Character record?

[ffutures]

This is mostly for the RPG enthusiasts, especially anyone who is familiar with Forgotten Futures because Flatland is essentially an FF variant.

My Flatland RPG has

Three characteristics
Fifteen possible skills
Five possible advantages (you can take as many as you like but you don't start off with many points to buy them, and two are mutually exclusive, you can only have one of them)
Nine disadvantages (of which a group of three and a group of two are mutually exclusive, you can't have more than one of them.

In practice a typical character looks something like this:

---

Gunga Thin: SIDES [2], MIND [2], BODY [6]
Brawling [7], Stealth [5], Thief [5], Weapons [4]
Advantage: Good sight
Disadvantage: Eccentric; constantly swearing
Equipment: Lock picks, rope, water, food
Quote: "Ruby? What ***** ruby?"
Notes: Gunga Thin is an Isosceles native bearer, originally from the Eastern border of The State, attached to Sharp's regiment. He is the servant for all the officers. He is reasonably loyal, but primarily interested in loot and other "perks" of army life. He isn’t an official member of the army; his status falls somewhere between servant, mascot, and pack animal. And in a pinch he’s probably edible…

---

The question is, do I need to bother including a character record sheet? My gut feeling is no, but I just drew one with spaces and base values for all skills, advantages, disadvantages, etc., not very big type, and it filled a page. The trouble is it looks boring, like a tax return or something, and I really doubt I can make it much prettier. There may be some people who feel that they need this sort of record form rather than jotting characteristics onto a piece of paper, but I'd really rather like to avoid it.

What do people think?

Comments

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

The character sheet should be a playable miniature. They should be cut equal to their shape, and instead of words for their abilities they should have shapes. So 7 Brawling could be 7 fists, 3 Mind would be three brains, etc. Done right you can tell all the stats of the character just by looking at its mini. And if you do it very well, it'll be super-cool looking.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

[fx - stunned silence]

OK, let's see you design it then...

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I'm busy with Zeppelin Age. It shouldn't be that hard. You'd need a fixed number of icons that you could probably get from a freeware font assuming you didn't want to draw them yourself. They don't have to be complicated icons: simple shapes would really be best anyway. From your example:

Sides: a line
Mind: a brain shape, or a question mark
Body: a heart, or a square
Brawling: an arrow -->, fist, boxing glove, broken bottle, etc. Pick one.
Stealth: black boot
Thief: a key
Weapons: dagger (double dagger)?
Good sight: eye
Equipment: simple pictoral representations of the stuff

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Trouble is I think you'd need two or three pages to explain it...

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Although it could be a "how to make your own character sheet" page, I suppose, just give examples of the different symbols and how they should be put on the page.

But on the whole I think it might be more trouble than it's worth.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

No, it wouldn't. Just put the icons next to the skill descriptions, and then give an example.

[doctor-toc.livejournal.com]

You could make it look like a character itself, in order to make it a bit more visually interesting.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

AAAAAAAA! He's READING MY MIND and STEALING MY IDEAS! I must WRAP my HEAD in ALUMINUM* FOIL POST HASTE!

AAAAAAAA!

*Not "Al-u-min-i-um," but "A-loo-min-um."