Every RPG character sheet should look like THIS
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ก.ย. 2024
- The more I've played Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop roleplaying games like Shadowdark, Pirate Borg, Mothership, Pathfinder 2, and Dungeon Crawl Classics, the more I'm convinced that every TTRPG character sheet should be a certain way. Well, at least, I prefer them a certain way. Right now. Today. Who knows about tomorrow....
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Shadowdark is absolutely amazing! My group plays it.
I am the GM and have found that once you get past L3 it’s less deadly - but mostly because the players are more cautious.
And the character sheet is super simple. Also pretty much standalone character sheets.
Ahh, you played only D&D untill 5 years ago. Then you became an adult.
I appreciate what Luke is saying. But I really feel like we are dancing around the subject of just admitting there are different types of games.
“Rules lite” is different than 5e and other games like it.
If I sit down at a table I’m going to trust the Referee to make it clear what type of game they are running.
The example of a hard as nails and deadly 5e game. I hope the Referee states this flatly. So I would know to bring more than one character.
The idea that character creation takes hours… eh… that’s only been my experience when I’m unfamiliar with a system. 5e character creation takes me maybe 10 minutes now.
It depends though. If your new character is lvl 1 it's super fast, yes. But if you bring a new character at lvl 12 it's a completely different story.
That having been said. I do agree that more rules heavy games, while good for their own reasons, can make players change how they behave.
By that I mean. A situation comes up and I notice in the rules heavy game players tend to look down at their character sheet and see if “they have an answer/counter to the situation”. Rather than just reacting and trying things or ideas. Games tend to be a bit more prescriptive than descriptive.
The number of times I’ve had fellow players at a 5e table look down at their character sheet and just go “I can’t do anything” is pretty frequent.
I also noticed, unless I missed it, I’m reading through the 2024 PHB right now and I haven’t seen the blurb about “dm fiat”. There has been plenty of “work with your DM to come up with something” but I’ve either completely missed, or it’s just not there, where it says “the DM has the final say”
And really, if I’m being honest. I don’t need it printed or codified in a book. It’s just that most modern players seem to think that things must be printed and sanctioned by WotC before they can accept things.
Hell. That’s part of the reason we are getting a new “edition” (outside of financial reasons)
5e I agree characters are super quick to build, regardless of level. Might take a bit of time to select spells for a spellcaster but that's about it.
Pf2e though? Yeah that one takes a fair bit of time to build.
@@ninjasqurl4383 I will never get why people need their mom to give them permission to breath nowadays.
"Do what is best for you and your group" is the motto i strive for and i find these people to be a interesting case study.
Best intro RPG game I found was...kobolds ate my baby....so fun
No, I don't think that the character sheet should include generation instructions. That only matters in the beginning. It should be a place to record the results of generation. For a simpler game, yes - especially one with lots of character churn.
Playing D&D is very rules light. All you have to do is tell your DM what you try to do. You'll have to learn the dice, where stuff is at on your character sheet, and your character's abilities, but really, that's it.
I can whip out a 5e character in 5 minutes. Standard array, starting kit, pick skills, and done. A caster might take a bit longer with picking spells. But then again, I am familiar with the process.
Say, Luke when pen writing or penciling feats and traits on my dnd 5ed sheet, i always also mark the phb or book pages next to it? and also bracket what it does if i do not recal by mind? Didnt you do that?
i learned this since dnd 2nd.. good tip good tip!
Honestly, I think I get anxious with rules light games if they lean on GM ejudication too much. My GM keeps trying to push us into games that appeal to him, which are generally things that are going to be frustrating to players.
Hard doesn't have to mean frustrating.
I prefer "Less Is More" philosophy in my character sheets. If I can fit everything I need on an index card with a separate sheet for like inventory or my notes, that's the ideal. Games like Black Sword Hack? I can make a character in five minutes, and that includes time to deliberate on character options.
Playbooks are indeed amazing, everything on the sheet, no need to reference a manual.
One thing to note is to think about columns. If you have one column about combat stats, and one column about exploration, say you have a second page of paper with your combat spells, it's fine if that page overlaps with the exploration column because you won't need it at that moment.
I myself am a fan of modular character sheets. No need to have a blank page with spellcasting if you're playing a monk. But then also have some extra space to track your power resource points.
I haven't seen it a lot, but I'm also a big fan of using the qualities of paper itself. One roleplaying game I've seen, you're playing a magical girl, and when you do your transformation, you flip over your character sheet and look at the backside for all your magical girl powers. This can also be used for werewolf characters, in my opinion.
Paper can also be folded or cut. Fold it once and set it straight up on the table, fold up top, like when people have their names on paper so the substitute teacher knows who you are. Now the paper has a front side shown to the GM, a back side shown to you, and an inside. These can represent different parts of the sheet. You can even write down something secret on your side, then turn it around and have your secrets reveal itself to the GM.
Cut, or burned: slowly erasing your abilities on your sheet as you permanently lose them in a horror setting.
We haven't seen the least bit potential of a paper character sheet at all in traditional roleplaying games.
I got my gf & her son to play & there new to ttrpg so i used the Cairn & the Character sheet as a template to make things easy for them & me & i incorporate some dnd material into the game so a cairn+dnd hybrid of sorts but they just call it dnd, & me her are doing ShadowDark also. She wants to play like all the time now she says
"What have you done to me" 😂
I think there should be a viable OPTION for quick character generation using only a sheet for rules light and medium games. That said... viable doesn't mean optimal and I do admit that it's pretty much impossible to create a one size fits all in one character sheet that won't potentially be less fine tuned than one created with all the options from every supplement that inevitably come out in most non-rules light game editions' lifecycles.
I wish DM lair would just do normal titles over all the clickbait ones.
Cant support a man you cant support
That Pirate Borg game was a ton of fun and the character sheets were DEFINITELY a major part of that! Can't recommend it enough!
I’ve been playing Pathfinder 1e for almost 15 years and I can assure you it doesn’t take hours to create a character even if it’s higher level.
More complicated character creation doesn't make better characters. Fast, simple, and intrinsic is the best way to help players.
3:14 creating a new character can take some time unless of course you have 15 characters lined up ready to play
This is why my go to game for running one or two shots is Chasing Adventure or Dungeon World.
If you like horror, Supernatural Hunter RPG is fun.
The character sheet should tell you how to play the game. And most fail to do that
If its that easy to create a character they're both worth a look!
Anyone got recommends for D20 or D100 system?
I’m hoping to try some of these games at upcoming conventions
Fr, I spent up to 3 hours making a dnd character. Feels like homework but worse.
I admit it. I am one of the Gatekeeping Grognards that loves spending DAYS(!!) creating a character, and expect that my players do the same paying attention to every detail of their character. That is part of what "Session Zero" is about. The game is a long-term investment of my time and creative capacity. This hobby is not something "casual" for me.
That being said, I also recognize that I need to get over myself and my self-importance. Bringing new blood into the hobby is important for the hobby to survive, and my way is not the only way to do that.
Could you expand on what you mean by spending days creating a character. Do you mean mechanically or terms of a backstory. Because if it's the former, yes you need a complicated system and a more extensive char sheet. But if you mean the latter, you actually don't need any complicated mechanics at all. All you need to do a compelling character for roleplay is a good idea and good writing capabilities.
@@NikozBG Hi! I mean both. One plays into the other. The mechanics need to support the characters story (so far) and the story needs to support the character's mechanics.
For example, there is a half-elf barbarian character in my campaign that uses a double-bladed scimitar. Simple enough mechanical weapon that basically let's you attack with both ends. But If you know anything about the origin and history of that piece of equipment, it has some baggage to say the least. So now we have to work out a story explanation for how and why she got this particular piece of equipment and how she is going to work out the baggage that comes with it. How is she going to keep it hidden? Under what circumstances is she going to use it? What will her reaction be if a witness challenges her on it's use? What is she going to know to say, if anything?
If the player isn't down with handling all the baggage of putting that weapon on her equipment list on her character sheet, then I would suggest the alternative of using a more mundane staff weapon and taking the Polearm Master feat and leaving it at that. But in this case the player thought the weapon was just too cool and was really excited about being able to use it. Well then, we had to do some story-time to make it happen for her. The choice on the sheet required more character development to happen. More than 10 minutes, at least.
I'd actually argue that adding in the character creation rules to a sheet is actually not a good idea for all sheets.
The reason I say this, is because it makes the sheet harder to read since you also have to filter through the rules to find the information you're looking for. And when looking for Counterspell takes 10 minutes on its own, you don't want to look through all the rules for preparing new spells.
Additionally, it's much harder to make a very fluid and flexible system where homebrew flows freely when all the rules are plastered in there. Not to mention: it wastes precious space if you don't use the rules exactly as written, or have the process memorized.
It works well on single-sheet characters like in Pirate Borg or Mothership, because they're simple, and everything you need fits in one place, even with all the rules. Not so much with DnD or Pathfinder (as you pointed out). For that, a quick reference or small calculation guide for the values in question would be reasonable, but not much more than that.
Oh, and you can't forget a piece of advice you gave in the past to MANY DMs: K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Silly)!
Conclusion: On-sheet Creation Rules are great for new players that are trying a simple system for the first time. Not so much for veterans or a complex system.
Came here to say this.
I think they could make a *much* better character sheet by splitting this into two pages. One to be the instructions and one to be where you write it all down.
Why spend 80% of the space on a character sheet on options you'll never want to see after the first 10 minutes?
For the rest of my Pirate Borg game, I have to see all the hats and pets my character *doesn't have*? That's a really bad user experience.
If it were two pages, you could have only the actual options you chose on the actual character sheet. And then you have all that extra space to make it look pretty and give people room to add their own notes.
@@NateFinch I think this is a really good way of handling it.