Messy character sheets & messy characters!

[Oryan77]

So my wife plays in our D&D game. She's more of a casual player who likes to roleplay and hang out with everyone but she likes D&D a lot.

She's also stubborn!

Her character sheet is a nightmare. It took me months to get her to redo her sheet on a new character sheet. Her original sheet is no longer white....it's brown. The paper was also a lot thinner than the sheet I originally bought (ok, we all know I took the paper from work). It's more like tissue paper than printing paper now. The sides of the sheet are also frayed and ripped. If a pirate were to find her character sheet in my room he might think he just found a treasure map. There's even plenty of doodling on the sides that could be mistaken for a compass rose and clues to the treasure.

She also found one of my old 2e spell sheets and used it to record her spells on. I have my own spell sheets to use and for 2 years she refused to use it. For some reason she only wanted to use the old 2e spell sheet for her 3.5 character!

I just realized her character information is also a mess. I often forget when she is leveling her character and gets bored and says she'll finish it later. So now the group found out that her saves, skill points, and who knows what else is not correctly updated. I already knew her familiar & animal companion wasn't updated, but I didn't know about the stats. There's no telling how many levels worth of info is missing for her PC.

The sad thing is, she doesn't really care. Even worse, other people in the group do care!

 

[timbannock]

My girlfriend washes my dishes for me.

I keep her character(s) updated and in-line.

It's a fair trade.

Okay, not really...she's getting the raw end of the deal. But she likes Kit Kats, so she's easy to coax back to my side ;-)

 

[dmccoy1693]

My girlfriend washes my dishes for me.

I keep her character(s) updated and in-line.

It's a fair trade.

Okay, not really...she's getting the raw end of the deal. But she likes Kit Kats, so she's easy to coax back to my side ;-)

Does she have a sister?

 

[Umbran]

The sad thing is, she doesn't really care. Even worse, other people in the group do care!

A character sheet is, primarily, an aid for the player. So long as the player knows what is up, there's not much reason to change. Like my messy desk - I know where everything is on it. I see little reason to clean it up for you, when you don't use it.

As for the other players - how she keeps her information really, really isn't any of their beeswax. When you go over to their places for dinner, do you get to tell them how to reorganize their silverware drawers?

 

[Oryan77]

A character sheet is, primarily, an aid for the player.

The players aren't concerned with what her sheet looks like and how it's organized. They have a problem that her aid isn't up to date and she doesn't know what her scores really should be.

I don't really blame them for being concerned about that since I'm throwing challenges at them balanced for four 9th lvl PCs and not three 9th lvl PCs and one 9th lvl PC with 9th lvl hitpoints, 7th lvl saves, 6th lvl skill ranks, and 5th lvl animal companion stats.

 

[billd91]

The other players should really not get their undies in a bundle over this. The PC primarily affected by your wife's sloppy information keeping is her own PC. If she's failing more saves than she should, that's her problem mostly, and everyone else's only tangentially.

Frankly, my wife does things in a similar way. Her character sheets are a study in frustration, I think, to figure out... and she uses print outs from Heroforge! It's just that I can never tell what's been updated on it with pencil during the course of play during a session. I know she isn't intentionally obscuring how many charges her wands have left, but it's very hard from session to session for me to figure out what the PC has and doesn't have.

I'd consider making her a character folio. Get a folder, add some note paper, and ask her to put her notes in that. Then maybe she'll keep her character sheet a little neater and less scribbled on.

I'm not exactly the tidiest guy on the planet, but I do like a clear and well-organized character sheet.

 

[Piratecat]

A player in my game updated her messy sheet for her high level paladin, and realized that she hadn't actually updated her stats for TWO different levels!

Sometimes, neatness is its own reward.

 

[ThirdWizard]

I've seen this problem. It is why I started doing regular audits.

I have to do something at work.

 

[Scribble]

I'm like that too... My sheets are a MESS!

But it's just how I am. A tiger don't change its stripes.

 

[Oryan77]

I'd consider making her a character folio. Get a folder, add some note paper, and ask her to put her notes in that.

Oh, I didn't even mention her red notebook of notes Luckily, she already has what you suggested. But it's a whole other story

She has pages and pages of notes and doodles in that thing. And there is no system to it. I've taken a peak in it and she has notes from the game written upside down, vertical, and right side up all on the same page. And ringing the notes is a nice frame of doodling. Sometimes there's doodles in the middle of the page mixed in with her notes.

Somehow she finds what she's looking for in that thing. It doesn't take her much time to find the info within her notes either.