Despite the love of my players I know I am a terrible Game master, with a craptastic grasp of complex rule systems. Mostly I'm too damn lazy to memorize shit. Or busy. Or both.  And of course, as the guy with all the books, aside from D&D none of my players can be assed to learn whatever system we are using beyond the basic die mechanic.

One hard and fast rule I've discovered is this: If you put it on the character sheet it will get used. If you don't, then it probably won't.  

In my early expiriments with the current generation of D&D, no one had any AoO feats. Subsequently, Attacks of Opportunity never really showed up in games for a long time.  I wasn't even the GM for those, so I know it's not me.

Me, I like some crunch in my games. Sounds weird with my tendancy to ignore half or more of the rulebook, but there you have it. I likes the crunch. On the other hand, I've come to value speed and ease of play as I get older and my game time grows more limited.  That's the way the cookie crumbles.

Character sheets are a huge part of that.  The more simplified the rule, the faster it is to play. Grappling, again from D&D (for benchmarking purposes), became much more common at my table once people started filling out the little box with their 'grapple total' on it.

So. I'm thinking this: A good character sheet is one where there is acutally MORE information on it, not less. If all you put on the sheet is a list of attributes and a space for skills and equipment, it may be simple, even pretty, but it is next to worthless as a play aid. On the other hand, a huge, complicated mess of a sheet isn't much better.

Let me illustrate some more: Aberrant, from White Wolf. I love this game for some asinine reason. Never played it but man did I want to. To this day I couldn't tell you what my 'health levels' should be, despite many forays into the rule book to figure it out. Why? The character sheet is worthless for that. I know, I know, health levels are highly flexible in Aberrant. So? They are in Exalted too, but Exalted was much easier to figure out with their little check the box matrix printed right on (some of) the character sheets.

put it on the damn sheet. Any and every shortcut and number crunch that will come up in game. Organized and easy to follow... and most importantly, visible.  The coolest, niftiest mechanic in the world is useless if no one remembers to use it.  Character sheets, when properly made, can help explain the rules. Character sheets, when properly made, can speed game play and smooth the learning curve.  

I was positively Orgasmic when I read the two page character sheet spread in 'Secrets of Zir'an'. An example, filled out with little text boxes explaining not only what went there, but where to find it in the book.  It took months for me to come down off the high from that and realize that, all else aside, I didn't really like the setting enough to use all those cool rules.  Not that I don't desperately want to rape the rules for every clever tidbit I can.

Yeah, I'm definitely inflicting a playtest of Zir'an on my players just to see the system in action.  And we can thank the Character sheet for that.  hell, I may just hand out a photocopy of the character sheet explanation page along with the blank sheet itself, rather than the rule book, to get people started...

Character sheets are very important. Let's look at an example of presentation and for. I have one that I did and one a fan who is a graphic designer did. Both have the same information but widely differing presentation.

Before (197 K PDF)

After (1 M PDF)

Bill

I still prefer squared paper to most character sheets. Most of the time some entries are missing or not big enough. Index cards for special situations have proven to be rather useful, too.

That is a huge difference, Bill. Other than having everything on one sheet, however, I'd be hard pressed to say which one was objectively better for play without actually putting them to use.  The before sheet has room for all that stuff that some players love (who they've met, what they've done, etc) will the after sheet is very dense, but without a lot of room for player doodling or notes.

Maybe swap sheet one from before with the after sheet and keep 2-4....:confused:

Yeah... that gets to the meat: If it is important or useful it should go on the sheet. The converse of that is: it had better be useful.  

With a addendum of giving players room to doodle?


And Sos: yeah, I always liked my hand notes character sheets for similar reasons.   I've moved away from that as the proliferation of well done character sheets hit the hobby.  Depending on the game and the sheets available, I've slowly moved to using sheets rather than paper. SR4, however... ugh. Notepaper all the way to the bank.

IMHO it's time that publishers use the advanced capabilities of PDFs a bit more. Swapping out layers to customize the sheets, performing calculations etc.
Sadly, the programmability isn't that good and you can't save them with the normal Adobe reader.

An interesting option would be multiple sheets for different situations, preferably generated from one master sheet. So my main sheet would have most of the information on it, but I'd also have a combat sheet that's purely oriented towards what I use during battle. For D20 that would be the weapon list, the feats, some attack options etc.
Juggling around multiple sheets is no fun, but the sheer amount of information gets a bit confusing when you have to put it on a single side of a single sheet.

Quote from: HinterWeltCharacter sheets are very important. Let's look at an example of presentation and for. I have one that I did and one a fan who is a graphic designer did. Both have the same information but widely differing presentation.

Before (197 K PDF)

After (1 M PDF)

Bill

I wish I'd had that second sheet when I played Roma!

Anywho, I agree with you Pika.  Character sheets can damn near make or break a game for me.  I want the maximum amount of useful information in the best use of space, and I want it clear and workmanlike.

This causes me to almost never use an official character sheet.  I go out of my way to seek fan-made ones done by graphic designers and the like.  For D20, for example, I go hit Ema's character sheets.

It's a peccadillo of mine.  I need my sheet to be neat, pretty, and easy to reference.  If I have to use a sheet of ruled paper, I will, but I won't be happy until I can get something better.

That link is looking pretty damn cool, actually, Red. Gotta wait for the damn comp to play nice to really explore it, but I did notice the 'dynamic sheet' option looks a lot like what Sosethenes was talking about....

Erm, looks more like a simple concatenation of pages and selecting the correct background. The Mad Irishman has some sheets with neat layer effects, e.g. the True20 one.

Quote from: SosthenesErm, looks more like a simple concatenation of pages and selecting the correct background. The Mad Irishman has some sheets with neat layer effects, e.g. the True20 one.

Really? I could only see the FAQ description. It takes me something like an hour for me to unzip a file for some reason. Opens right up then freezes forever before I can extract. God forbid I mess with it during the freeze, it'll close and send an error report.

The main reason I love Ema's sheets is because the dynamic spell sheets allow me to print out customized lists of spells, selecting which sourcebooks to draw from, every spell listed with short spell info and a page / book reference number.

Though I use the sheet also because the main sheet page is very concise and well-organized, so even if I'm playing a Fighter I'll still use Ema's.

One thing on character sheets that I find all to rarely is is a space for the name of the other characters. It's one of those handy things that doesn't crop up that often, but I feel really should be there. Saves scribbling it down on the back of the sheet, or a scrap of paper or whatnot.

When I recently started a new game, one thing one of the participants said was "Yay! A character sheet with space for other peoples names!"

Anyone else think this is kind of useful or is it just me?

Cheers
Malcolm

WHen I've run games of AFMBE at cons in the past, I put a full rules breakdown (one sheet!) on the back of the character sheet.  It works really well.  Players tend to look at the back, and discover things they can do.

Next time I run an RQIII game, I'm going to put the same thing: Front side of the sheet is character stuff, back side is a one-page spot rules.

Zomben:  That is most excellent. It is even cooler if there is space on the back for the player to note the character's ability (pre-calculated) to do those actions.

I think, anyway.  But yeah, having a rules cheatsheet does tend to improve/speed up play a LOT.

The only thing that works better sometimes is getting non-gamers to play. The sort of player that will try anything they think of because they don't know better.  I love those guys. They make me work, and hard, but the payoff is almost always worth the effort.

I write my character's stats out by hand on a blank white sheet of paper, with spells on a separate page if I need them. When I do an NPC's sheet, I do the same thing, but on a half sheet of paper with spells on the back. I like it because it lets me set things up as I please, and label anything that needs to be labeled.

I used to do that long ago. Then I found I could often not find stuff when I needed it.

Then I discovered good, premade character sheets. I rather like them now, and I have, occasionally, learned more about the game's rules from them than I thought possible. Thus, I am fond of good, informative, Character sheets.

I think I am not alone in this.