I think I’m covered in this department, though: the pregens for this scenario include short histories, and their Beliefs and Instincts tell you a lot about why they’ll be fun to play — one of the perks of BE!

I made character sheets (for more characters than players, so they’d have choices), but I also made a custom sheet. (The game was Mage, where there’s some customization and flexibility to what you do with your spheres.)

For the custom sheet, I made up a short history (a paragraph or two, long enough to start playing from but short enough not to constrain) for each character. I also made up a “sample spell” part taking the special powers for the system and tailoring a few effects for each character tailored for their spheres and history. The “sample spells” worked really well– probably because it highlighted something really cool about the character… but also served as an example/springboard for player creativity. Since it was setup to teach the system as well, I was happy when they ran with the examples.

It might be too late for this to do you a lot of good, but a paper with a short history + what makes this character unique and cool might be persuasive.

I’ve decided to run a traditional one-shot, and because of BE’s structural elements that means my prep consists mainly of being sure I understand the rules, the basics of the one-shot and the characters involved (plus printing and creating support material).

In terms of carrying the one-shot over into a full blown campaign, that won’t be an option — again, because of the way BE works. We could, however, reuse the world and some or all of the PCs if everyone’s excited about them. I suspect we’d wind up starting fresh, though.

(bignose) I’m not sure what you mean by “pitch session”.

When I’m writing posts, I often go with a term that sounds right to me without considering it in a broader context. Sometimes that works, sometimes I smack myself in the forehead later — that’s one of the perils of posting daily, I suppose.

“Test drive” probably would have been a better term to go with than “pitch session.” Just like test driving a car, this is the chance for my players (collectively, the driver) to see if they want to dive into a full campaign (buy the car).

As there’s always a chance I’ll hate running the game, to a much lesser extent it’s also an opportunity for me to see if it’s fun to GM.

This is more of a “test drive” session and it’s taken a year to get to that point. Take from that what you will.

At the same time I don’t see the point in arguing semantics or (further) codifying a lexicon of RPG selling terms. We all know what the general idea being discussed is: Martin has a game he wants to run and we’re trying it out.

Conversely, if the *only* way to gauge interest in the campaign is to actually run an entire session in it, with all the preparation work that implies, then it’s not going to happen very often.

Most GMs will want to talk about the concept with their players *before* prepping a campaign or even a first session: while it’s still cheap to make major changes, and while there’s little or no preparatory work to throw away if the players want something different.

The dynamics of trying to pitch the campaign to the group is less like trying to sell a car and much more similar to pitching a TV series to the stakeholders. We should be conscious of the dominant established terminology and use it.

To me, a “pitch” is taken from “sales pitch”, and in particular the “pitch” done by a director or writer to the stakeholders. This is where the person *talks about* the work, without actually *having* any of it ready to perform.

What people seem to be understanding you to say is what is better called a “pilot session”. This would be analogous to the “pilot episode” of a series, where the stakeholders get to see one piece of the *actual finished work*, presumably ready for the world to see.

The former is done to gauge interest in the *idea*, before making a big investment in producing something. The latter is done after a significant amount of production work is already done, to gauge the success of that work and guide future work.

Can you please disambiguate? I’d vastly prefer that the “talk about it as a concept hoping to get feedback” session be called the “pitch”, and “actually try doing it for a real session” be called the “pilot”. Otherwise it’s confusingly different to the established meaning of the terms.

If your pitch session is supposed to lead into the potential game beyond, consider having the pitch session be “what went before.” For the sake of a widely recognized example, say your planned campaign will be the original trilogy of Star Wars movies. You could have the players play pregenerated Bothian spies who have already stolen the Death Star plans, and need to get them to the Rebels. Start in the middle of the action (“A blaster shot just missing George by inches is your first clue that the stormtroopers have found you. Roll for inish!”). If the pitch session goes well, the players pick up from there, making characters that, say, receive the stolen plans.

1. Make sure it fits within the time allowed. Have a simple scenario with bits you can add or remove depending on time, interest, and flow.

2. If your session includes basic character creation, make sure you scenario is designed for beginning characters. I know this sounds obvious, but it was a problem we had at a recent FATE pitch session.

3. Keep your setting accesible to the PCs. If your BE game is a medieval fantasy use the basic tropes.