OLD SCHOOL Character Sheet for the Dungeons and Dragons Playtest

D&D Next Playtest Character Sheet

For some reason I became obsessed about hand written character sheets. My players were not as excited about the prospect of re-doing their character sheets by hand, regardless of how much loving hand-crafted enjoyment they were sure to get out of the project, not to mention the feeling of oneness they were sure to have every time the held their characters, so I decided to create a single page, one sided D&D next hand crafted character sheet. The style is early basic/advanced first edition dungeons and dragons. All analog. This sheet is compatible with the October 2012 playtest packet. Use it.

Besides a general backlash from the days of computer generated reams of pages during the fourth edition era, I began fondly remembering the scores of characters we used to make up in a notebook, page after page, to be torn out and discarded (or burned) when killed. It got to the point were each of my friends had his own “style” or look of their character sheets. Not only does this give the player a sense of attachment to something they created, and are still creating, but by making the sheet themselves, they know just where to put the most pertinent data.

This character sheet is an attempt to recreate the “look” of character sheets from the earlier editions, before pre-printed character sheets became all the rage. Sadly the lines on the paper do not show up that well (it was done on inverse graph paper, my new fave) but the lines are a medium gray “graphite” shade to give it the extra authenticity. It also helps the player-written information stand out, which is sadly missing from most of the dark, garish, contrast-intense character sheets out there, the official one included. I like my character sheets to be light and airy, with the information standing out.

And to close out the quick blog post, I would be remiss if I did not post the other most popular style of character sheet out there in the early first edition days, DF Cole’s classic, which is a complete antithesis of every virtue of my hand drawn sheet above, yet is perfect in its own way. both are two OLD opposing schools of thought on the character sheet.

THE character record Sheet Page the First

and the reverse