Last week, I talked about the fact that character sheets are inherently incomplete and that it might be a good idea to rethink them. This week I\u2019m going to float a new definition of a character sheet: \u201cA character sheet should describe the relevant traits of a character at a particular point in time and helps the GM and player understand the character\u2019s role in the game.\u201d Since that doesn\u2019t sound all that different from the standard definition (and since stopping here would make for a short column), I\u2019ll expand on that.<\/p>\n
First off, the character sheet describes relevant traits. Relevant to what? Two things: The game and the character.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Relevance to the game means that a trait or ability is likely to come into play with some frequency during the game. For most games, that means things like combat and investigation. If a character is better than average at something that\u2019s going to come up often, you need some mechanics to back it up. In some cases, what\u2019s relevant and what isn\u2019t will depend on the setting. For example, if a game is set five years after the fall of civilization, a lot of a character\u2019s pre-fall abilities just aren\u2019t relevant anymore and can be handled as background rather than mechanics. For a fictional example, take Xander\u2019s construction job in the later seasons of Buffy. Even though it was his full-time job, Xander only used his abilities a few times on screen, usually in cases where a sane GM wouldn\u2019t call for a roll in the first place. If Xander were a character in Contractor: The Sawing, he might need mechanics for his construction skills. For a game about fighting monsters, not so much.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Relevance to the character means that a particular trait is important to the character\u2019s identity even if it\u2019s not likely to come up as something that requires a skill roll in the game. If you think of RPG characters like characters from a book or movie, these traits would be things you\u2019d describe to someone who wasn\u2019t familiar with the story. Not every character that served in the military necessarily needs a mechanic for it, but someone like Walter Sobchak from The Big Lebowski should probably have a \u2018Nam-related trait because Walter\u2019s military service is key to his identity. Getting back to Xander, he\u2019d probably have a comic book or nerd trivia skill of some sort, because his geekdom is something that comes up over and over again. Agent Booth from Bones, on the other hand, wouldn\u2019t have a comic book skill because no fan of the show would use \u201ccomic book nerd\u201d in a capsule description of the character. Sure, he\u2019s been known to sit in the bathtub with a beer helmet reading Green Lantern, but comics aren\u2019t a major part of his life.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n So what about all those other skills that aren\u2019t on the character sheet? How do we account for those mechanically? Fortunately, most games already have a way of doing that with default rolls of some sort. Unless a system\u2019s default rolls are really geared toward failure for unskilled rolls, the chances of failure aren\u2019t going to be much higher on a default roll than they are for a low-rated trait anyway, and that\u2019s exactly where traits that aren\u2019t character-relevant are probably going to fall. If the GM really thinks a character should have a better-than-default chance of doing something because of established character background, he can always give the player a bonus. If the GM decides not to give a bonus but the player feels like he really deserves one, most games these days have some sort of bennie system, so spending Yum Yums (or whatever) is always an option. This is basically the classic trope from fiction when you find out that a character just happens to have an ability right when that ability becomes useful to moving the plot along, like when we find out in Die Hard 4 that John McClane\u2019s been taking flying lessons.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n But what about game balance and continuity? Won\u2019t handling skills like this potentially cause characters to have a long list of \u201cphantom abilities\u201d that cause all-new problems because they\u2019re not written down? Wouldn\u2019t that make characters who make use of \u201cunlisted\u201d abilities regularly \u00a0more powerful than those who don\u2019t? Not really. For starters, game balance is a myth anyway, but that\u2019s a topic for a future column. Continuity isn\u2019t a problem because the skill list isn\u2019t an inventory–you can try anything, even if it\u2019s not on your character sheet or established by background. Also, from a story perspective it doesn\u2019t matter if a character succeeded last time because he got a bonus and failed this time because the GM decided to withhold the bonus or the player was out of Yum Yums. He failed this time because the helicopter\u2019s controls were different than the ones he\u2019s used to, or because he\u2019s hung over, or because the sun was in his eyes, or for any of the reasons that are used when a character fails a roll on his highest-rated trait. Also, keep in mind that since we\u2019ve already made sure to include mechanics for common game actions, these things are going to be outliers. In most case, the character will never have an opportunity to attempt them again. If a player starts using an ability constantly after pulling an \u201cI took a class in college\u201d trick, the GM is perfectly justified in asking the player to buy a trait for it since it\u2019s become a character-relevant ability (since it\u2019s becoming his SOP) and a game-relevant ability (since the character is making it a common game action). \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n That kind of brings us to the next part of my description of a character sheet, which is that the character sheet describes the character at a particular point in time. In most games, the character sheet describes the character from the beginning of the game because we mostly just add new abilities. If a character was once good at something, he\u2019s always that good at it or better, never worse. But in the real world, people tend to get rusty when they don\u2019t stay in practice, and there are only so many things you can practice regularly. So, instead of just adding new stuff to the character sheet, I think it might be better to just trade the old stuff out for new stuff. Instead of having an ever-growing list of traits, the character basically has a set number of \u201cslots\u201d (which probably increases as the character gets more powerful) for different kinds of traits and the player can switch them out whenever it\u2019s appropriate. Going back to Buffy, Willow doesn\u2019t add the \u201cWitch\u201d Job to her character sheet alongside her \u201cComputer Nerd\u201d Job in Season 4, she replaces the \u201cComputer Nerd\u201d Job with \u201cWitch.\u201d*<\/span><\/p>\n When is changing words around appropriate and how major can the changes be? It depends on what\u2019s going on in the game. If the first session of the game is \u201cthe world\/your character\u201d just changed fundamentally and the second session takes place a while later after everyone\u2019s gotten used to the change, the characters might get to make major changes to their characters between the first and second session. If the plan is to actually play through the characters\u2019 adjustments to the new world\/job\/knowledge\/whatever, I might let them make one change per session until they\u2019ve settled into their new roles. Further into a game, I\u2019d allow minor changes whenever they made sense and allow more substantial changes at the end of major story arcs. The sorts of the changes allowed would depend on how much time passes between arcs. If the game picks up very soon after the previous story arc, only minor changes that followed from or were foreshadowed by the last story would be allowed. If the new story takes place months or years later, players would be allowed to make bigger changes. For most games I\u2019d probably stick with a TV series kind of arrangement where the new \u201cseason\u201d picks up a few months after the previous one. Some characters may have gone through some changes, but they\u2019re not completely different people than they were at the end of the previous season. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Does changing the characters around like this mean the characters lose abilities? I don\u2019t think so. We\u2019ve already covered some ways that \u201cunlisted\u201d abilities can be handled. More importantly, though, is the last part of the definition, that the character sheet helps define the role of the character in the game. Explaining by example is probably easiest here, so let\u2019s go back to Willow. When the player changes Willow\u2019s Job from \u201cComputer Nerd\u201d to \u201cWitch,\u201d that\u2019s a signal for the GM that the player wants the character to do magical stuff instead of hacking, so the GM should change around the kinds of problems Willow will face to accommodate that desire. In addition, Willow\u2019s player is telling the GM \u201cwhen faced with a problem, I\u2019m going to try to find a magical solution rather than a technological one.\u201d So, for instance, when the gang needs to find information on someone, she\u2019s going to cast a spell rather than start searching the internet and hacking databases.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Putting these ideas into action will obviously require some tweaking of whatever system you\u2019re playing, but unless you\u2019re playing something like D&D with structured level progression, I think it\u2019s doable. The biggest challenge is overcoming the expectation that character improvement and escalation of abilities are synonymous, which is probably best done through non-mechanical story rewards like resources and stature. If anyone has other ideas, let me know.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n *Actually, since she probably had a \u201cWitch\u201d Skill in Season 3, she probably just transposes them; \u201cComputer Nerd\u201d gets moved to the Skill slot previously occupied by \u201cWitch,\u201d \u201cWitch\u201d gets upgraded to a Job. To some extent, this is still the QAGS 2E system but we\u2019re ignoring all the weird numerical clunkiness in favor of simplicity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last week, I talked about the fact that character sheets are inherently incomplete and that it might be a good idea to rethink them. 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