Does having a cool character sheet help enhance the playing experience?
Certainly does for this man, it could be my particular OCD that works
on it, but for me, the sight of a well drawn out character sheet, everything
where I can find it on the one page and nothing to have to flip through, look
up, cross reference, or otherwise makes me very cheerful.
So when it comes to character sheets, there are a few different ones
that really got my attention, and all of them have something in common with the
game that they’re designed for.
The first is the convention character sheet for Diaspora, beautifully
simple lines complimented by the swirling pattern of stars in the background
and when you put it on the table, everyone can see who you are and the basics
of your character which helps everyone get into the game so much more easily.
The second is the character sheet for spirit of the century, not the
original mind, but this one.
What I love about this is the way it’s been done to show the simple
grace of the character whilst making it interesting to look at. I know there are people out there who have
problems with character sheets that have writing at all angles, but I’m really
not one of them.
It was things like this that I looked into when I thought about the
character sheets for my own game. I wanted to make sure that it gave the right impression
when they saw the character sheet. On
the one hand, drawing such a sheet would be impossible, you’d spend days doing
it, but we’re in the days of printing and photocopying now, so what was once a
three hour task is now a five second button press, so character sheets can
evolve beyond the mass of text and spaces for numbers that they once were.
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This in turn brings into play the ideas that if you can get an idea of
the game from the character sheet, will it entice you to pick it up if you
wander past a game playing at a convention where the players all have amazing
character sheets to look at on the table.
Certainly it is for me, but I started my formative years in roleplaying
in a manner I imagine is much the same as many by doing the “Roll up a million
characters” thing, the books of which I still have somewhere in the library of
games. What always got me interested was
when you looked at the character sheet and something about it made sense to
you, whether it was the original L5R sheets and the stylised method of doing
the stats, to the huge soulless blocks of the rolemaster sheets that came out
or (as I mentioned a few days back) the massive penfest that is the Alpha Omega
Character sheet.
It’s like anything really, if you like what you see on first glance,
then you’re likely to take a second glance, and for many people, particularly
at conventions and game stores, the thing you check out is the character sheet,
so when you’re looking at doing your own game, consider this, and don’t make it
an afterthought at the end of the shiny bits of the game.
It’s a character sheet
Give it Character...
