I just ran into trouble with the definition of a character sheet over at the Doing Away with XP thread. Perhaps this term should be added to the glossary?

In summary (if you don't want to read the thread), a character sheet was known as two different things by myself and tiego.rodrigues:
- Tiego: I guess one could call the friends list you used as an example as a character sheet, though it would be strictly through catachresis, as it says nothing about the character herself, except through her connections to other people. I would call it a relationship list, karma list, or whatever name sounds cool to the players...
- Zak: A character sheet holds anything relevant to a group's play concerning a player's character's uniqueness within the game.

So how's this:

Character Sheet: Anything that makes the player unique (resources, descriptions, etc) as recorded on paper(s) (or similar medium).

Zak Arntson wrote: Character Sheet: Anything that makes the player unique (resources, descriptions, etc) as recorded on paper(s) (or similar medium).

Here's how I would define character sheets:

A document containing all of the data which describes a player character or non-player character.

How is that?

Doctor Xero wrote: Consider this instead :
Character Sheet: A record of the formalized interactive points of contact between the player and the game system, historically by way of the formal quantifications within system of the options (resources, attributes, character name, et al.) of the player's particular game persona (hence the term 'Character Sheet').

Zak Arntson wrote: I just ran into trouble with the definition of a character sheet over at the Doing Away with XP thread. Perhaps this term should be added to the glossary?

Doctor Xero wrote: Consider this instead :
Character Sheet: A record of the formalized interactive points of contact between the player and the game system, historically by way of the formal quantifications within system of the options (resources, attributes, character name, et al.) of the player's particular game persona (hence the term 'Character Sheet').

The above definition works for gamist, narrativist, and simulationist games equally well (and even for war games), and it works for all three stances and for all the possible variations of game-mastered and game-master-less gaming. Yet it makes it quite clear the functional relationship between character sheet and system without reifying it.

Doctor Xero wrote: Character Sheet: A record of the formalized interactive points of contact between the player and the game system, historically by way of the formal quantifications within system of the options (resources, attributes, character name, et al.) of the player's particular game persona (hence the term 'Character Sheet').

Though I like the definition Doctor Xero provides, I think the lack of discussion in this thread means a lack of need for the item in the glossary. It would be nice for a term that covers all the player-relevant information players hold in front of them, though the lack of a term doesn't bog down discussion (the thread linked from this one is the only time it's tripped me up).

That said, "player records" is a good one (and one I'll wind up using, probably), but it doesn't need to be formalized.

Zak Arntson wrote: Though I like the definition Doctor Xero provides, I think the lack of discussion in this thread means a lack of need for the item in the glossary.