What information on a PC’s character sheet do you, as a DM, frequently need to know?

The reason I ask is that I’m playing around with putting together an Adventure Worksheet: A little standard form that can hang out as a tablemat for quick reference.

For example:

• Who’s the slowest party member? (So that you know how fast the group moves in exploration mode.)
• What’s the standard watch rotation?
• What’s the standard marching order? (With notations for light sources.)

And key PC stats like:

• Armor Class (so that you don’t need to keep asking for it every round)
• Known Languages (so that you know who understands the guttural grumblings of goblins)
• Spot/Listen/Perception checks (assuming you make them secretly)

I find the information that I can actually reference in this matter tends to vary a lot. For example, for my original 3E group I was able to jot down ACs for the PCs and significantly streamline my resolution of NPC attack rolls. But every 3E group I’ve DMed since then has featured characters who are constantly shifting their AC from encounter-to-encounter and (frequently) round-to-round, preventing me from effective cheat sheeting.

Similarly, I know several DMs who jot down Spot/Listen/Perception checks because they like to make those checks secretly. I prefer the “red herring” approach to Perception checks (in which I will periodically call for Perception checks whether there’s anything to detect or not) because it gives me an extra tool for setting pace and tone. (Properly employed you can create a sense of paranoia, false-confidence, or both. It’s also a great, non-confrontational way to refocus attention on the game if the table is getting sidetracked or chit-chatty.)

So I’m wondering what type of stuff you like to have at your fingertips as a DM. (Or would like to have.)

Let’s take a peek at the Black Book Beta character sheet for Legends & Labyrinths:

(click for PDF)

Like the rulebook itself, this is a work in progress. (I’m not particularly happy with the skill section, and there are some other sizing and spacing issues that need to be tweaked and resolved.) But this should give you some idea of what I’m aiming for.

As with many elements in Legends & Labyrinths, one of the key hurdles I had to avoid in developing this character sheet was what I came to call the “illusion of simplicity”. For example, I had a long struggle with the illusion of a character creation process so simple that you just “rolled ability scores, picked a class, and then started playing!” It’s a seductive vision, but it never actually existed. (And there was a reason it never existed.)

These “illusions of simplicity” served as siren songs. If, as a game designer, you pursue them you’ll end up handicapping your game. The idea that your life would be easier if you didn’t need to buy shoes bumps against cold, hard reality when you start talking about lopping your feet off with an axe.

In the case of this character sheet, the illusion of simplicity I struggled with was the classic sheet from the BECMI Basic Set that had indoctrinated me into roleplaying 20 years ago. Wouldn’t it be great if your character sheet didn’t have anything on it except character name, alignment, class, level, ability scores, and saving throws?

But the reality was that the BECMI sheet achieved its simplicity by not including some key forms of utility.

On the other hand, I also didn’t want (or need) the spreadsheets-of-doom which so many character sheets have become.

REFERENCE LAYERS

The solution I eventually developed was the concept of “layers”. For example, here’s the hit point section:

The iconic heart gives you a clear, pictorial reference. Collectively, these distinct graphical shapes keep the sheet from turning into a gray haze. It also gives you a large palette for keeping track of your current hit points.

The top layer contains the “most important” info. Below they you have secondary info that you’ll want to have for easy reference, but not on a frequent basis: Your max hit points. Any temporary hit points you’re currently benefiting. A place to track nonlethal damage. And a place for noting damage reduction if you’ve got it.

As a different example, here’s the saving throw section:

This is pretty basic: Once again you’ve got a distinct shape conceptually grouping these stats together. The top layer contains the total saving throw bonus (the key information you need to reference during play), while the layer below that lists the various modifiers that build that top layer stat.

What I like about the sheet is that, when you look at it, the top layer of information “pops out”. In play, it feels like you’re using a much more streamlined character sheet because of that — but you’ve also still get access to all that additional information when you need it. (And I think this will be even more true as we tweak the spacing and layout issues.)

MORE THAN JUST STATS

I also feel its important for a character sheet to contain more than just game mechanics. That’s why the right hand column is given over to description. This is broken into three types:

First, the “Symbol-or-Sketch”. This has vanished from most modern character sheets, or it gets buried somewhere on the second or third page.  But having this space on the front of the character sheet for my old school campaign has evoked all kinds of evocative doodling and drawing. (I think there’s something about having that blank space right in front of you during play that encourages players to start filling it up. If nothing else, it’s a good space for taking notes.)

Second, concrete requests for information. Height, Weight, Age, Gender, and the like. This establishes a fairly standard scaffold to start hanging your character on.

Third, an invitation to create in bold strokes. The boxes for “Distinguishing Features” and “Personality Traits” are deliberately open-ended. You can put pretty much anything you want in there (or ignore them entirely). But the idea is to lay out a few bold ideas. I find that, particularly for new roleplayers, writing down a few key words like “impetuous” or “always lying” or “loves to grin” is often the best way to jump-start a character.

Those of us who like multi-page biographies and character studies, of course, are still free to tack on as many supplementary pages as we like. But I’m a big fan of taking new players, handing them a character sheet, and letting them pour their imagination onto it. When it works — when those new players invest themselves in the role they’ve created — you can create a gamer for life overnight.

The streamlined system for character creation in Legends & Labyrinths is the first part of that process: It allows new players to take control of creating their first character (without feeling overwhelmed by endless details for which they have no context). And then, hopefully, this character sheet seals the deal by putting the non-mechanical elements of character creation front-and-center: Inviting them to start thinking of their character as more than just a collection of numbers.

We’ve got less than 24 hours before the end of the month and our deadline for early bird completion of the $3000 landmark in the Legends & Labyrinths 8-Bit Funding project.

If we hit that landmark by midnight tonight, all Labyrinth Prowlers ($30 and up) will receive PDF copies of Mini-Adventure 1: Complex of Zombies and Mini-Adventure 2: The Black Mist as a free bonus when the project is funded.

Either way, tomorrow morning I’ll be announcing our next landmark and the bonus perks to go with it! If we hit the $3000 early bird landmark, we’ll stay on the super-charged early bird track. If we don’t, then we’ll transition onto a more traditional landmark track.

Yesterday I talked about how subtle mechanical shifts can have a large impact on gameplay. But if a change as small as shifting create water from being a 4th level spell to a 1st level spell can have such a large impact on how the game is played, it follows that one could deliberately create such effects with shifts in mechanics or emphasis.

Which brings us to a chapter in Legends & Labyrinths that I hope will prove to be completely subversive for modern gamers.

Chapter 10: Companions and Allies returns henchmen and hirelings to the heart of the game. It brings them back in from the cold and reverses their exile to the cruel hinterlands of gaming manuals everywhere.

It does this in three ways:

First, it gives them a place of primacy. Not just an entire chapter to themselves (instead of being squashed into a single sub-table of the Equipment chapter), but a chapter in Part I: Characters.  This is very much a declaration that your companions and allies are part of what defines your character. (Consider that the other chapters in this section are basically summed up as Character Creation, XP, Ability Scores, Races, Classes, Skills, Movement, Hit Points, and Conditions.)

Second, all characters are inherently and mechanically endowed with companions. At 1st level everybody gets a contact. At 6th level, every PC begins benefiting from the equivalent of 3E’s Leadership feat. (Dropping every character’s 1st level feat and replacing it with Leadership also helped me fix some balance issues with multiclassing in L&L.)

Third, mechanical detail. The process of attracting followers, hiring men-at-arms, and the like is not left as a complete tabula rasa. Like everything in Legends & Labyrinths, these mechanics provide a light framework for DMs to work within — but I honestly believe that such frameworks make it far more likely that certain aspects of the game world will be used.

In my old school campaign, I’ve seen that (a) having rules for hirelings front-and-center in the process of character creation and (b) making hirelings a tangible, mechanical part of defining a PC has a profound effect on how people approach the game. I’m hoping that a similar — albeit more subtle — approach in Legends & Labyrinths will have a similar effect.

WHY DOES IT MATTER?

First, and most importantly, I think it’s a viable and entertaining form of play. While there’s much to be said for the intensity of solo play focusing exclusively on a single character, there’s also a reason why The Sims was such a popular game.

Second, I think it sets the stage for a more sustainable form of high-level play. Even if the various contacts and followers a PC accumulates are not actively adventuring with them, they will be begin to enmesh the PCs into a wider web of obligations and connections. This type of widespread engagement with the game world is, in my experience, a key factor in avoiding the 15-minute adventuring day at high levels.

Third, even if the PCs aren’t actually employing hirelings, I think a little emphasis on play-with-henchmen also encourages superior encounter design. Basically, henchmen are a way of introducing mixed-level parties. And when you’re designing for a mixed-level party you can’t engage in the kind of lop-sided, mutual-assured-destruction of fetishized-balance encounter design. You have to use a larger number of more varied opponents. And those types of encounters result in better gameplay in general (mixed-level parties or not).

Fourth, hirelings and henchmen are a great way of supporting non-standard and under-sized play groups. And being able to support groups like that can be a big help when you’re trying to establish an open gaming table.

Consider this: In 1974, create water was a 4th level spell and create food was a 5th level spell. That meant you wouldn’t have magical access to a water supply until you had a 6th level cleric in the group; and you wouldn’t have magical access to food until you had a 7th level cleric. (By 7th level you’re considered a major religious leader and at 8th level you’re assumed to be founding your own churches.)

This remained true in the Basic line of the game all the way through the Rules Cyclopedia in ’91. In the Advanced line of the game, however, things shifted. In the 1st Edition PHB create water became a 1st level spell.

What does this mean? Well, it means that B4 The Lost City was a viable scenario in the Basic game, but not in the Advanced game:

Days ago your group of adventurers joined a desert caravan. Halfway across the desert, a terrible sandstorm struck, separating your party from the rest of the caravan. When the storm died down you found that you were alone. The caravan was nowhere in sight. The desert was unrecognizable, as the dunes had been blown into new patterns. You were lost.

(…)

The second day after your water ran out, you stumbled upon a number of stone blocks sticking out of a sand dune. Investigation showed that the sand covered the remains of a tall stone wall. On the other side of the stone wall was a ruined city.

The whole concept of being driven into an ancient ruin because you’re short on water pretty much ceases to be an issue. This is even more true in 3E when the already devalued create water became a 0-level orison.

But like the wings of a butterfly, the subtle shift in this single spell actually has a profound impact on gameplay.

THE WIDER EFFECT

As my old school 1974 campaign moved towards hexcrawling, my players began figuring out how to equip their characters for wilderness exploration. The hexcrawling was based around a fairly basic system (which served as the test pilot for the wilderness exploration mechanics found in Legends & Labyrinths). It’s not a mass of complexity, but it does provide a basic model for:

1. Travel Time
2. Navigation
3. Discovery

Combined with the standard systems of encumbrance and a daily requirement of food and water, the result was a fairly plausible demand for supplies (particularly if they were heading into the jungle where potable water was difficult to come by).

What they quickly discovered was that, for any journey of appreciable length, they couldn’t physically carry the necessary supplies. So they needed horses.

But horses pose a problem if you need to go spelunking. So they needed hirelings to care for the horses.

And once you’ve got hirelings watching the horses, it doesn’t take much imagination to start hiring men-at-arms to come into the dungeon with you.

All these hirelings, of course, need their own supplies. Which means more horses. And eventually pack horses. (The latter, particularly, once they started hitting treasures that they couldn’t easily haul back in a single load.)

After some trial and error, each group found their own equilibrium. But, in general, adventuring parties grew. And as the parties grew, the need for larger, more elaborate, and more rewarding ventures grew.

The reality of this dynamic is actually more complex than this, of course. (For example, I also believe the fact that hirelings are given a prominent place as a major feature of your character in the original rulebooks plays a large role in making them a major feature in old school play. Take those same rules and put them somewhere else in the rulebook and that gameplay doesn’t get as much attention.) But the need for supplies was, in a very real sense, the camel’s nose in the tent: Take that need away, the need for horses disappears. The need for horses disappears, the hirelings disappear.

And I’d argue it can actually be taken one step further: Take low-level hirelings away and you take away mid-level fiefdoms because you haven’t developed the skills or style of play necessary to gradually transition into those fiefdoms. The entire original “end game” of the game disappears.

THE LARGER METAPHOR

The other thing about create water as a spell is that it’s a small example of a larger phenomenon in D&D which is often overlooked.

Specifically, it’s an ability which removes gameplay.

I’ve spoken with many game designers who consider this to be a huge mistake. It was certainly a motivating factor in the design of 4th Edition. A similar motivation gives you the game world scaling of Oblivion.

But I, personally, think it’s great: As you play D&D, the game shifts. At 10th level you aren’t playing the same game you were playing at 1st level.

If we consider this narrow slice of the game, D&D basically used to say: “Okay, you start out exploring a nearby dungeon for 2 or 3 levels. Then you start exploring the wilderness and you have to really focus on how to make those explorations a success — supplies, navigation aids, clear goals, etc. We’ll do that for 3-4 levels and then, ya know what? I’m bored with that. So we’ll keep doing the explorations, but we’re going to yank out all that logistical gameplay, replace it with some magical resources, and start shifting the focus of wilderness exploration to staking out fiefdoms and clearing the countryside. We’ll do that for 3-4 levels. By that time you’ve probably transitioned pretty thoroughly into realms management, so we’ll just give you this teleport spell and we can probably just phase that ‘trekking through the wilderness’ stuff out entirely.”

(Of course, it’s not really gone because the same players are running multiple PCs. So if they’re in the mood for some hexcrawling on Tuesday night, they’ll just bring out their lower level characters to play.)

You’ll find these kinds of abilities studded throughout the game. Their impact has been dulled somewhat over the years (and removed pretty much completely from 4th Edition), but this fundamental panoply of gameplay experiences continues to be a major strength of classic D&D.