
- Dead Men’s Moon: Near future sci-fi horror – ghosts in spacesuits and sorcerer-psychics gone mad
But even with these plans, nothing is set in stone. Your input is vital to this process.
What kind of pregen characters would you be most excited to play? Are there any specific monster archetypes you’d like to see that aren’t on this list? Or, are there any other settings or genres you’d want to play an RPG about monster stories in?
Want more monster action from Hexingtide?
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