Inspired from one of the posts in the Game Jam thread, and along a similar line to the System in a Can challenge.

Make a character sheet for a new system, that anyone familiar with RPG conventions could pick it up, write a character and be able to play the system. There shouldn't be any rules explanations outside of the character sheet, and explanations on the sheet shouldn't be anything beyond a clarification, and perhaps an explanation of what the resolution mechanic is.

I've seen something close to this with the 1PG systems, where they had a brief overview of the rules beside the sheet, and it actually made more sense than the longer explanation of the rules.

I'm going to make an attempt at this as well. Whether it's succesful or not should be easy to determine - if someone doesn't have a clue what something on the sheet is for, it didn't work out.

Incidentally, anyone know a good place to host PDFs?

Hey, this sounds fun.

Are there any limits?

Is it ok to create, for example, an ultra huge or multiple page sheet? Are two-sided sheets fine? What about font size and stuff?

Also, a deadline?

I'm always looking for a chance to hone my skills with contests like this.

By my own admission I bombed on the System in a Can challenge with a game that lacked direction and was a bit too unwieldy for the 4 page restriction.

But I've come up with a game idea based on origami, in which you can fold the page in various ways to cause game effects and character development. If I can get the rules onto a square page that is actually used as both the rules and character sheet, this could be interesting.

V

No time limit. It's more an idea to see if it can be done.

Multi sheets is fine, I don't think I want to put a hard limit on it. After all, D&D and T&T have shown us that you need several pages just for spells. It would be legit to have a brief spell description on the sheet assuming that each character has access to some or all of the spells.

Basically the idea is that the system should be so clear, and the character sheet so clear, that to a role player who has already played some games the character sheet is self explanatory and no rules explanation is necessary.

I've got an example PDF of what I tried for about an hour after posting this thread, but I'd need somewhere to host it.

With regards to getting rules onto a square on a page, it shouldn't be anything more than maybe clarifying what type of mechanic it has. For instance my sheet (I think) is pretty obvious to most people that it's a dice pool system, but it's not clear what type of dice it uses (the way it's designed, it doesn't matter that much, but I clarify that it's D6). I basically have 1 line of clarifications in there. If I had more time though I'd probably try to get some dice fonts and have a D6 icon in the part of the character sheet as "decoration", rather than having to explain it in a line on the sheet.

Incidentally, making a note that if you had better skills you'd do something a bit differently, basically describing what you'd want it to look like is perfectly legit too.

Basically, the only rule is that it should look like a "real" character sheet, ie one that is meant to go together with a system, it shouldn't be obvious at first glance that the point was to get the system onto the character sheet.

Very neat idea.

Always wanted to do that. Cool practice - to make the mechanics so clear so Character Sheet alone would be enough to sit and play. I think it could become a major event. Lets make up a deadline and wait for more participants, and we'll have a Contest.

I have no idea what's an appropriate deadline for this kind of thing. Any suggestions?

I'll have a go at this idea. Not sure how well I'll do, but practice makes perfect and all that jazz.

Migo: You can find file storage/hosting at Box.net.

System in a Can was a pretty frenzied experience, so maybe give it a fortnight.

Regular discussions throughout to brainstorm ideas between participants, then at the end of week 1 everyone submits the first draft ideas.

Then everyone gets the second week as an opportunity to refine their ideas. Final submission at the end of week 2.

I'd say that trying to keep the whole thing focused and simple is the key to this type of friendly competition.

V 

That sounds good.

Let's say Draft 1 by the 12th. Final Copy by the 19th.

http://www.box.net/shared/q8f3omc3kq - hopefully that works. That's the rough one I threw together.

O.K.

I'm in.

V

Ok, so who else do we "officially" have in?

I have some advice to offer, based on running and observing a lot of these activities.

Don't make a big deal about who's "in" while it's going on. A lot of people get distracted by that - announcing and then un-announcing, not participating at all because they weren't confident about announcing, and so on. A kind of little emotional whirlpool occurs which undercuts the activity itself. Calling for announcements of participation does not act as an actual motor for submissions.

I suggest that you'll know who's "in" by receiving submissions, and that's all you'll need.

Please feel free to ignore my advice if it doesn't match well with what you want to do.

Best, Ron

I have been working on something for this challenge since yesterday when I first read the thread, the only question I have though is how much is to much in your opinion. I only ask as you have issued the challenge and I would prefer to work off your definition.
I personally see the sheet as being anything which does not have an excess of description, only providing the bare bones and has some use in actual play. For example the game worked up thus far uses 5 sheets total, 2 specifically for player use, and 2 for the gm's use 1 is used by both player and gm.

Character sheet:
This sheet is used to track the more or less static abilities of a character over the bulk of game, bellow each aspect of the sheet is a brief phrase advising how that attribute is advanced. 
Effort sheets:
The game uses dice pool mechanics as well as multiple types of dice and so their are three brief sections explaining rolls and pool interaction, interspersed between the spaces on the sheets for the pools to be placed.
Chronicle sheet:
It is key to the flow of game play that the gm goals, and player goals be aligned in a similar manor (at least for a standard game) and so from the very beginning of game play the chronicle is kept track of by every one to create a more uniform organized play environment. These sheet has at the bottom a brief entry advising what its function is and the rest of is is set up for people to write on.

It will probably be a bit clearer once i have the sheets all worked up (by the end of today most likely) at which point I you can advice if they meet the standards as far as you are thinking with the design concept for the game.

Regards, Seth

Ron, thanks for the advice.

Seth, what you're describing sounds fine. I like the idea of a chronicle sheet, it's not technically a "character" sheet, but it fits the spirit of the challenge just fine.

Hmm, the "like a real sheet meant to go together with an outside system" as opposed to "complete system contained within the sheet" is a tough part :)

E.g. looking at the example sheet, I wouldn't be able to run or play the system on the basis of it alone. Too much crucial information is left out. I wouldn't know how the scenes are framed, who gets to say and decide what, whether there's a central GM, whether there should be a pre-written scenario involved, or even how to determine initiative in combat. I can guess that the game involves combat, and I could try deciphering how it works, relating it to other games I played but it would basically boil down to creating one's own game by filling in the blanks. Furthermore, I could easily make wrong assumptions about the inspirations and intended approach, and wind up trying to play, say, Vampire instead of D&D, or DitV instead of GURPS.

I believe creating a complete working system contained within the sheet is possible, along with strongly implied setting and all the tools needed for session prep. It wouldn't even require large blocks of text, a lot could be done with brief outlines and diagrams. But I can't really imagine doing it while maintaining the appearance of a sheet attatched to some outside set of rules.

So, I think I'll pass on this challenge :)

I can't see why the default assumption wouldn't be a traditional GM-player set up.

My sheet was obviously Doom. Doom is a dungeon crawl. Any experienced group knows how to do a dungeon crawl, since it's D&D. Don't see why anyone would try to do DitV with it instead of D&D. Obviously people can go through the effort to misinterpret the sheet, but we're going to assume they won't.

Sadly, there's no edit feature.

Basically, I got this idea partially from reading through systems that didn't make sense, and then when I looked at the character sheet I was able to figure it out. It's been done before, so it can certainly be done again.

The two points with this challenge are, I guess: 1) create a system that's straight forward 2) create a character sheet that's well designed and hal all the information you need for play at your fingertips

Some AD&D character sheets come with detailed stat blocks to fill in for weapons. That immediately makes it pretty obvious what features are being worked with. You don't need any rules to explain what Short, Medium and Long range do when they have the modifiers factored in.

Just like you don't really need the rules to explain when AC applies and when not if you have a spot for AC ratings if you're blind, surprised, attacked from behind, etc. Every system's character sheet allows you to glean varying degrees of information from it. Here the point is to do that, except have the whole system be evident.

We could argue about these specific "default assumptions" being justified and whether they tie to the group being experienced or not, but that's probably pointless. There's a large variance in "traditional GM-player set up" across different traditional games to make the thing tricky, I think.

As for the example, I missed the Doom part, and it wasn't at all apparent to me that the game is intended for a dungeon crawl specifically. My initial impression was that it's a combat heavy supernatural monster hunters game, but neither Doom nor dungeon crawl were evident. Sorry, but it was simply not obvious to me, and neither my experience with Doom nor with various editions of D&D made noticing it easier.

But as you can see, such things are not necessarily evident, and even one additional sentence can completely change the way the game will be understood by someone. It basically makes for a Rorschach test rather than a reliable gaming system.

Sorry, but it seems it's simply not for me :)

Knee Deep in the Dead is what the first Episode of Doom is called.

Even if you interpret it as a supernatural monster hunting game, you still have GM controling the monsters and players controling the characters.

You can make the same arguments about things not being clear with stuff like "X in a nutshell".

Well, I can make the same arguments about some 300 pages long rulebooks. Still, I'm writing about this particular sheet at the moment.

I wouldn't bet that a whole lot of people picks up the Doom reference. Episode names where the last thing I kept attention to while playing the game, and it was years ago. What would certainly scream "Doom!" to me would probably be the tomato monster and BFG on the sheet, but such things could just as well tell nothing to someone else.

That there is a GM controling the monsters I can guess, but only after making assumptions based on your posts, which give me some vague hints about the gaming background you're coming from. Otherwise, being given the sheet and asked to reverse engineer a system out of it, I could just as well have players controling the monsters against each other, or even no need for anyone to control the monsters at all.

Calling it explicitly "GM's Monsters Sheet" would probably make it much more clear - although I'd still have to make some guesses about the way I'm supposed to use the monsters in play. One at a time? In groups chosen by fiat? Should I push the players with constant adversity? Maybe rather than the characters themselves I should endanger things important to them, based on the "personality/history" entries on their sheets? Or maybe I shouldn't really play them against the players as much as use them to carefully craft the atmosphere of danger and pace the encounters accordingly?

Other things that don't seem to be evident:

Character sheet doesn't say what equipment the characters start with. All the weapons and first aid kit with their maximum number of uses and full amo track? Less than that? If it's not set in stone, should the player himself or the GM decide the starting setup? Is it possible to replenish these resources in some way?

Also, it's not clear what happens when the character or monster loses all the wound points. Is the character dead, or merely uncoscious until first aid is given? If dead, does the player get to play another character, or maybe a monster? Maybe there are respawns?

Basically, I can see how many potential issues could be handled by adding a few more short clarifications and maybe outlining the overall structure of play. There's no chance to make every single thing about the system perfectly clear for every single person out there, of course. However, what I see now is deliberate sacrificing of communicativeness just for the sake of appearance.

In the opening post you've stated that if someone doesn't have a clue, it didn't work. Well, I didn't have a clue before your outside clarifications, and I'm still making wild guesses about some stuff. So, it doesn't work yet. It could certainly be improved, only the appearance restriction makes it very tricky.

Anyway, you can approach my critique of the example sheet however you want, even dismissing it entirely - it's yours after all. But since I get the impression you're rather defensive about it, I think I'll leave it at that.

Either way I'm not "in" despite my initial enthusiasm, and I'm just giving you my reasons. As the rules stand, it might be a good exercise in creating character sheets, but not in actual system design.

Ummm..... it's an RPG. You can do whatever you want. The rules are just guidelines. The sheet is there to keep track of things. You can replenish things if the GM says you can. Otherwise you can't. Just like any RPG with a GM. You start out with whatever equipment the GM approves. Just like any RPG. If the wound points go down, you die if that's how you want it. If you decide you want to respawn that's fine. If you make another character that's also fine. People take a game and break the rules all the time. You can respawn in D&D if you want to. Just because the rules don't say you can, doesn't mean you can't. Whether a character dies or is unconscious depends on the play style. Some people don't like character death. Some people hate not having it.

The point isn't to design a niche system like Beast Hunters or Universalis. It's to design a traditional RPG system. That's D&D, B&B, T&T, RuneQuest, WEG Star Wars, Shadowrun... GM fiat and player agreement is pretty standard in all those systems.

When reading it assume that you're going to try to figure out what it is, not think of every possible exception. It doesn't matter if there's officially character death at no wound points or if it's just unconsciousness. If it's the former people always houserule healing after dying in D&D if they don't like it. You're going out of your way to not understand the sheet instead of trying to figure it out. I realize things would look more obvious to me making it, but if I was looking at someone else's character sheet I wouldn't be fussing over details of how much gear you're supposed to start with.

I know you can say you can just freeform it, but the point of an RPG is to have a point of common agreement.

I don't have a problem with you not participating, but I just get the strong impression that you're trying to not understand the character sheet, which is going strongly against the spirit of the thread. The fact that you came up with a couple options tells me you could understand what I was getting at. A real lack of understanding would be asking what a certain part of the sheet was supposed to be and not being able to come up with anything at all.

I've tried to keep oyut of this discussion, because I can see validly both sides of the argument. Even if it looks like some of the comments are just being overly antagonistic.

I think the challenge is a valid one. I also think that the comment...

Filip wrote:
Well, I can make the same arguments about some 300 pages long rulebooks. Still, I'm writing about this particular sheet at the moment.

Yeah. I can understand the points he was making. Obviously with this challenge, you have to meet half way. If you're reading the character sheet you need to put some effort into figuring it out, and the person making it has to put the effort into making it as transparent as possible.

I like the idea of having the sheets split down the middle and you mix and match as you like. 25 possible combinations on 5 sheets of paper. I look forward to seeing it.

Ok so here is my problem I only have one computer with photo shop which is what I am using to formulate meh character sheet game for the contest. Much to my dismay this computer is also the only one we own that has the programs for my girlfriends database project for work (a tad more important) and so I will most likley not hit your set deadline for the entries but will surely as soon as I can wrestle the computer back get my finished work up for Petals in the Wind. I hope to read through other peoples entries in the mean time.
Regards, Seth

The deadline's really only there for people who work better with them. Any time is fine.

I saw this competition a couple of days ago and it really intrigued me.  Ideas have been bouncing around in my head ever since.

If it's not too late, I'm in.  My contribution is Skimpy RPG.

I'm not sure that's final, since I slammed it out pretty fast.  But, I thought I'd better put in something quickly.  Comments would be welcome either via PM or e-mail by using the "Contact Us" link at http://legendaryquest.com.

Sorry about the delay of a few days, work has hit hard. The player sheets for my system are pretty much ready to post.

A GM sheet for the system should be ready in a day or two. I've got friends over and a concert to head to. Come back this time tomorrow for updates...

V

Here's my basic entry.

http://www.angelfire.com/psy/vulpinoid/Split.pdf

Single GM sheet to come soon...

V

The angelfire link is making my browser hang. Dunno why that's happening.

I'll see what I can do to post it elsewhere. My angelfire cache has been used as a general internet repository of data since the late 90's...

...maybe it's time to get a real domain.

V

V,

If you're having a hard time finding somewhere to post your .pdfs, I'd be happy to temporarily host them at my website.

This looks interesting. I'll make a thread.

Migo,

Earlier, you said the final entries were due on the 19th.  Assuming that's still the case, here is my final entry of Skimpy RPG.

The 19th was a "soft" deadline as it appeared having one was better than not having one. Obviously since this is more of a mental excercise anyone who wants to submit something can.

As for determining winners, I think we have 2 submissions so far, and I can only view one of them because of some odd bug (I can't view embedded flash either, so it's something on my end), I can't determine a winner (obviously, I can't include mine in there).

If Vulpinoid can get the PDF hosted somewhere else, or some discussion could start about his submission that would be best.

Also, as far as criteria go, I find some of the looser interpretations to be better than what I originally had in mind...

If anyone wants to suggest a good way of looking at winners, by all means jump in.

I'm glad to hear that the 19th was a soft deadline.  I have one or two more slight changes I would like to make to my entry before calling it final, based on feedback and play-testing that has occurred since I made my last post.  It is likely that others would find an extension useful as well.

However, I do think we need to have some date at which we can expect the contest to end.  You may want to set it out a few weeks to encourage new entries.

It would also be reasonable to set some minimum number of entries to call it a real contest.  Two or three entries is pretty thin.  I'm actually wondering why more people haven't take an interest.  I saw it as an exceptionally difficult challenge, which made we want to see if I could get anywhere close to the target.  If anyone has any insight into this, I would be interested in hearing your ideas to see if we might be able to attract more entries.

As far as hosting PDF's is concerned, I would be happy to temporarily host any entries on my website.  Just send it to me via e-mail through the "Contact Us" link at http://legendaryquest.com.  Also, if anyone needs a sheet converted to .pdf, just send me a Word document and I would be happy to convert it for you.  Or, if you'd rather, Open Office contains a .pdf converter.

Concerning criteria, I think a loose interpretation is fine (since I think mine would be disqualified otherwise ;-).  You might want to clarify what you mean by "loose", or give some more examples of what you are expecting, though.

Personally, I think that you can be more objective in judging games if you create a list of questions that the character sheets should answer and then assign points according to how well you believe an entry answers them.  I asked for feedback in this thread for my entry using the following list:

1) What genre, if any, does the game promote?
2) What dice are rolled?
3) How do you know if you succeeded in winning a contest and what are the repercussions?
4) What is/are the reward system(s)?
5) Can characters advance?  If so, how?
6) How do players take turns?
7) When do scenes end?
8) How do you know when the game is over?
9) What role, if any, does the GM play?

You may want to start with that and modify it to suit your needs.  Does anyone have any suggestions to add to this list?

Well, this is a bit (amazingly) later than everybody else, but I threw together a tiny little system on a character sheet.  How does this work?

http://cjlong2.iweb.bsu.edu/pickupandplay.pdf

It's funny that I missed this thread when it first came out because I had a game in existance for nearly a year that the entire character generation system could be put on one side of a letter-sized sheet (8 1/2 x 11 inch) piece of paper. The things needed by the game master could be put on the other side. The other part that may disqualify it is that the character sheet can be reduced to a 3" x 5" index card with the back blank.

The ironic part was that this wasn't due to a contest but necessity as I had to print from a normal laser printer for an upcoming convention. If anyone is curious about a far future, post-apocalyptic game contact me with Dead Earth Saga in the subject line.

keithbvaughn@yahoo.com

I would like to see some more playtesting before I finalize it.

Keith

PDF hosting:

i recommend having a GMail account and uploading the files to GoogleBase.  It's free, simple to use and having a GMail account gives you many other great toys.