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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 3855935" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't dissent too much from the overall tone of your post, but I did want to pick up on this passage, and express a small disagreement.To me, this passage expresses a slighly narrow view of what the &quot;character sheet&quot; means. Suppose we ignore the fact that character sheets have not only mechanical information but lists of the PC's friends and contacts, in-game history, enemies, etc. And suppose we ignore those games in which much of that sort of information is expressed mechanically, such as HeroWars, or arguably in AD&amp;D 1st ed (via the henchmen mechanics).Even just looking at the mechanical aspects of an attribute, skills and talents game like 3E or RM, the character sheet can contain information that is not easily replaced and subsitutable: area knowledge skills, for example (which only make sense in the context of a particular PC's history), or the character in one of my RM games who had maximum ranks in juggling (which only made sense in the context of that PC's history of begging for money on the streets of Greyhawk's Old City).To an extent. But my impression is that the 4e character sheet will actually take a turn away from &quot;personality&quot; to &quot;avatar&quot;, because (I gather) many of the sorts of mechanical entries on a character sheet that only make sense for a personality (craft, profession, obscure performance skills, etc) will no longer exist, being handwaved away into character background.I think that as far as D&amp;D is concerned, 3E may represent the zenith of the notion that the mechanical aspects of a character are a total picture of that character.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 3855935, member: 42582"] I don't dissent too much from the overall tone of your post, but I did want to pick up on this passage, and express a small disagreement. To me, this passage expresses a slighly narrow view of what the "character sheet" means. Suppose we ignore the fact that character sheets have not only mechanical information but lists of the PC's friends and contacts, in-game history, enemies, etc. And suppose we ignore those games in which much of that sort of information [i]is[/i] expressed mechanically, such as HeroWars, or arguably in AD&D 1st ed (via the henchmen mechanics). Even just looking at the mechanical aspects of an attribute, skills and talents game like 3E or RM, the character sheet can contain information that is not easily replaced and subsitutable: area knowledge skills, for example (which only make sense in the context of a particular PC's history), or the character in one of my RM games who had maximum ranks in juggling (which only made sense in the context of that PC's history of begging for money on the streets of Greyhawk's Old City). To an extent. But my impression is that the 4e character sheet will actually take a turn away from "personality" to "avatar", because (I gather) many of the sorts of mechanical entries on a character sheet that only make sense for a personality (craft, profession, obscure performance skills, etc) will no longer exist, being handwaved away into character background. I think that as far as D&D is concerned, 3E may represent the zenith of the notion that the mechanical aspects of a character are a [i]total picture[/i] of that character. [/QUOTE]

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