Back in The Day!

[Scribble]

So I'm moving soon, so I've been packing stuff, and I came across a folder full of blank Basic D&D Character sheets... They're photocopies from the back of the Cyclopedia.

It made me think. Now at most I print maybe two or three character sheets, but most of the time character sheets are printed as needed. (Almost everyone I game with has a computer/printer.)

Back then I had to photocopy a bunch, because it wasn't like I had a photocopier in my bedroom...

I was lucky though, my parents were teachers, so every so often they'd take the book with the sheet I needed to work, and copy me like 100 character sheets. (Double sided too cause my parents were awesome like that!)



They did the same thing with hex paper for me when I started playing GURPS... To this day I still have a manila folder filled with Hex Paper.

 

[Crothian]

I think it was 87 or 88 we were playing a lot of Heroes Unlimited because that was the only supers game we had. In the back they have different character sheets for each type of hero. My friend had his mother take the book to her office and made us like 100 copies of each character sheet. Making up super heroes back then was way more fun then playing them. That was the summer of a thousand characters as we used almost every character sheet before school started back up.

 

[possum]

My "back in the day" only goes as far as 2000, but I do remember heading down to the local grocery store and using their photo copier to print out the 3rd Edition sheet in the book. Luckily, I didn't have to deal with that for long, as I found out about PDF character sheets. Even now, I head out to the library (because my printer's not all that good) and stock up on sheets for the games I use the most.

Right now, I'm right out of 3.5 sheets and have a few 4E sheets left. One Saga Edition sheet, too. I really need to go again...

 

[darjr]

Back in the day... o 1984? or 1985-8? I knew a guy who was a prolific doodler. Darn good one to. He'd doodle up really cool character sheets all the time. Every one of them unique.

I wish I knew where he was and where some of those sheets are. I'd love to scan em in and post em.

 

[Oryan77]

If you go to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, you can still find the character sheets that me and Grog carved into the wall with stones for our games. That's how far back in the day I go.

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

Back in the day (82 or so) I didn't know where pre-made character sheets came from; probably I saw some that older kids at the library group had, but the idea that you could buy them (e.g. the goldenrod AD&D ones) either never occurred to me or seemed too expensive. So I sat down with a typewriter and laid out my own, by the expedient of going across each row, typing in the things I wanted on that row, and then putting in a : where I wanted a vertical line between sections to appear, then doing it again on the next row with the : hopefully lining up with the one above. How much time and White-Out I spent on this cannot be imagined. (I did then have my dad copy it at his office, though - I didn't do it every time I wanted to make a new character).

(Note: The older kids probably got the inspiration from a visit to Mammoth Cave. I'm second-generation old fart.)

 

[Amphimir Míriel]

Back in the day, around 1992 or something like that, I remember designing a Spanish version of the AD&D 2nd edition and the Vampire The Masquerade character sheets in my 486 for my players (not all of whom spoke English well). I printed them out in my Dad's office and photocopied the hell of of them.

Also, back in those days, RPG materials were so expensive here that it was commonly understood that only the DM had to own the books, and some DMs even took advantage to that to oppose players from reading the "secrets" in the DMG or the Monstrous Compendium.
Most DMs shared their dice with their players too, because of the same reasons.

Nowadays, people seem to expect players to bring their own PHBs, plus any supplements their characters use, to the table. Also, dice are much cheaper to import here now. But for some reason, I don't seem to be able to find players for my game as easily as I did in the early nineties...

 

[Richards]

Back in the day (probably 1980 or so), all of our character sheets were each made from scratch, starting with a blank sheet of lined paper and a pencil. We had no idea that there were such things as preprinted character sheets. We followed the format of the only character sheets we'd ever seen: the handmade ones that my cousins, who introduced us to the game, had made for their PCs.

Johnathan

 

[Festivus]

Back in the day (82 or so) I didn't know where pre-made character sheets came from; probably I saw some that older kids at the library group had, but the idea that you could buy them (e.g. the goldenrod AD&D ones) either never occurred to me or seemed too expensive. So I sat down with a typewriter and laid out my own, by the expedient of going across each row, typing in the things I wanted on that row, and then putting in a : where I wanted a vertical line between sections to appear, then doing it again on the next row with the : hopefully lining up with the one above. How much time and White-Out I spent on this cannot be imagined. (I did then have my dad copy it at his office, though - I didn't do it every time I wanted to make a new character).

(Note: The older kids probably got the inspiration from a visit to Mammoth Cave. I'm second-generation old fart.)

This was my method too. And one error made you scream! (I didn't have white out). The upside is that I can type 75wpm these days without many errors.

 

[AFGNCAAP]

"We had it tough... used to get up 4 hours before we went to bed, roll up character stats using only one set of 3d4 in order, buy what limited gear we could for our characters with minimum starting gold, get 1 hit point, and then our DM would run our 1st-level characters through the Tomb of Horrors right afterward if we we lucky...."

Wait... sorry... thought this was something along the lines of the "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch:[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo&feature=fvw"][/ame]

Anyways...

Originally (back in the basic Red Box days), I used to just use a piece of lined paper & wrote down my character stats on that in a rough semblance of order. I eventually got character sheets & photocopied them. Back in the 1e & 2e days, I designed my own character sheets as an alternative to buying them.

.PDFs are a lifesaver now (as is the Character Builder for 4e). However, as a "tip of the hat" to the old days, I've printed out character sheets for some games I run on lined paper. The reaction I get is priceless every time.