What should a OD&D character sheet include?

[Zulgyan]

Should it include attack capability?

No. Just gimme a roll, I tell you if you hit.

Should it include AC?

No. It's enough if you know what armor you are wearing. I just check with the table when I attack you.

Should it include saving throws?

No. Just gimme a roll, I tell you if you save.


Consider this original character record:
www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/miscpages/miscscans/76pc.html

Neither attack capability, or AC or saves are included.
The players don't really need to know them.

[ffilz]

Since I'd like to reduce table lookups on my part, I plan to include attack capability and saves on my character sheets. And definitely AC.

Frank

[driver]

It should have a blank square for a character sketch. This should initially be filled with a smiley face. Over the course of a long campaign, it can be embellished with adornments including, but not limited to, the following:

- a viking hat
- a corncob pipe
- a big fat joint
- googly eyes, crossed or pointing in opposite directions
- one eye like a panda, the other all Egyptian-looking
- a mustache, either handlebar or Burt Reynolds-style
- vampire fangs or big buck teeth
- rosy cheeks like Raggedy Ann
- a taped on picture of Yngwie Malmsteen.

[Zulgyan]

ffilz: Don't you find it somehow detrimental of sense of wonder, mystery and magic?

I think that the more rules you "hide" away from players, the better the immersion into the imaginary world gets.

driver: Please. I'm looking for a friendly but "serious" discussion here. Humor is great (I actually LOLed) but maybe for another thread. Thank you.

[ffilz]

Nope - I'm not into immersion.

Frank

[Zulgyan]

Maybe we need to define what immersion means in OD&D and RPGs.

[joethulhu]

I'm in favor of whatever speeds a game up. If I ask a player to roll his character's save versus poison, and he can tell me the result quicker than it takes me to consult a chart, I'm all for making sure saves are recorded on the sheet.

For large battles I've even asked players to help me track monster hit points, conditions, and spell effects!

Immersion smersion! Me and my buds are playing a game. Kicking ass, taking loot, and drinking a brew if they're available.

[foster1941]

That linked 1976 TSR sheet is by far my favorite D&D character sheet, and I've got a big stack of 'em (from Falconer's facsimile version) printed out on orange and green paper. It has spaces for all of the variables (except HP -- per EGG this was an oversight) and nothing that's just table entries copied out of the book (AC, saving throws, to hit chart, ability score mods, racial or class abilities). What's so cool about a sheet like this is that it's not intimidating or overwhelming to newbie or casual players -- it doesn't have a ton of numbers or tiny little print, it's not hard to find the info you're looking for. It shows exactly how simple the game really is. Plus it has a ton of blank space for the players to fill in with notes, doodles, character portraits, etc.

I know a lot of people consider a sheet of lined notebook paper as the only true old-school-D&D character sheet, and I'm sympathetic to that viewpoint, but using a sheet of note-paper still requires the player to have a certain degree of familiarity with the game to know what to put on his sheet, whereas this sheet tells you exactly what you need to know (and nothing that you don't). Give somebody who's never played the game before a blank one of these, a pencil, and some six-sided dice and you can be rolling in 10 minutes.

[busman]

Here's the one I'm using for mako's game:
spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pPWmxqIr20A_4c3xiROEOJw&hl=en&pli=1

[Zulgyan]

Me and my buds are playing a game. Kicking ass, taking loot, and drinking a brew if they're available.

Our games seem to be similar. But I prefer players to better get into the world where the ass kicking is taking place, and I think that the less rules they know, it's better for that end.

I also LOVE that players don't know their saves. This keeps them at the edge of the seat while they wait for the referee to announce success or failure!

With regards speed, I'm having no problem. The tables are small and simple enough. And after a couple of sessions you start to apply them by memory.

[Deleted]

The TSR character sheet is a good beginning, but as it clearly wastes alot of space. Why do Experience and Gold need whole columns? Who split equipment from magic items?

Usually, with all the unique information about a character in an OD&D game, an index card will do.

However, here is an example of a "totally unique stats" character sheet done for an old style computer capable of a 40 column by 24 line text mode:

CHARACTER: ____________________________
 
CLASS: _____________     RACE: ________
 
EXP: __________    ALIGNMENT: _________
 
MAX HP: ___            GOLD: __________
 
STR: __ INT: __ WIS: __ DEX: __ CON: __
 
CHA: __ LANGS: ________________________
               ________________________
WEIGHT: _____  ________________________
 
  EQUIPMENT    MAGIC ITEMS     SPELLS  
             |             |
             |             |
             |             |
             |             |
             |             |
             |             |
             |             |
             |             |
             |             |

In one page, a low level 3LBB character can be easily kept.

[coffee]

I'm glad you mentioned the hit points.

When I ran the game, at the convention (which I discussed in another thread), I brought copies of the old TSR character sheet for the players to use. Nobody mentioned the lack of AC or Saving Throws (although somebody did ask about THAC0).

But they all noticed the lack of space for hit points.

I had them put it at the end of the line for Languages.

[joethulhu]

zulgyan said:

Our games seem to be similar. But I prefer players to better get into the world where the ass kicking is taking place, and I think that the less rules they know, it's better for that end.

I also LOVE that players don't know their saves. This keeps them at the edge of the seat while they wait for the referee to announce success or failure!

So do they roll their own stats? Do they know their own hit points? Do they track their own damage? Not doing those things would certainly up the immersion and edge-of-the-seats-waiting on the resolution of things.

Would this style of play even require a character sheet?

[coffee]

joethulhu said:

So do they roll their own stats? Do they know their own hit points? Do they track their own damage? Not doing those things would certainly up the immersion and edge-of-the-seats-waiting on the resolution of things.

Would this style of play even require a character sheet?

I've heard of games where this sort of thing occurs, but that's way too deep for me. I prefer if the players consciously realize they're playing a game.

The social 'game experience' is a part of D&D to me and always will be. That's why no computer game, no matter how clever, can replace it.

[lordtwang]

These early sheets show how even in the early years the game's players and designers didn't know whether D&D should be about the immersive story experience or about a social adventure game. I think some of the worst bits of design and some of the inconsistent interpretations across various editions show this little tug of war. Now, I think a strength of the game is that it can go either way. And I suspect that one reason a lot of people like OD&D compared to later editions is that it's easier to drift it in either direction. Most groups do a mix of these that fits their comfort level. I think the upcoming 4th edition will be the first edition to at last out-and-out choose one side. This will, of course, angers those on the other side.

[Zulgyan]

joethulhu said:

zulgyan said:

Our games seem to be similar. But I prefer players to better get into the world where the ass kicking is taking place, and I think that the less rules they know, it's better for that end.

I also LOVE that players don't know their saves. This keeps them at the edge of the seat while they wait for the referee to announce success or failure!

So do they roll their own stats? Do they know their own hit points? Do they track their own damage? Not doing those things would certainly up the immersion and edge-of-the-seats-waiting on the resolution of things.

Would this style of play even require a character sheet?

The eternal search for the happy medium is my way. I try to avoid extremes.


To all: Why this opposition bewteen adventure game and immersion? They get alone totally fine.

My OD&D games usually start at the very door of the dungeon, ready for action. But that does not mean I don't try to achieve immersion.

[ffilz]

I guess to me, immersion has never been the attraction. Oh, I suppose it can be part of the game, but the play of the game is what has always grabbed me. Playing the game requires knowledge and manipulation of the rules.

There is also part of me that realizes that while in one sense it's cool to hide the rules and "out of character knowledge" from the players, the truth is eventually they will have such, if nothing else, when a player starts his 2nd character, said character shouldn't know about various monsters, but the player does. You can't put the genie back in the bottle.

Frank

[coffee]

ffilz said:

I guess to me, immersion has never been the attraction. Oh, I suppose it can be part of the game, but the play of the game is what has always grabbed me. Playing the game requires knowledge and manipulation of the rules.

There is also part of me that realizes that while in one sense it's cool to hide the rules and "out of character knowledge" from the players, the truth is eventually they will have such, if nothing else, when a player starts his 2nd character, said character shouldn't know about various monsters, but the player does. You can't put the genie back in the bottle.

Frank

This is the way I've always played the game.

I know, some DMs like to 'set the mood' and have a very heartfelt roleplaying experience, which is along the lines of this 'immersion' of which you speak, but I gotta say, at the end of the day, I'm just playing a game with my friends.

I forget who had it, but somebody somewhere has a sig file that says "We don't explore characters, we explore dungeons." And that works for me.

[Zulgyan]

"We don't explore characters, we explore dungeons."

I also play by this principle. But I try to archive immersion into the dungeon, into the fantasy world. It looks more real if you keep a happy medium of known rules.

[coffee]

Zulgyan, maybe I don't understand what you mean by immersion.

Can you explain it in different words? I do want to understand, I'm just not getting it.

[Zulgyan]

zulgyan said:

Maybe we need to define what immersion means in OD&D and RPGs.

Yeah, we need to talk about that.

I think I'm saying it in the meaning of "the fantasy world comes alive". There is no need for in depth character interpretation, but I do want to absorb the players into the fantasy world, and try to "make believe" it. "You are now in a world of dragons and mythical dungeons, live or die by the sword!". I want to take YOU into the fantasy milieu. I want you, Carl Jones, not Glamring the Elf, to feel inside the dungeon.

Magic seems much more magical if you don't know that a roll of 16 will resist it.

You become much more wary of poisonous creatures if you don't exactly know you chance to resist poison is.

[foster1941]

I, at least, know exactly what you're getting at, because it's the same way I try to approach the game. I don't have time now (posting from work) but perhaps we can try to get into this in more depth later on.

[coffee]

Okay, now I see what you're getting at.

Part of it has been called 'system-naive' play; the players don't know the mechanics of the system, so they have to decide what to do based on their knowledge of the real world, of fantasy, and of what they've already learned from the game system through actual play.

The other part is the verisimilitude of the dungeon experience, which aids in the players' making their decisions.I.e.:

"Okay, the floor is wet and uneven, so if I try to get a runing start to jump that chasm, I might slip and fall in. Also, I can barely see the other side in my torchlight. Maybe I ought to come up with another way to get across..."

As opposed to:

"The environmental modifiers of -6 means my jump check will only be 4; I don't want to risk it."

At least, that's what I think you mean by that part.


(What confused me is that there is a school of thought I've heard of (but never played) called "deep-immersion" roleplaying, where the character's psychology is explored in depth, and the world is explored in depth, and nobody ever fights anything. That doesn't sound like any fun to me, so I'm glad that wasn't what you were talking about!)

[foster1941]

coffee said:

Okay, now I see what you're getting at.

Part of it has been called 'system-naive' play; the players don't know the mechanics of the system, so they have to decide what to do based on their knowledge of the real world, of fantasy, and of what they've already learned from the game system through actual play.

The other part is the verisimilitude of the dungeon experience, which aids in the players' making their decisions.I.e.:

"Okay, the floor is wet and uneven, so if I try to get a runing start to jump that chasm, I might slip and fall in. Also, I can barely see the other side in my torchlight. Maybe I ought to come up with another way to get across..."

As opposed to:

"The environmental modifiers of -6 means my jump check will only be 4; I don't want to risk it."

At least, that's what I think you mean by that part.

Yeah, that's it exactly.

[murquhart72]

zulgyan said:

Consider this original character record:
www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/miscpages/miscscans/76pc.html

Neither attack capability, or AC or saves are included.
The players don't really need to know them.

Keep in mind, these sheets weren't readily available to the public. The following sheets came out later:
www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/miscpages/miscscans/77pcf.html
And had almost as much detail as Advanced D&D character sheets!

[Zulgyan]

Are those sheets post-Sup. I-Greyhawk?

That could explain their increased detail.

[joethulhu]

Ah - I see where you're coming from with Immersion. I run my games the same way when describing things, doing my best to set the mood. I just don't bother hiding the mechanics of the game. TheRedPriest can vouch for this, as he has played numerous games with me (D&D, AD&D, Stormbringer, Call of Cthulhu) with me as referee back when I lived in Nawlins.

He ran some HARP and Runequest for me in return! I had the coolest short human fighter evar!

[coffee]

There's a copy of the Wee Warriors "Character Archaic" character sheets on ebay right now, item # 270224505675.

If, you know, you happen to have $305.

[Deleted]

CHARACTER: ____________________________
 
CLASS: _____________     RACE: ________
 
EXP: __________    ALIGNMENT: _________
 
MAX HP: ___               WEIGHT: _____
 
STR: __ INT: __ WIS: __ DEX: __ CON: __
 
CHA: __         LANGUAGES     TREASURE 
             |             |
             |             |
             |             |

  EQUIPMENT    MAGIC ITEMS     SPELLS  
             |             |
             |             |
             |             |
             |             |
             |             |
             |             |
             |             |

Revised to expand the types of treasure allowed.

[badger2305]

Lines to write on. ;D