Announcements: Cutting Costs (2024) » January 2024 Copyfraud Attack » Finding Universes to Join (and making yours more visible!) » Guide To Universes On RPG » Member Shoutout Thread » Starter Locations & Prompts for Newcomers » RPG Chat — the official app » Frequently Asked Questions » Suggestions & Requests: THE MASTER THREAD »

Latest Discussions: Adapa Adapa's for adapa » To the Rich Men North of Richmond » Shake Senora » Good Morning RPG! » Ramblings of a Madman: American History Unkempt » Site Revitalization » Map Making Resources » Lost Poetry » Wishes » Ring of Invisibility » Seeking Roleplayer for Rumple/Mr. Gold from Once Upon a Time » Some political parody for these trying times » What dinosaur are you? » So, I have an Etsy » Train Poetry I » Joker » D&D Alignment Chart: How To Get A Theorem Named After You » Dungeon23 : Creative Challenge » Returning User - Is it dead? » Twelve Days of Christmas »

Players Wanted: Serious Anime Crossover Roleplay (semi-literate) » Looking for a long term partner! » JoJo or Mha roleplay » Seeking long-term rp partners for MxM » [MxF] Ruining Beauty / Beauty x Bastard » Minecraft Rp Help Wanted » CALL FOR WITNESSES: The Public v Zosimos » Social Immortal: A Vampire Only Soiree [The Multiverse] » XENOMORPH EDM TOUR Feat. Synthe Gridd: Get Your Tickets! » Aishna: Tower of Desire » Looking for fellow RPGers/Characters » looking for a RP partner (ABO/BL) » Looking for a long term roleplay partner » Explore the World of Boruto with Our Roleplaying Group on FB » More Jedi, Sith, and Imperials needed! » Role-player's Wanted » OSR Armchair Warrior looking for Kin » Friday the 13th Fun, Anyone? » Writers Wanted! » Long term partner to play an older male wanted »

Character Sheets: Do They Enhance a Roleplay?

a topic in Game Design Workshop, a part of the RPG forum.

Moderators: Ambassadors, Scholars

A forum for discussions about the general design of RPG systems and techniques for building good roleplaying games.

Character Sheets: Do They Enhance a Roleplay?

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby SpiritDancer on Tue Mar 15, 2016 2:55 pm

Question: What is your personal opinion on the use of character sheets, and the style of coding that people generally use whenever they create one? Do you feel that it actually increases the quality of a roleplay? Whenever you use/create a character sheet what do you usually include in it and for what reasons?

I mainly ask this question as a GM, because I want an idea of what I should be focusing on whenever I create my character sheets for others to use. Though I'm aware that the people who frequent the forums aren't exactly the same group of people who use the roleplaying system, the latter being the one I use.

Personally, whenever I write a character I like to focus on the personality more than anything. I don't exactly like character sheets that want you to list out every single little detail and quirk about your character. There's just no reason for it in my opinion. Listing out what your character likes and dislikes is one thing, but why do I have to list out a character's strengths, flaws, goals, hobbies, habits and fears? I much rather explore and expand on those things in a roleplay.

Though I can see how doing exactly that can benefit the roleplayer, as it forces them to know exactly who their character is, and that does definitely help whenever they're roleplaying, or at least in my experience.
Ambar: Snow & Ash
Image
Image
"I’m tryin’ to fix myself
And not care too much about you"

Tip jar: the author of this post has received 0.00 INK in return for their work.

User avatar
SpiritDancer
Scholar
Member for 9 years
Contributor Promethean Conversation Starter Author Inspiration World Builder Conversationalist Builder Storyteller Beta Tester Arc Warden Friendly Beginnings Person of Interest Visual Appeal Greeter Salesman Property Buyer Tipworthy Lifegiver

Re: Character Sheets: Do They Enhance a Roleplay?

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby LawOfTheLand on Tue Mar 15, 2016 6:54 pm

Different RPs will stress different things about a character, depending on the plot the GM has in mind. So there is no "one-size-fits-all" character sheet. Well, I mean, there certainly can be one, but there's inevitably a lot of cruft involved that will never have any bearing on the plot.

For a romance RP, you'll probably want things like if they've had previous lovers, their quality of life (can they afford a kid?) and what sort of personality they have. If the RP is combat-oriented, this information can and should be ditched in favor of detailed descriptions of their weapons and armor, and perhaps the properties of any super-powers. What do they do? How often can they be done? What does it take for them to use?
Image

Tip jar: the author of this post has received 0.00 INK in return for their work.

User avatar
LawOfTheLand
Contributor
Contributor
Member for 16 years
Beta Tester Promethean Conversation Starter Author World Builder Conversationalist Friendly Beginnings Novelist Builder Donated! Party Starter Contributor Person of Interest Bug Hunter Streamwatcher Maiden Voyager Recruiter Greeter Visual Appeal Tipworthy Property Buyer Salesman Concierge Arc Warden Lifegiver

Re: Character Sheets: Do They Enhance a Roleplay?

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Quakernuts on Wed Mar 16, 2016 12:31 pm

I think character sheets serve a very useful purpose as a quick reference about a character. There's a general outline that most people use. Name, age, gender, history and personality. Anything else past that is subject to the individual roleplay that the character is involved in.

Personally, I don't like using a personality section in a CS because of how it locks your character down when generally they evolve over the entire RP. As such, it's really hard to know a character right from the beginning and remembering every little thing you put down. I like it when you don't necessarily know a character's personality right from the get go, it allows everyone to learn about the character as the RP gets along and not let that meta-information influence how their own character interacts with you.

(The age ol' "Character is a bad guy and the good guy immediately gets a bad feeling about him" cliche)

That's my two cents anyways.
Writing is a tool used to convey an author's passion and imagination, use it to the best of your ability.

Tip jar: the author of this post has received 0.00 INK in return for their work.

User avatar
Quakernuts
Member for 12 years
Promethean Conversation Starter Author Conversationalist Friendly Beginnings Novelist World Builder Inspiration Tipworthy Lifegiver

Re: Character Sheets: Do They Enhance a Roleplay?

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Kestrel on Wed Mar 16, 2016 4:52 pm

What you might not realise, as I don't think a lot of people using these sheets even do, is that by making required fields you are forced to include and think about aspects of your character you otherwise wouldn't. 'cause, let's be honest, when I have to include three fears that's a bit of a headscratcher, but at the same time most people you know are afraid of at least three things. Even if it's as basic as 'losing a loved one.' Most people aren't going to jot down character fears if they're not asked to do so. Same with goals. Even if the balance between what is driving your character forward and what is holding them back is essential to basic character writing.

You can also use this extra information to build pre-existing character relations. Which I find an interesting twist on "Hey here's all these people you've never met, let's stand around being awkward." Tavern scenes that are... Well not sure how common they are nowadays but I used to see a lot of. As a GM, you can use the information people provide here to involve or pull their characters into plots.

Additionally there is basically an effort-barrier. ie, people who invest a certain amount of effort are more likely to stick by the RP because of the sunk cost fallacy. Having to think and fill out a shitton and deal with the coding makes it harder to give up on the RP. Even if ever so slightly (as it's effect diminishes over the common use of these detailed sheets.)

Like all things, there's pros and cons to the fancy character sheet and I think there's more than enough people willing to point out the negatives. I just figured I'd share their potentially positive effects.
Do you come from a land down under?
Where women glow and men plunder?
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover.

Tip jar: the author of this post has received 0.00 INK in return for their work.

User avatar
Kestrel
Member for 16 years
Promethean Conversation Starter Author Inspiration Conversationalist Friendly Beginnings Completionist Lifegiver

Re: Character Sheets: Do They Enhance a Roleplay?

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby SpiritDancer on Thu Mar 17, 2016 9:34 am

Kestrel wrote:Additionally, there is basically an effort-barrier. ie, people who invest a certain amount of effort are more likely to stick by the RP because of the sunk cost fallacy. Having to think and fill out a shitton and deal with the coding makes it harder to give up on the RP. Even if ever so slightly (as it's effect diminishes over the common use of these detailed sheets.)


The reason why I want to continue leaving out strengths, weaknesses, fears, goals, hobbies, ect. in character sheets is because roleplayers barely ever seem to mention in the roleplay. I've seen them used to figure out character relationships, but it's become increasingly obvious that some people only ever fill them out to get the O.K from the GM, and those are usually the people who drop out of the roleplay anyways.

If you include them but never use them, it ultimately doesn't make a difference. With character sheets people usually just seem to forget they even exist the moment the roleplay starts, which I continue to find more and more annoying. At that point it's not really the fault of the character sheet, but the fault of the roleplayer, but it's problem none the less.

These highly detailed character sheets have been around for so long already (about two years?) that the effort barrier has little effect on how willing people are to stick around for a roleplay. I think now it's beginning to boil down to other aspects of the roleplay.

Tip jar: the author of this post has received 0.00 INK in return for their work.

User avatar
SpiritDancer
Scholar
Member for 9 years
Contributor Promethean Conversation Starter Author Inspiration World Builder Conversationalist Builder Storyteller Beta Tester Arc Warden Friendly Beginnings Person of Interest Visual Appeal Greeter Salesman Property Buyer Tipworthy Lifegiver

Re: Character Sheets: Do They Enhance a Roleplay?

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby FyreT1ger on Wed Mar 30, 2016 3:16 pm

I've seen people write hugely detailed sheets including a bunch of pictures that never actually play said character in the roleplay or drop out after only a couple posts and people with super simple sheets play from beginning to end. Because of that I can't say that a lot of effort in a sheet is equivalent to the same amount of effort in the actual roleplay. Even so I can still see a reason for character sheets.

If a player doesn't know their character that player can't play that character well. I'll give some examples of my own characters. Nikita was a character I didn't really know when I made her and her character in the roleplay became completely inconsistent and, in my opinion, pretty flat. On the other hand, Kyle in the same role play is more dynamic because I know what what he cares about. Though in the roleplay he seems to be constantly in a loop. He tries to improve himself and then falls back and has to start over again. If he does seem to have continuity issues, it's because I was a little afraid of what he would do, so that is definitely player error. Players need to know their characters and trust them to write them well in any circumstance.

A character sheet is best used as a guideline or framework for a character so the player can get to know them. I have a strong belief that a character's experiences before the game began makes said character who he or she is, so if anything, I think a history of a character should always be required on the CS. That's another problem I had with Nikita, I didn't really know her history before the game began, and several months in I needed to backtrack from the present to build her history. Only then did she begin to take shape, and well now that role play's dead no further progress can be made. She's stuck as a half-formed character.

Tip jar: the author of this post has received 0.00 INK in return for their work.

User avatar
FyreT1ger
Member for 15 years
Conversation Starter Author Conversationalist Friendly Beginnings Novelist Donated! Contributor Lifegiver

Re: Character Sheets: Do They Enhance a Roleplay?

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Zodia195 on Mon Jun 06, 2016 10:33 pm

FyreT1ger wrote:I've seen people write hugely detailed sheets including a bunch of pictures that never actually play said character in the roleplay or drop out after only a couple posts and people with super simple sheets play from beginning to end.


You beat me to it, I was about to say something similar. Yeah it really does vary from RPG to RPG. The most successful rpg I was in was even on this site, it was in Yahoo! Groups. The rpg character profiles were very short, but it was so successful that we completed one story line and almost finished it's sequel.

At the same time, I've had to create very detailed character sheets and they never get off the ground due to the gm vanishing. It's very frustrating so I actually am hesitant to join rpgs that require detail character sheets.

Tip jar: the author of this post has received 0.00 INK in return for their work.

User avatar
Zodia195
Groundskeeper
Groundskeeper
Member for 13 years
Promethean Conversation Starter Author Inspiration Conversationalist Friendly Beginnings Novelist Completionist World Builder Greeter Tipworthy Concierge Visual Appeal Lifegiver

Re: Character Sheets: Do They Enhance a Roleplay?

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby cl.love on Tue Oct 11, 2016 6:02 pm

As a GM myself, and a lover of making character sheets, I can say that this whole conversation in general has actually brought a lot to my attention that I might not have really picked up on had I not read everyone else's notes.

Usually when I make a CS code, I want to personality and history to be the parts people focus on, since those are the parts of your character that will be the most evident in the roleplay. However, I've now noticed that including things like specific strengths and fears aren't really super necessary. On the other hand, I also know that for me, including things like that help to know my characters more deeply, and it helps to know how someone would react to situations that might come up.

I also agree that when it comes to the relevance of the parts of a CS code, it really just depends on what kind of roleplay you're writing for. Action-oriented roleplays usually require you to know what your character is good/bad at, while romance-oriented roleplays might require what your character fears the most (for angst purposes). I also think it depends on the roleplayer making the code, since everyone has their own way of doing things. Usually I don't have huge expectations when it comes to people's CS codes for my roleplays - they can use whatever sheet they want, so long as it looks nice and includes basic information about their character.
╭━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╮

Partner Search | Tumblr | ArchiveOfOurOwn
Discord


ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

My theme song is Iris by Goo Goo Dolls.


╰━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╯

Tip jar: the author of this post has received 0.00 INK in return for their work.

User avatar
cl.love
Member for 9 years
Promethean Conversation Starter Author Inspiration Conversationalist Novelist Completionist Streamwatcher Tipworthy Visual Appeal Lifegiver

Re: Character Sheets: Do They Enhance a Roleplay?

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Kato on Sat Oct 22, 2016 6:49 am

In my experience the "effort barrier" doesn't seem to work. Making a complex character sheet takes time, and although a lot of energy has gone into it, that energy then gets expended before the RP starts.

Character sheets of some kind are necessary. You need to have a basic idea of what that character is like in order to RP with them effectively, and if you are the GM or an active player, to be able to introduce plot points that you think the other characters will engage with. For example, if I see on someone's sheet that they have a missing brother, then that gives a good story hook to work with.

I'll admit, I also use character sheets to make a judgement on the writing ability of the player. XD

I think long and very detailed character sheets can be extremely fun to make, but they just aren't necessary in any way. Just basics such as history/personality/appearance and a bit about their stats and weapons/powers, etc. is usually enough. Sometimes I will make a long character sheet, which includes all the info I want to reference when playing the character, and a short one, which would be the one I show other people. Usually a short one is sufficient when beginning the RP though.

Also, I like being able to find things out about my character as the RP progresses. If I know everything before it starts, then that isn't so much fun. It gives more of a chance for the character to grow organically.

I'm not hugely keen on lots and lots of images and especially gifs. One or two static pictures seems like enough to get the idea across, especially if there's also a written description.
"Schopenhauer was right, wouldn't you say? Life without pain has no meaning. Gentlemen, I wish to give your lives meaning..."

Tip jar: the author of this post has received 0.00 INK in return for their work.

User avatar
Kato
Member for 11 years
Promethean Conversation Starter Author Inspiration Conversationalist Friendly Beginnings Lifegiver Visual Appeal Person of Interest Tipworthy

Re: Character Sheets: Do They Enhance a Roleplay?

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Madame on Wed Dec 14, 2016 2:03 am

CS are also used to as sort of an audition too, no? You don't always know the roleplayers that are applying to be in the rp and you dont want to accept someone who will half/ass posts or someone maybe not at the writing level you're looking for. I like the basics down personally, history and personality being the nice meaty parts that I like; but being redundant isn't necessary in asking for traits negative and positive and rating your character's strengths and weaknesses. Or at least it's not necessary if people are treating the rp like a book and not like a video game where the goal is to out-power everyone.
Image

Tip jar: the author of this post has received 0.00 INK in return for their work.

User avatar
Madame
Member for 8 years
Promethean Conversation Starter Author Inspiration Conversationalist Lifegiver

Re: Character Sheets: Do They Enhance a Roleplay?

Tips: 0.25 INK Postby Fabricator on Mon Feb 27, 2017 11:23 am

I've always enjoyed the idea of character sheets but then again I've used them in various forms for RPG's for years either online, pen & paper or as part of various computer games.

I'll admit I always hate writing the personality part and usually struggle a little with the hobbies or skills parts since It's sometimes an area I don't find easy. That being said it's at same time useful to force myself to deal with that to improve my writing. But then again I always find it easier to talk about automatons or structures than actual people.

Ideally they are there as a quick reference as well as an audition to join the RP, so that the GM and other players know what other characters are like and how they would interact with them. I'd say they're more useful than interacting with others in a void since you've got to deal with writing something similarly to what you would have put into a character sheet once you're in the story. While that can indeed work it does add additional filler to the story or character interactions beyond what could happen without and serve to delay the story just as much as it would progress it.

Personally I like them to be simple with a couple of images to help support the text rather than to compete for the readers attention. Mainly covering an overview of the character, with their basic details, description and characteristics with a couple of likes, dislikes and perhaps interests. Then finishing off with a history. Personality would probably end up in there somewhere but I do have a habit of leaving it blank till after I've done the history since I don't know how they are really till after that's written.
ImageImage

Tip jar: the author of this post has received 0.25 INK in return for their work.

User avatar
Fabricator
Member for 12 years
Conversation Starter Author Conversationalist Friendly Beginnings Novelist Completionist Tipworthy Lifegiver


Post a reply

Make a Donation

$

RPG relies exclusively on user donations to support the platform.

Donors earn the "Contributor" achievement and are permanently recognized in the credits. Consider donating today!

 

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest