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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9009572" data-attributes="member: 42582">I like <a href="http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/14" target="_blank">this</a> from Vincent Baker on "character sheets":Character sheets are useless when it comes to creating, describing, defining, realizing characters. Totally pointless, valueless, toss 'em in the recycling. A notebook is helpful for remembering things, or 3x5 cards or post-it notes, let's use those instead. Or let's use nothing at all, if we can remember what we need to remember! Probably we can. . . . So we start right here at this point: the character exists only in our minds. If we write something down about the character, it's only to remind us, to help us keep the character in our minds. The character cannot be touched by rules or game mechanics at all, under any circumstances, no exceptions. The character is pure inviolate fiction. This is fundamental and inescapable. And from there we build. . . . The "character sheet" isn't about the character. Maybe - maybe - it refers to details of the character, if that's what our resolution rules care about. But either way, even if so, the "character sheet" is really a record of the player's resources. "Character creation" similarly isn't how you create a character, but rather how you the player establish your resources to start. If you like, you can design your game so that the player's resources depend wholly on details of the character. Or you can just as easily design your game so that the player's resources don't refer to details of the character at all. Or a mix, that's easiest of all. Whichever way, you need to establish what resources the player has to begin with, and you'll probably want to write 'em down. That's what's really going on.So a character sheet should make it easy for me to see what my resources for play are. I like it to group things by similar details of the character, where those are relevant; and by mechanical function, where that is relevant. Sometimes these two desiderata collide with one another, which creates challenges in design.Here's an example of a collision like that: in Burning Wheel, call-on traits set out distinctive or quirky details of the character, similar to character traits, which suggests these should all be grouped together on the sheet. But call-on traits also allow manipulating the dice pool, which suggests they should be grouped on the sheet with artha (Fate, Persona and Deads points), which are mostly about manipulating the dice pool.I haven't worked out the best way to handle this on my own (Excel-based) BW character sheet.</blockquote>

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