Ok I have 7 days before a small gaming convention at a local university. Well 8 days if you count the first day of the convention. I am leaning very heavily towards running at least one if not two sessions of Planescape. Not sure quite yet if I want to run classic or post faction war Planescape but I will certainly have a lot of stuff from here at Planewalker around for advertising if nothing else to interest the kiddies in this great setting. I think last year they had overall attendance of about 70 people though a good number maybe 50%-60% were there for solely the collectable tournaments (ie magic, heroclix, and etc.)
I have only limited experience with 3rd edition as yet however I have already enlisted a person to act as a mole type who knows the edition well. I am planning to use pre-constructed characters to maximize role playing time as I have seen far too many convention sessions wasted by extremely long character creation sessions. Anyway as I am still in the early planning stages I was wondering if anyone has any advice on a couple of fronts.
1) If I decide to run classic Planescape are there any published adventures that might work well in a convention setting? (I own all 30 original supplements so I have them all) I can most likely setup a session length between 4 and 7 hours though most likely around 5 or maybe 6 hours though.
2) What kind of general advice do you have for running one shots like this at a convention. I have only played in 3 sessions like this before and never actually attempted to DM one. What are some pits falls I should watch out for and work to prevent
3) If you were a player (or even as a DM giving advice) do you think I should just stick with like 6-8 pre-created characters basically ensuring a mostly rounded out group or would it be better to have like 15 characters ready so people have an extensive choice especially considering the nature of Planescape. I could balance that out a bit by having my mole player pick a character that will balance the group out a bit if needed.
4) What sorts of things from Planewalker do you think I should put up and give out around the convention?
Go current. PS3E, so you can advertise the site more prevalently to the players and those watching.
Use pre-gen characters, but base the alignment on your campaign.
If they're doing naughty things, make 'em neutral and Evil, if they're freakin' niceys, neutral and good. (This way, if someone wants to play something outside the realm of the campaign, you won't be sequested into party infighting at a 6-7 hour block, which eats up a TON of time, I tell you that.)
Keep the characters to ten. (Three good, three evil, and four neutrals.) This way, your PCs will have a decent choice, and the optimal size group (3-6, IMO), will still have a chance to pick and choose what they want to play.
This has worked best for me in the past at cons. I suggest against the using of a ringer, though, because (s)he may have favoritism, and if your goal is to garner newbies to the fold, this may be a hindrance to this. ('Course, I don't know your bud, so you can disregard that last comment if you wanna.)