Character Sheets

[Tarieles]

So, I've always been on the fence about Character Sheets. On one hand, they're a great way to get your character right into the story without needing to explain stuff while you go along. But on the other hand, what if you don't like something you wrote those months ago, and want to change it, but it's pretty integral to your character? Now what? Could just roll with it, or ask the GM to let you change it, but if they won't let you, now you can't have your character grow in the way you wanted.

Other debates I've seen are super-maximum-in-depth sheets that describe everything and nothing is left unturned VS. Minimal information, just enough for the basics, but everything else will be part of the roleplay for character development. I personally prefer the latter, but I am very curious as to what others think.

Do you prefer sheets or just a jump-in format? If you like sheets, how do you like them? Super in-depth, Minimal, or somewhere in the middle?

 

[Sidhe]

I like to fill out basic character sheets before starting a role-play, and then once I get into the story and the character I usually fill out a detailed one on my own time because I like filling that shit out. 8| Even the super preposterously long and detailed ones. I would never expect my partners to do the same though. Honestly I just have a word document full of this kind of stuff. I like all the dumb questions. I especially like filling them out in first person. It's fun!

I just like to have a basic idea of who my character is before starting. Tbh I don't think I would even really need my partner to fill out a character sheet? I just do it for my own reference mainly.

 

[Tarieles]

@Opal I do that too. I like filling out basic stuff at first, and then get progressively more detailed as time goes on. Makes them seem more like a person.

 

[junebug]

I prefer basic sheets. I have no desire to tell people about what my character likes, dislikes, or what their favorite song is. All of that can be revealed in IC.

 

[Vendethiel]

Probably somewhere in the middle. Sometimes, I will get inspired to do a thorough character sheet on another hand I might have only the time for the basic of basic. I don't mind if my partner does either or.

 

[Obsidian Miscreant]

I like character sheets.
Its a good way to initially flesh out a character, and jot down information to build on later.

What I really love to write out are physical descriptions of characters. An image is not enough.
Why? Because I highly doubt YC looks EXACTLY like the picture posted without even the slightest deviation. If anything an image is a rough outline of sorts, and the description reveals things like tattoos, a cute mole, important scars, birthmarks, piercings, extra appendages, varying eye colors, height, etc. Things that their image may not incorporate. I want to envision characters with clarity within my mind throughout the rp. My own, and everyone else's.

But I really hate writing histories/backgrounds.
When I write up a CS it comes last, and can be so tedious to write. Its boring. The CS is no longer fun for me at that point.
I would much rather hint at general/in-depth info of a character's backstory spread all throughout a bio then write multiple paragraphs.
That or do bullet points.

When I do 1x1's I always make sure to tell my partners that histories are not mandatory.
Info can be sprinkled about, summed up into bullet points, or revealed via writing.

 

[Tarieles]

@ObsidianNyx I am with you there when it comes to histories. Often, I keep them optional in my groups. If I make them mandatory, I usually inform people to just give a small inkling of what large things happened in the character's life.

I can understand where you're coming from when it comes to physical descriptions. I, personally, don't like doing them, but I admire those who do. In real life, I never pay too much attention to people's physical characteristics (I don't know what color my bff's eyes are, for example. I think brown.) so I don't pay too much attention to character's. Except for hair, I have a thing for hair and I always remember the hair of characters before other things.

 

[junebug]

@ObsidianNyx Ditto to the history part. I'm not a huge fan of writing them either. I found recently giving my group options instead of making it mandatory makes things less stressful for them and more productive.

 

[Vendethiel]

Doing histories can be time consuming for me. I've had many character sheets I have scrapped all because I got stuck on creating a history.

 

[Kestrel]

Character sheets are great.

They're a screening process. As someone who has fantastical combat in their RP's, I can't tell you how stupidly useful this is. You see, everyone has different interpretations of what is fair in love and war. However the responsibility to keep it fair lies with the GM. Likewise, character sheets help you sort out issues prematurely, like poor sentence structure or plainly not reading context. Both of which are a lot more of a hassle to work out once they're in the IC. It is also really helpful to see how people react to criticism and questions when you have some before accepting.

Beyond that, they're useful for having a base to work from. Everyone ever is going to tell you characters don't play out exactly as their sheets say, but writing an idea down gives most people a stronger foundation to work from. A list of likes and dislikes may sound trivial and boring, but you know what RP's thrive on? Interaction. Far more than overarching plot. If I know Jane likes old rock music, I'll make Charlie's performance in the talent show include a Judas Priest cover, so Jane has a reason to approach him. You have so much more control over momentum when you know information beforehand, versus waiting forever on exposition. I don't need to even be a GM to make use of this.

History, while I don't like writing it either, can be massively useful. I mean who the fuck cares Susan was born a slave when at the start of the RP she's basically a free-fought warrior princess? Well, I can guarantee you people will care when the party has to cooperate with a slaver in order to progress in the quest. Want to know why they have to deal with a slaver specifically? Because the GM wanted to create conflict within the party for character development and story purposes.

If you like sheets, how do you like them? Super in-depth, Minimal, or somewhere in the middle?

I don't think there's a singular end-all answer to this. The trick to sheets is to balance them for your RP and audience. If I see an sandbox magic highschool RP where people just want to fuck around, I don't want to write seven pages of history. If the GM created a lore-heavy world, I want to use it to it's fullest extent and make sure I get this particular culture of elves right and a more detailed overview is very useful for that.

 

[Hecatoncheires]

The golden rule with character sheets is KISS: "Keep It Simple, Stupid". As a GM, you need to ensure that the player provides enough information for you to make a call on whether the character works. That's important, no doubt. But it's a balancing act. Overwhelm a player with too much character sheet and some might be put off entirely, and you also run the risk of a player not being able to dynamically and organically reveal information on their character within the game itself. This deprives your RP of those great character moments that makes a game so memorable.

I tend to go for a leaner, more minimalistic sheet whenever possible. Focus on the essentials, cut the unnecessary parts, and trust your players to fill in the gaps.

 

[Kitti]

I tend to like the simpler character sheets as well. I agree with them being a useful feature (I don't enjoy playing characters without at least a small sheet for them just to help me solidify my ideas in one place). The information that I use varies from character to character. Sometimes, the backstory of a character is very important from the beginning, in which case I'll happily toss that information down, sometimes I can't find an image that feels right so I just write a description, and so forth.

Really long, really detailed character sheets are hard for me to fill out from the beginning though because I think that in some ways, I learn and grow with the character as I play them and see their reactions.

 

[Smallz]

I have a word document filled with my own character sheets, but they are very simple. Typically, they go over basic details of the character like age, and physical descriptors. The one thing I really like that I do is a short history(think like 3-4 simple sentences), and an important event in their lives. Not every character gets an important event and typically this isn't shared among my partner. I think of this event or events as something that would define the character's life of before and after. So, say the character's father dies when they are 16, this is a life changing event that would strongly define the characters life. I guess it just helps me keep everything in a specific lense that the character sees their world through. It's also about magnitude of the event for a character, a character with a relatively easy life may see failing a college course as a huge event and life changing moment.

 

[Mami Tomoe]

For me, it depends on what type of roleplay I'm running and how I want the experience to go. If I want the roleplayers to discover more about others' characters in the RP, then I have a few minimalist character sheet, usually without Personality and Biography sections. In those cases, I usually ask roleplayers to PM me their character's Personality and Past.

If I'm running a complex roleplay, then I'll ask for a bit more info. Lore-heavy roleplays tend to demand more in-depth character sheets. But my sheets never go into an immense amount of detail. Usually, the key elements are appearance, personality and biography. Other sections (besides basic info which includes character name, age, etc) usually come after. I also like having a relationship section on every sheet, so roleplayers can edit and record their character's relationships.

My most detailed character sheets are in my google docs. You can find several of them in my character gallery, in the showcase section. These characters can take up to weeks to finish, or just one day depending on my mood.

 

[Elle Joyner]

XD too many tabs open. Wrong reply in the wrong thread...

I always prefer a character sheet when I GM or join an RP - because it's nice to have something to reference for both my characters and other people's... but as time goes on and I fill out more and more sheets, I find I prefer something a little less in depth. A quick guide, as opposed to a total dossier :)

 

[Nav]

So, for my groups, I do use fairly in-depth character sheets and there is a reason for this.

While I'm entirely willing to let people edit their CSs at any time, I require them up front because I need to know if they're going to work in the story or not, basically. As most of my games have some element of fantasty or super-powers, I need to make sure the character is A. reasonable within the limits of the world B. has weaknesses and C. understand the mechanics of the universe. I also use them to see how the writer matches up compared to other players in my story. Because I do almost exclusively high-detailed work (4-5 paragraphs a post), I want to make sure my players are all about on the same skill level so one player doesn't get left behind or end up feeling bad about themselves. It saves them and me a lot of heartache if I can be up front with them at the beginning instead of letting them start and having them bail or have to ask them to step-out at some point during the game.

Another important thing I use CSs for is plotting. As I'm building the story, I can use CS information to build characters more integrally in to the story. This allows me to make sure every character is feeling equally involved in the story at some point without one or two characters taking over the show and being the stars all the time. As a GM, it gives me the foresight on power balancing... so if I have a lot of scenes of fighting dragons, but I have one character who is a... I dunno... a unicorn tamer, I can have the foresight to bring in a situation with a unicorn and make the player feel like they have a part instead of just going "LOL TOO BAD ONLY DRAGONS U SUCK."

Truthfully, all this comes down to personal preference and GM style, but I for the life of me cannot remember every single players' characters and sometimes, if I need a small detail of information for something, I don't want to have to ask and wait for a response or dig through IC posts to find something. I can just snap back and reference their CS. I definitely understand the appeal of a jump-in style, but it's not my favourite. (:

 

[PoetLore]

I like character sheets, but I also like to let the character's background come out during the interaction with the other characters. I don't mind having a detailed one, and I tend to have a lot of notes for every character I create, like odd sayings or superstitions they might have.

I haven't attempted to GM a group here, to this point, but I doubt i'd expect a detailed history. Just a brief one and a description of the character. However, since I have yet to be that brave, it remains to be seen.

 

[Vars]

The golden rule with character sheets is KISS: "Keep It Simple, Stupid". As a GM, you need to ensure that the player provides enough information for you to make a call on whether the character works. That's important, no doubt. But it's a balancing act. Overwhelm a player with too much character sheet and some might be put off entirely, and you also run the risk of a player not being able to dynamically and organically reveal information on their character within the game itself. This deprives your RP of those great character moments that makes a game so memorable.

I tend to go for a leaner, more minimalistic sheet whenever possible. Focus on the essentials, cut the unnecessary parts, and trust your players to fill in the gaps.

In general and as a GM, I agree 100% with Grumpy.

As a player entering a new group RP, I absolutely hate super-detailed character sheets. It pushes a lot of the "work" of RP to the front, before you even join. I also, as a new player to a very developed lore, usually don't feel fully able to make characters that might fit what the RP calls for or the GM wants. This is more opportunity to create a character I might not like later on, or worse, involves lots of wasted effort in a character I felt I did well with but the GM doesn't like.

So as a GM, at least in my specific cases, my main goal is to attract as many people as possible as quickly as possible to help prevent the RP from dying before it even starts. To do that, I use the least-demanding character sheet possible for the game. It gives inexperienced or players without a ton of time on their hands the ability to just put in the minimum effort, but it also gives people who want to be far more detailed the freedom to do so.

Something I've run into with these less-demanding character sheets though is that it scares some more experienced/dedicated players off because they think the GM/RP will not be run very well, or they think the experience of RPing in the thread won't be as enjoyable because the other players won't be up to "their level." For me as a GM, this is an unfortunate, but acceptable loss, because I would personally prefer fostering players of all skill levels and more characters than a possibly short-lived RP with only a few well-developed characters. But this is my preference, and your needs as a GM may be different. So there are advantages and disadvantages to any type of character sheet you use.

Another good thing about the less-demanding character sheets for me is the ability to change things about your character retroactively without actually touching the character sheet. This can also be a negative at times, but I've found it (as a player at least) more helpful than not. Let's say I put in the bio that my character has PTSD, but I don't say where it came from. Maybe I need some time to be in the RP world for a while before I figure out what caused it. Or maybe I am just waiting for the perfect character to join the RP where I can retroactively say that character caused it somehow.

As someone else described above, "History" may not be fun to type, but it does allow for far more character interaction. For me personally, I am okay with that character's history being developed as the player gets more involved with the RP, rather than having to do all that work up front and relying on only the characters that have already joined at the time they developed their character sheet originally.

I just see more opportunities in vague character sheets. Some won't take advantage of it, but some will, and there are just so many possibilities.


Now, for me simply as a player, if I plan on using a character for a really long time or for a variety of RPs, I will make a HUGE character profile sheet for myself, and make changes to it for personal reference. I may also make a detailed CS if it's only a 1x1 RP. But for group rps, it's no character sheet or bare bones, and maybe something longer for myself as time goes on.

Roleplay is different from writing. Having your characters 100% figured out before you begin writing is good (necessary even) for writing books and stories. But in my personal opinion, it is mostly negative and limits interactive opportunities when it comes to roleplay. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Kagayours]

I like CS's. Like @Kestrel said, they make for a good "screening process". And, it makes it easy to look up certain details about another character without having to dig through the IC to find it. It forces players to put at least some thought into fleshing out who they want their character to be, which prevents anyone from jumping in with a bare-bones character idea. Besides, I generally don't have much of a problem with people wanting to change certain details of their CS if it doesn't retcon anything that's already unfolded in the RP.

In regards to the debate about whether long CS's or short CS's are better, I'd like to bring something up: there is a difference between players being allowed to make long, detailed CS's, and players being required to do so.

I can totally understand the aversion to needing to fill out a long list of fields and to write 6 paragraphs of history. But, personally, I do enjoy reading longer CS's (and, often times, writing them). I love it when people put a ton of thought into their character and have a long and detailed CS to share. owo But, in order to balance these two interests -- I never require super-detailed CS's. The amount of detail that I usually ask for in a CS is... not exactly minimalist, but not outrageous, either. You could probably get away with writing half a paragraph of history and filling out some other basic information and it would be fine, so long as there aren't any problems in regards to the RP's lore or powers that I wouldn't allow or anything like that. I rarely reject a CS for not being detailed enough. But if you want to put the effort in and make a long and detailed CS, then... well, I'd love to see it! owo

The only issue that sometimes comes up with this method is when I have an ongoing RP where most of the current players have long CS's, and a new player joins who gets intimidated by the long CS's and feels like they won't be accepted if they don't put in the same amount of detail. Thankfully I actually haven't seen this happen very often in my current RP's, though. Having a mix of long and short CS's from the start helps prevent that from happening -- but, since I don't want to stifle anyone's creativity if they want to make a longer CS, then... having the right mix in order to prevent newbies from getting intimidated is kind of just the luck of the draw. :/


Also! Even when my CS's contain a bit more fluff, a lot of it is optional fluff. The CS's I use in Fandomstuck, for example, have a "quirks" section, where you can list any sort of odd mannerisms or habits that your character has. Usually, the information in this section doesn't have a strong affect on the RP -- but it's really nice to see people have fun with filling it out anyway, and seeing what kinds of interesting things people can come up with. I think it just helps people flesh out their character more so that they have a more solid idea of who their character is. But I don't require anyone to come up with a list of some arbitrary number of quirks if they can't think of any. I wouldn't mind if you only listed one or two things, or even if you omitted that section entirely -- because none of it is really important enough to make into a hard requirement.

 

[Jargo]

I actually dislike character sheets. I understand some basic character information is required for a group roleplay, because you need several people to each understand and work around each other, but especially for 1x1-s I find them completely unnecessary. This is doubly true for the extremely elaborate CSes I've seen being tossed around some group RPs, containing tons of information, 90% of which, nobody will ever use or care about. Perhaps they are useful in helping a person imagine their own character but apart from that I fail to see any. Besides, I'm pretty certain there are many RPs, where there's more stuff written down in everyone's CS than in the actual roleplay, because while everyone is able to fill in all the CS details and get approved for it, the overall interest in the game/plot itself has decreased significantly.

When reading a book you're never given a detailed summary of each character, you meet them in their natural habitat, so to speak, and you only find out about them through their interactions with others, be they direct or indirect. I much prefer to apply this approach to roleplaying as well, so I've never asked for a CS in my 1x1 roleplays. If you definitely must screen the other person, then having then write up a paragraph of character interaction is much better, because it showcases their overall roleplay skill as well, plus it probably takes less time.

Aside from everything else, a lack of CS also keeps you engaged by introducing the other player(s)'s character(s) bit by bit across the entire plot, especially its earlier parts, not just spoon-feeding you everything about them. It also allows players much more freedom to change details about their character during the roleplay itself, especially if they are still unintroduced details regarding a character, without having to edit another document and also warn their partner.