So I had an interesting conversation on Vincent's (aka lumpley) blog anyway: cf. "Strong stuff indeed". However, I'm afraid I may have overstepped or sidetracked discussion on there. Anyhow, discussion came out of lumpley's starting statement:

lumpley wrote: Resolution is how you participate in stuff happening, and development is how your participation changes over the course of the game. Anything on your character sheet that doesn't contribute to your participation, now or over time, is pointless.

Charles wrote: I think that a more useful way to think about it is not "What is on your character sheet that you don't use?" but instead, "What do you use that isn't on your character sheet?" If your character sheet includes a lot of irrelevant stuff, that probably won't hurt play much. If your character sheet doesn't include a lot of stuff that matters, then the mechanics of character creation (to the extent they are represented by what you end up with on a character sheet) are failing to support the stuff that matters. Even worse is if there is stuff on your character sheet that is wrong, if the game doesn't include mechanics for changing the representation of your character as your character evolves.

Hi John,

My take on the issue (which I don't think I articulated effectively there) is that both approaches are valid. I read it that Vincent was saying for a narrowly focused game design, ruthlessly throwing out everything on the sheet that doesn't directly relate to play is effective. Considering his focus on his blog (those are the only types of games he's interested in discussing), I think it makes sense to bring the more general conversation here.

Games that discard universal statistics that model the real world use this approach. Characters tend to interact with the game world using their relevant attributes, but those can as easily be "Bitter Cynic" or "Loves Clair" as they could STR, DEX, CON, and INT. Under this approach, if the game is all about high-stakes political intrigue, you know how well Bill is able to influence the Duke, but not how much he can dead-lift.

I don't think that there would ever be a game where the character is fully and completely represented solely by what's on the character sheet. Obviously there's information the players contributed to the SIS about Bob that's not written down there. I feel like that was what you felt was being argued for on Vincent's blog, but I didn't read it that way. I felt it was more an issue that if something isn't important in the SIS, it doesn't need to be written down.

I think it all comes back to the character sheet being a useful part of play. The character sheet should reflect the character's contact points with the rules; I've played in many games where this wasn't the case. I see readjusting the rules, and the character sheet, to match the focus of the game as being a helpful thing, and I don't see that focusing as limiting.

It's not that if you play Dogs, you can't introduce some new element to your character that's not on the sheet -- but rather that you'll likely add this new element to the sheet at the next opportunity. (I read about PCs taking Fallout that fleshes out their character all the time. In a lot of games, you'd have written down "Questioned his faith" as a note, but here you'd be able to add it to the sheet as something that interacts with the rules.

Is it all that different a style of play than what you're describing? No, not really. But for someone who's played in many games where nothing on the character sheet was referenced, other than the text boxes for "backstory" or "notes", it might be a considerable aid in having the rules actually aid play rather than be ignored.

(known as Charles on Anyway)

I have to agree with you, John. It seems to me that what I meant could be better stated as things that are unthinkingly not included in the character sheet that play an important part in play might better be included on the character sheet (to the extent that the character sheet is the physical manifestation of character creation). It certainly seems to me that your process of creating the Vineland game's character sheets was well thought out in terms of what effect including things on the character sheet vs. not including them would have. It is interesting to see things not stated (or not recorded) being used to powerful effect. The idea of using the mechanics to force certain things within the game to be viewed as unspoken (even though they remain central to the game) because certain portions of the mechanics fundamentally ignore them is one I haven't run across before. It actually seems like it would achieve that very nice effect of having the mechanics emulate the experience, for while Kjartan may care enormously about his affair with Silskif, and the player may as well, character and player are placed in parallel positions of having the formal rules of the game and the formal rules of society refuse to fully acknowledge that interest.

It still seems to me that including things on a character sheet that don't come up in play is only a problem to the extent that it means that character creation was focused on things that weren't relevant to play. However, having things that are on your character sheet, do come up, and don't contribute to play is definitely something to be avoided. Since things that are put on your character sheet, particularly things that it is agreed that everyone should have on their character sheet (say, Hit Points or Relationships), are very likely to come up, even if they don't contribute to enjoyable play, it is probably more important to trim off the junk than it is to add on everything.

I should probably mention that I actually play fairly freeform games, but that I find formalized character generation systems interesting and productive as a way of helping me to think about a character, and frequently use them to help me create a character, even if the character sheet itself will never actually be used in play (or never actually exists). So when I talk about a character sheet, I am really talking more about the end product of the process of creating a character than I am about an actual sheet of paper. This may make me less than clear, but I find it helps me to get more out of discussions that are framed in mechanics oriented terms.

Hi John,

To really examine the subject, maybe it might help to look back at Vincent's chart here:

http://www.lumpley.com/archive/156.html

A character sheet, a blog, the family trees in the character folders- all of these are cues to help remind the group about what matters in play. In some cases, such as what's on the character sheet proper- it's something the designer has put forth to help focus play. Stuff like in-character blogs, family trees, and anything else the group adds also plays this role, but isn't provided by the text- it's provided by group drift.

So, if we put aside both types of cues as being part of the "character sheet"(in the largest sense), it is interesting to note that some of the most important stuff in any game might still not be directly cued...

But- I believe the point of all the cues is to direct the group towards that final goal. If we're looking at Dogs- there is no mechanical score o cues relating to "Judgement" or "What's right?" or anything like that, but the system and cues work together to produce play dealing with those issues.

So yeah, the important stuff might be completely unrecorded and uncued... but for consistantly hitting it, the stuff that is cued needs to aim towards it.

Chris

Well here's a maybe interesting thing to consider.

What if the character sheet (however broadly or narrowly understood) isn't a record, accounting or description of the character at all?

What if, instead, the character sheet is a description of your participation in the game? Like how a chess piece's shape doesn't tell you where it is on the board or its history of moves, it tells you how you can move it right now?

The purpose of mechanical character creation, then, would be the same as the purpose of setting up your pieces at the beginning of a chess game. It establishes your starting position in the game. Changes to your character sheet wouldn't, essentially, follow changes to your character; instead they'd essentially change your role, your strengths and weaknesses in the game, as a player. Like kinging a checker or queening a pawn.

-Vincent

Vincent,

I like that. It also explains why, in many games, I didn't bother too much with the character sheet other than solely as the starting point. Fiddling with the numbers and making it neat and pretty just doesn't do much for me.

Our recent game of Nine Worlds has proved to me how valuable the character sheet can be--very much in line with what you just posted. The character muses express my goals for future game play as well as how these goals intersect with the other players' goals.

Julie

Vincent,

Interesting. Under the broader definition of character sheet, I don't think I'd care for it (in that the broader definition is the ful representation of the character in written material), but if it were the narrow definition of character sheet (and part of the broader definition) then interesting. I think it would tend to force the game in a conciously game-y direction (a strong emphasis on what the player can do) as the chess analogy suggests (we don't care about what the rook is like, we care only about what we as players can do with it), but I don't think it would have to do that.

Of course, in a game where the only thing the player can do is act through the character, then this is actually what a D&Dish character sheet does. The player can affect the game world by having hir character cast magic missile. The player can effect the game world having hir character climb walls. The player has an X% chance of affecting the game world by hitting the monster.

A character sheet is like a chessboard when it can give you an idea of what the points of stress & tension & possibilities for development are. The bishop in peril is a bang taking place. A lonely pawn is an opening for adversity.

Visually represented cues could help you better formulate what happens in the game, as well as letting you know what resources the player has access to. Sounds like thats what happend for Julie in 9Worlds. The relats map in Sorcerer & Polaris do this, they let you know what's at stake & what the relationships are among characters.

Or, the resources that are recorded on the sheet, can point to what the player wants to (or ends up) exploring. Traits in Dogs represent resources the players can call on, and also tell you what they've committed to exploring via their character. Taking two d8s in a gun means they've committed that part of their ability to contribute to calling that gun into action.

If we look at the character itself as a large order cue for what the player is interested in exploring, and the character sheet as their starting position for doing so in the game, then what Ron said about character, development & resources makes even more sense.

Ron wrote: Let's look instead at two other aspects of System: resolution and development. Resolution is "how stuff happens," and development is "how characters change." ...
Anyway, once you have resolution and development a little clearer in your mind, then you can see how character creation is really nothing but a starting point for those two processes in action.

Bankuei wrote: A character sheet, a blog, the family trees in the character folders- all of these are cues to help remind the group about what matters in play. In some cases, such as what's on the character sheet proper- it's something the designer has put forth to help focus play. Stuff like in-character blogs, family trees, and anything else the group adds also plays this role, but isn't provided by the text- it's provided by group drift.

So, if we put aside both types of cues as being part of the "character sheet"(in the largest sense), it is interesting to note that some of the most important stuff in any game might still not be directly cued...

But- I believe the point of all the cues is to direct the group towards that final goal.

Andrew Norris wrote: Is it all that different a style of play than what you're describing? No, not really. But for someone who's played in many games where nothing on the character sheet was referenced, other than the text boxes for "backstory" or "notes", it might be a considerable aid in having the rules actually aid play rather than be ignored.

Hey Charles!

Another thing to consider is that in every game you play, something has to serve the function I described. Otherwise, how would you know how to participate?

Thus I don't think that having such a character sheet leads at all to consciously game-y play. I mean, having unspoken social convention serve that function doesn't especially lead to consciously game-y play either.

John: You've pretty thoroughly misunderstood my little drawings. But that's okay; what I'm saying is that I agree with you, and my little drawings do too. If you'd like me to explain how my drawings and yours say the same thing, let me know; otherwise, I'm comfy going forward in this thread with just yours.

-Vincent

I was thinking about the relationship between the character and the character sheet just about three months ago, and I put it together in Game Ideas Unlimited: Character at Gaming Outpost (at present still a subscription site, but may be changing fairly soon).

In that article, I wrote: ...There is a degree to which what we call character generation is not the creation of the character; it is the creation of the character sheet.....

For anyone not familiar with the game or this character creation system, in Multiverser the player plays himself, or perhaps a game recreation of himself that is as accurate and complete as can be managed in transposing a real person to a fictional character....Real people are far more complicated than anyone imagines, though, and we worked our way to the point that a starting character paper was a major project. Of course, there are many games in which a starting character is a major project....Eventually, though, we realized that we were doing too much work up front. Game play was better facilitated if we began by putting a very few important scores on paper and filling in the rest as game progressed. Which scores are the important ones very much depends on the character....The trick is to identify which are the outstanding and important qualities of this character and get those on paper, allowing the more mundane and insignificant aspects to be added at such time as the game calls for them.

In that sense, it's pretty obvious that there's a big difference between creating the character and creating the character sheet. In Multiverser the character already exists, and has existed for years before anyone thought to bring him into the game....The character sheet, on the other hand, is a bare bones sketch of a few important aspects of this character. It gives a few fragments of character abilities in terms that permit them to integrate with the game mechanics. It cannot be more than that, really. Were it a hundred pages in small print, it would barely scratch the surface of all that this character is and does, his abilities, his drives, his beliefs. All it is is a quick reference document to keep a few fundamental character facts as matters of record, should they be needed in play.

The surprising thing, though, is that this is true of all character creation processes in all role playing games. The character is something rich and diverse, filled with motivations and history, relationships and anecdotes. The character paper is nothing more than a reference sheet for a few relevant statistics that are likely to be needed for resolving important moments in play, possibly with some color added to assist the player in getting into the mindset of this character.

We make the mistake of equating the two. Pass me my character, we say, as if there could possibly be adequate information in a file folder to fully define the persona we bring into the game world....As was suggested when we discussed Credibility, that piece of paper is an authority to which players can appeal for support in their proposed actions and results. The character exists in the shared imagined space, that is, in the minds of the participants in the game.

For some of us, this is an essential restructuring of the understanding of the character. The words and numbers on the sheet are not the character. They could not possibly be that, and so they never were. The character is that entity that lives and breathes in our imaginations; this piece of paper is a page from the hall of records, a birth certificate, a school transcript, an employee evaluation. Just as those documents, even collectively, cannot say who you are, so too the character sheet cannot tell us who the character is. It can only tell us a few important statistics about the character, which is not at all the same thing.

Of course, this becomes evident in a game like Multiverser, where the entire character creation process...involves imagining the character and putting the details on paper. This applies in many other games as well. Seth Ben-Ezra's Legends of Alyria...does much the same thing, having the players define who the character is and then create the stats on paper that describe that character. If you've created a character in your mind and then reduced it to notes on paper, it's blatantly evident that the notes on paper are a pale reflection of the character that has been created. These are only the chart at the foot of the bed; the patient is much more than what the chart reports.

Yet it is equally true of those games in which the statistics are developed through mechanical means, such as dice, and the character fleshed out by player choices and additional rolls. In this case, the real character creation occurs after the sheet has been constructed, as the player defines who this person is in revealing him in the shared imagined space. Just because we rolled up the scores doesn't mean we rolled up the character. We only defined a few key points, and left the rest up to our collective imaginations to devise. The character sheet in this case is the starting point; the character is about to be created from it.

Either way, the character sheet is not the character, but only a synopsis of the character. It is like the one paragraph biography of the author that appears on the flyleaf and tells you everything and nothing. Stop looking at that as if it were the character, and realize it's only the framework, the few critical points to which everyone has agreed. Start the game and watch the character create himself on the stage of the mind as play progresses.

The discussion of things on a character sheet that are not used being a detriment is all well and good if you're talking about stats or somesuch that are recorded but not used. That seems more of a design issue, since what stats and other info belong on a sheet is often clearly spelled out in the game manual. There is one obvious place it seems to fall down, though.

If I'm playing in a Sim scenario, or a scenario with any Sim leanings at all, then something that most of the time goes unnoticed on my character sheet might be very important in the right situation. The same can be said in many Gamist situations. IF, for example, there's a bit of gear my character owns and carries with him, such as a small knife, that is not commonly used, that can be overlooked most of the time. If, however, the character pulls a knife out of his pocket that a captor missed in a pat-down after taking the PC's main weapons, that's going to rile other players if there's nothing about the knife recorded anywhere.

This leads me to a question. Just what sorts of things should be left off of a character sheet and under what circumstances?

groundhog wrote: This leads me to a question. Just what sorts of things should be left off of a character sheet and under what circumstances?

M. J. Young wrote:

groundhog wrote: This leads me to a question. Just what sorts of things should be left off of a character sheet and under what circumstances?

And the answer is:

Exactly those things for which the player may require some authority to back his statement that such a thing is real within the shared imagined space.

lumpley wrote:
What if the character sheet (however broadly or narrowly understood) isn't a record, accounting or description of the character at all?

What if, instead, the character sheet is a description of your participation in the game? Like how a chess piece's shape doesn't tell you where it is on the board or its history of moves, it tells you how you can move it right now?

John Kim wrote: Offhand, I am hard pressed to recall a time when a player has held up his character sheet for other people to read in order to back up some in-game statement. (Note: I believe that it happens in other games, but it's not a part of my experience.) Thus, I don't think of character sheets as primarily a supplier of social authority. To my mind, the character sheet is primarily for that character's player -- not for the other players in the group....

So descriptive stuff which helps them get in-character (if that's desired) and play aids (like commonly-used charts) are good to go on a character sheet.

M. J. Young wrote: I think that if you had a player who frequently created new "facts" about his character that "just happened" to fit the current situation (and the game didn't normally extend that kind of credibility to character players) you would start asking to see his sheet when he made claims about character abilities you didn't recognize, in much the same way that if one guy keeps reporting a lot of really good rolls that are out of view of everyone else you'll start insisting that he throw the dice in the middle of the table where everyone can see them.

So the paper isn't less used as an authority merely because we trust the player to base his statements on what it actually says instead of inventing stuff.

contracycle wrote: RPG charsheets by contrast are not really seen as in and of the game; they facilitate the play of the game rather than being part of the game. I think this approach needs to be challenged, and that more completely integrated, game-empowered, system-representing character sheets would qallow a certain increase in the sophistication of games.

Hi John,

John Kim wrote: What I'm trying to emphasize is that the character sheet, in practice, is generally looked at only by the player. So it should be designed for how it is actually used -- i.e. as a player aid. Indeed, often a player will take it with her and be allowed to write on and edit it. Given this usage, I am suggesting it is not very effective at the suggested role of being a social authority. It can fill that role in a pinch, but it's not very well suited for it. For that, it's better to use, say, chips or cards or other elements dealt out during play.

Maybe it's just because I've played with a lot of "munchkin" players, but I've had lots of experience in seeing equipment "assumed" to be on a character in Sim or Gam scenarios. This usually happens when the player conveniently assumes his character would have the gear when it's most needed, and contrary to what the rest of the play group thinks about that player's character.

It's not often that someone will outright doctor a character sheet, and to do so is a pretty big violation of the social contract. It is more common, though, to interject, "Of course I am wearing a tench coat and have a submachine gun under it", even when on a tropical island at a beach resort. In Sim play, or in heavy Gamist play in which those added advantages were called upon, the groups in which I've been involved have regularly made use of an inventory sheet. When leaving a safehouse/cave hideout/whatever, things being taken with the character get moved from the inventory sheet of the site into the character's personal inventory or that of his conveyance. That way, from moment to moment, there is no disagreement about whether that nifty new spellbook was left at the mage's laboratory to be stolen by a burglar or whether the pocket knife was shoved into the thief's boot and still there when he was taken captive.

This kind of detail, of course, is not necessary in Nar play because it could make a better story for a character to have a possession in an unlikely place or at an unlikely time. It may even work to have a possession that is itself unlikely to be available to the character. With the cause-and-effect of mushc Sim play, though, it can be very important. Likewise, if it is done specifically at key Gamist points of interest, it can be important for that CA as well.

The setting could make a difference in the need for such a system, too. If the character travels all the time and has one change of clothes, a horse, a sword, one knife, a breastplate, a rope belt, and some cloth bags in his name then he'll probably carry all of that all the time. If a character has an apartment in the city, a country hosue with barn, a safety deposit box, a rented self-storage unit, a locker at the airport, four vehicles, a huge wardrobe, and a personal assistant then it's much more difficult to determine what is with the character or in a particular place at the time. If you need that faked ID to get into the facility you're trying to bug for surveillance, but it's in yesterday's clothes, that's a big issue. I've seen memory as an attribute in games particularly to facilitate this kind of screw-up at a mechanical level.

On the other hand, that memory stat I just mentioned is overkill for many kinds of games. It would be part of an advantage/disadvantage system in others, with everyone else assumed to have an average memory. In a game in which characters can have amazing skills but in which attention to detail is the theme, things like memory, perception, skills in proper spelling and grammar, and other things suddenly become important to that game and therefore need to be handy on a character record.

I think it pays to determine what is important for the situations you want to arise during play. That's what belongs on the character sheet. If you have no interest in the chance of having a James Bond type playing with a neat gadget from Q's lab only to realize he forgot to take it with him the one day he really needed it, then your superspy game doesn't need a character inventory. If you're interested in a dimplomat accidentally bringing two countries to the brink of war during a negotiation by committing a minor cultural faux pas with great signifigance as an insult to one party involved, then a skill for customs is as important as a skill for languages.

It all depends on your focus and that of the players you want to play your game. One way in which generalized/generic mechanics fail is to include every minute detail about a character in what's considered the central data about the character. One way in which minimalist mechanics could fail is if they leave out something that would be helpful in addressing situation, character, (dis)advantages, or premise and which follow closely what is already included. Where to draw the lines can be difficult, but I agree the decision must be made. Getting it right is a matter of focus, common sense, and experience in playing other games.