My Problem With Character Sheets Is ..

Howdy-hey, guys and gals. Your friendly neighborhood Sato here with another discussion point!

Over the last year or so, I've come to understand something about myself as a roleplayer. I hate character sheets.

Seriously. I really go out of my way to avoid them. They feel awkward. I find them amateurish, in a way. This in no way reflects how I feel about those who use them, however, I just don't think in terms of name: age: history: weapons & equipment: when creating a character.

Rarely have I found, in my day-to-day interaction, that the people in life simply volunteer information about themselves on a little index card. Learning every little detail about a character before I even get to be in a scene with them takes away the mystery and fun of learning more about them through dialogue or (more importantly) through action.

Now that I'm a full-on Screenwriting snob (#filmstudentswag) I'm seeing the parallels and dissimilarities between text-based roleplaying, and writing for film. So here's a bit of my perspective on that: When you first introduce a character into a scene, you don't get the chance to go into things too much. You have one sentence to describe what the character looks like, something distinctive about them, and then perhaps an added action tag.

Here's a snippet of a bunch of character descriptions I did for my feature-length script. All rights reserved.

And that's all you have! The rest of the character is conveyed through action and dialogue. That's all you get. Maybe that's what's caused this slow, burning hatred I have towards extensive character profiles.

I know the other side of the issue, of course. As a past and current GM, I understand the organizational nightmare it would be to have a jillion character profiles, with no lasting information on any of them. For this reason, I far prefer to read a bio about the character (a little bit on who they are, what they look like and what they're about) just in a general sense rather than reading through everything that the character has done in their conscious life since day one.

Ultimately, I'm still a fan of the one-sentence synopsis.

Here's an example of the sort of character profiles I write, when forced to. Everything you need to know about the character is given as a seamless sort of narrative entry - almost like something you'd read on the back of a book. I suppose my primary problems with character sheets are how halting and clinical they feel. I don't feel like I know the character that way. I just feel like I'm looking at a handful of symptoms of features.

I'd love to hear what others of you think. Perhaps you think I'm some sort of strange animal, some maverick in the way of Roleplayers. I do advocate the dissolution of rigid character sheets in roleplays. I really do. Perhaps it can force us to convey character through action rather than through handy little cheat-sheets collecting in an OOC forum ..

Of course, take what I say with about twenty-thousand grains of salt. Love to hear everyone else's thoughts!

-VV

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RolePlayGateway/~3/f37nSSD4GMo/viewtopic.php

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