No Character Sheets

[everyfan]

my uncle played OD&D back in the day (he's the one who gave me my white box copy) and insists that he didn't use character sheets at all. Not so much as a note card. He claims that the Dungeon Master handled all of that!anyone else play like that?

[makofan]

In all my years of playing and DMing, the players maintained their character stats

[Scott Anderson]

Well, the first dungeon masters rolled all the dice in some cases. So why not?

[Red Baron]

My DM used to do that with his college group back in the day. They didn't know their hit point total, level, etc, the DM took care of it all.

He can't handle all that work anymore, so we use character sheets now.

[Porphyre]

Didn't TSR or Judges Guild edit some DM Spreadsheets for that , back in the days ?

[coffee]

I've heard of that style of play, but never tried it myself. It does indeed sound like a lot of work for the referee, but I'd imagine the immersion the players felt would be worth it.

I myself am not organized enough to do that, however. I'll happily let the players maintain their own sheets.

[Deleted]

I could probably do it as I keep the "official" character sheets myself and just give my players a print out of it every session. The only thing is equipment. I can't see how you could play without the player knowing what stuff they're carrying. That seems like the normal way to do it for me.

[luc]

I used to DM that way back at University.

I'd give the player's a written description of each of their abilities (STR 14 = strong). If they found a sword +2 it was a "magical sword". That's all they'd know. The main reason I did it was it got new players up and running very quickly.

They enjoyed it, but it was a bit of extra book keeping on my part. I've gone back to letting the players handle all their character details now.

[Torreny]

The way I see it, is it circumnavigates that complaint of "learning a new system", for the crowd that doesn't even want to see if there's other games out there, and of course, it makes it pretty easy for non-gamers to swallow. "You're in an X, what do you do?" I remember someone once saying that D&D was the game that only needed one nerd to play. Seems about how you'd do it.

One of my buddies still keeps the sheets when he's running any RPG for people that aren't into the crunch.

[machfront]

Feb 19, 2015 18:40:29 GMT -6 everyfan said:

my uncle played OD&D back in the day (he's the one who gave me my white box copy) and insists that he didn't use character sheets at all. Not so much as a note card. He claims that the Dungeon Master handled all of that!anyone else play like that?

Oh, yeah. That's just what I'd want as a DM: more homework. Wee.

[Falconer]

No, in my games they do have their sheets. BUT, the way I do it, characters do NOT note their saving throws, any sort of to-hit numbers, or even thief skill percentages. I have all those charts at my fingertips to look up quite easily. They roll the dice and I tell them if they succeed. I even have them note their armor class not as a number but in the form of “chain mail and shield” (this works just fine in OD&D; not so much in AD&D).

[Starbeard]

Mar 2, 2015 11:32:07 GMT -6 Falconer said:

No, in my games they do have their sheets. BUT, the way I do it, characters do NOT note their saving throws, any sort of to-hit numbers, or even thief skill percentages. I have all those charts at my fingertips to look up quite easily. They roll the dice and I tell them if they succeed. I even have them note their armor class not as a number but in the form of “chain mail and shield” (this works just fine in OD&D; not so much in AD&D).

That's pretty much how I handle it. Saving throws and To-hit numbers almost never need to be noted on a sheet in OD&D or AD&D, since that's always just a tiny table away and the table is the same for all players. Since I use Chainmail combat, we don't use AC numbers, so that's all good.

Especially for OD&D, I have begun very much to appreciate simple character sheets that can fit on a single 3"x5" card, omitting as much as possible any 'universal' statistics that are the same across classes or levels.

[tog]

Feb 20, 2015 1:12:33 GMT -6 Porphyre said:

Didn't TSR or Judges Guild edit some DM Spreadsheets for that , back in the days ?

TSR's Dungeon Master's Adventure Log, from 1980. each character listed on one line, along with class, race, abilities, XP, etc. etc. It's for AD&D 1e, but I don't see why it wouldn't work with OD&D.

Hum, now that I think about it, it's the format for characters in Searchers Of The Unknown, and I've been thinking of how to manage a party in that system. The DM'SAL had about a dozen lines per sheet, which would be perfect.

[kesher]

Also the Rogue's Gallery...

[rsdean]

Well, as the DM, I always had people keep their own character sheets. A couple of years ago one of my old friends/original players showed off his preserved oroginal character sheet, with the stats and die rolls in my hand, and the rest of the notes in his...

[rsdean]

I also used to put together these summary pages when DMing, with hit points, armor classes, plusses to hit and damage, and, in this case, horse type and hit points. The latter suggests that it was for a wilderness expedition. I think this format is modified from something in the Ready Ref Sheets, but it might have been suggested by a Dragon article as well.

Most of these didn't survive, because they'd get pretty battered with all the erasing of damage, plus the bottom half of the sheet was apparently used for noting treasure collected, and, of cpurse, rows would change as characters died off or leveled up. Since these are my own characters (suggesting some sort of solo play), and I only remember a handful of the henchmen, I have to assume some catastrophe hit soon after.

[kesher]

That character sheet is priceless! I love that "thief" is crossed out--you can almost hear the thought process after rolling those stats...

[tog]

Jun 3, 2016 4:37:46 GMT -6 rsdean said:

Well, as the DM, I always had people keep their own character sheets. A couple of years ago one of my old friends/original players showed off his preserved oroginal character sheet, with the stats and die rolls in my hand, and the rest of the notes in his...

I LOVE LOVE LOVE stuff like this, particularly when I buy someone's used box set of an RPG and there's old character sheets and such inside. I certainly wish I had kept my stuff from back in the day.