Basically, creating pre-generated characters for a convention game is a bit more involved than normal. GUMSHOE has a sliding scale of beginning skills for characters that’s dependent on how many people are playing in the campaign. That basically means that I have to design three different character sheets for each PC: one for a five-person game, one for a four-person game, and one for a three-person game (if I don’t get three players I’m not running the game, but I can’t imagine that Evil Hat isn’t going to be good in a pinch for a player or two for their own new game line).
This is not really a problem; it’s more like a special wrinkle for running a con game. The regular character generation system GUMSHOE uses will just eat up too much game-slot time for my liking; I’m going to want to have my players be ready to go within five minutes of showing up. Which means that I need to concentrate heavily on archetypes, and encourage my players to rely on cliches a bit. Which also suggests that this game is going to end up being an exercise in low humor.
Ach, well, that’s how my games usually go anyway.
Same thing in the NBA free rpg game, Van Helsing’s Letter. They made 6 pre-gens and then added this:
The characters are built on 20 Investigative
points. If you have fewer than five players…
4 players +2 Investigative
points each
3 players +4 Investigative
points each
2 players +12 Investigative
points each
Eh, it’s not unique to GUMSHOE, really. I’ve had GMs divvy up skills from an unchosen character, when there were 5 instead of the planned 6 players. GUMSHOE sounds more formal about it, though.