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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8048617" data-attributes="member: 18">This is an extremely good point I had never previously considered. Whilst I haven't made a sheet for a couple of years, because the internet has provided (or we used Beyond, if it's D&amp;D), I will take that into account in future.For me, I guess it's like a balance of practicality, laziness on my part (which is abundant), and aesthetics, but to me, you have to get above a certain bar before I even consider the aesthetics, and most characters, including every official D&amp;D character sheet I can think of (every edition), have fallen distinctly below that minimum bar of &quot;Oh that's kinda sexy/stylish/evocative&quot; that I have before aesthetics kicks in.So then it's just a war between my laziness and how practical the official sheets are. The internet obviously complicated the situation in two ways:1) In the early days of the internets, particularly before about 1997-ish, there often wasn't an official character sheet you could print out. So you either had booklets of character sheets, photocopies (flashbacks man), or you had an unofficial sheet someone had whipped up on a website. Often these were godawful (all three) and part of why I started creating sheets.2) In more recent years (certainly the last decade), every time I've been dissatisfied with a character sheet for a game I've just Googled for one and found one that is &quot;good enough for government work&quot; - and sometimes they're actually excellent.Our most recent non-D&amp;D game we didn't even need character sheets. We just had a Google Sheet filled in with the stats of the characters and referenced it as needed. But that was a real one-page RPG (Sepulchre - it was excellent).I actually think we'd see a lot more better-designed character-sheets if it wasn't for the fact that once the game is started, even if you realize a sheet sucks, it's a pain to transfer the character details.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 8048617, member: 18"] This is an extremely good point I had never previously considered. Whilst I haven't made a sheet for a couple of years, because the internet has provided (or we used Beyond, if it's D&D), I will take that into account in future. For me, I guess it's like a balance of practicality, laziness on my part (which is abundant), and aesthetics, but to me, you have to get above a certain bar before I even consider the aesthetics, and most characters, including every official D&D character sheet I can think of (every edition), have fallen distinctly below that minimum bar of "Oh that's kinda sexy/stylish/evocative" that I have before aesthetics kicks in. So then it's just a war between my laziness and how practical the official sheets are. The internet obviously complicated the situation in two ways: 1) In the early days of the internets, particularly before about 1997-ish, there often wasn't an official character sheet you could print out. So you either had booklets of character sheets, photocopies (flashbacks man), or you had an unofficial sheet someone had whipped up on a website. Often these were godawful (all three) and part of why I started creating sheets. 2) In more recent years (certainly the last decade), every time I've been dissatisfied with a character sheet for a game I've just Googled for one and found one that is "good enough for government work" - and sometimes they're actually excellent. Our most recent non-D&D game we didn't even need character sheets. We just had a Google Sheet filled in with the stats of the characters and referenced it as needed. But that was a real one-page RPG (Sepulchre - it was excellent). I actually think we'd see a lot more better-designed character-sheets if it wasn't for the fact that once the game is started, even if you realize a sheet sucks, it's a pain to transfer the character details. [/QUOTE]

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