Saturday, 29 October 2011
Starter Character Sheets Origins
I started on the aforementioned Starter Character Sheets for WFRP 2e.
The basic layout borrows heavily from Pathfinders Beginner's Box Set. What I quickly learned is that character sheets are information heavy. While not any different from many other games character sheets, clearly there is an expectation of investment. Of course this is obvious, but if one is not thinking about how information is presented and accessed on a character sheet, one might just "forget" the obvious. Initially, I debated: would the project use Dave Graffam's excellent character sheet (of which I can't find online, but will ask permission to serve here) or the official character sheet?
After some tests with Dave's sheet it became clear that the game investment has to be well-rooted for a player to truly appreciate the layout and access to information. Thus the debate was decided: the official sheet would be used...
... but not without some editing. The Pathfinder character sheet is really only effective with two sheets (or one sheet printed front and back). WFRP is no different. Some inspection of the Pathfinder Beginner Box Set sheets shows liberal reworking of the sheet from the core rule set to answer the following question: if the rule book was not available, could the reader play a rough approximation of the game in 15 minutes just looking at the character sheet?
That question seems to beg an answer that eludes many seasoned players of AD&D or WFRP... at least WFRP is nicely packaged in a single book of less that 300 pages. Pathfinder is over 500 pages. D&D today--even yesterday--is dozens of books (minimum two). How can you distill the subtly complex rules and game play into a single sheet and 15 minutes of exposure?
I tried... once. I think I did a good job, but even with freshly exposed players all the "cheat sheet," a WFRP Primer if you will, tried too hard to boil down my experience to one sheet. My experience is broad (vast?), but maybe still too much for new players trying to grok a foreign ruleset. See what you think, download my WFRP 2e Primer.
Your comments, as always, are welcome.
The basic layout borrows heavily from Pathfinders Beginner's Box Set. What I quickly learned is that character sheets are information heavy. While not any different from many other games character sheets, clearly there is an expectation of investment. Of course this is obvious, but if one is not thinking about how information is presented and accessed on a character sheet, one might just "forget" the obvious. Initially, I debated: would the project use Dave Graffam's excellent character sheet (of which I can't find online, but will ask permission to serve here) or the official character sheet?
After some tests with Dave's sheet it became clear that the game investment has to be well-rooted for a player to truly appreciate the layout and access to information. Thus the debate was decided: the official sheet would be used...
... but not without some editing. The Pathfinder character sheet is really only effective with two sheets (or one sheet printed front and back). WFRP is no different. Some inspection of the Pathfinder Beginner Box Set sheets shows liberal reworking of the sheet from the core rule set to answer the following question: if the rule book was not available, could the reader play a rough approximation of the game in 15 minutes just looking at the character sheet?
That question seems to beg an answer that eludes many seasoned players of AD&D or WFRP... at least WFRP is nicely packaged in a single book of less that 300 pages. Pathfinder is over 500 pages. D&D today--even yesterday--is dozens of books (minimum two). How can you distill the subtly complex rules and game play into a single sheet and 15 minutes of exposure?
I tried... once. I think I did a good job, but even with freshly exposed players all the "cheat sheet," a WFRP Primer if you will, tried too hard to boil down my experience to one sheet. My experience is broad (vast?), but maybe still too much for new players trying to grok a foreign ruleset. See what you think, download my WFRP 2e Primer.
Your comments, as always, are welcome.
Posted by at 12:51 AM in d10
