Why good D&D Character Sheets are essential (especially for beginners)
It started with a troll
One of the first responses to my very first character sheet design was something like „never seen anything more useless…“. Against my own advice I asked Mister Internet Troll for some constructive feedback instead of this disrespectful comment. And surprisingly I got a somewhat constructive answer. He pointed out, that he comes from a time when character sheets where just simple notepads or sheets of white paper where every player just wrote down his stats and character information in his or her own individual way. Pure, apocalyptic chaos in my opinion. He wrote further, that this was all they needed back then and should also be all we need today. And while I somehow think his point is valid, because you really do not need anything but a pen & paper to play a game like DnD, I strongly disagree with his opinion that good character sheet designs are useless. In fact I think a good designed character sheet is what most players, especially beginners, need the most. And if you are willing to read along, I will tell you exactly why that is.
A short history of character sheets
To prove my point I want to take you on a short trip through the history of character sheets first. In 1974 the game of Dungeons & Dragons was published and changed tabletop gaming forever. What I find very interesting, is the fact that there were no character sheets back then. This point goes to you Mister Internet Troll. But even more interesting is, that only one year later a guy named Stephen Tihor published the first ever character sheet as a part of his fanzine „Haven Herald“. So the fans of this, at the time very young, game realized quickly that they needed some sort of guidance on character documentation. Especially with larger groups and new players. Even back then, when the rules were much lighter and less complex, the players and DMs felt the urge to organize all the character information in a pleasant way. Since these early days of TTRPGs, a ton of different character sheets have been created. But the basic concept really didn’t change. Blocks of character infos are placed in black and white on a sheet of paper in kind of a random order.
The first ever character sheet by Stephen Tihor.
Published in his fanzine “Haven Herald” in 1975. Simple but it worked.
And this is where my main point comes to play. For decades we’ve been using basically the same method to track our characters. Even the growing complexity of DnD and other games did not push forward a movement to rethink the design of character sheets. In my experience the greatest reason for beginners to not start with DnD is because the rules are overwhelmingly complicated. Professionally designed character sheets could help those poor souls to find their way into the world of made up wizards and barbarians. And while the use of digital sheets and journals offers some great opportunities to save time and neglect the need to know every single connection between certain stats, the world of printed character sheets almost stands still. For people like me who really want to avoid most of the electronic devices while playing Dungeons & Dragons, this is pretty disappointing.
My own new approach
This disappointment was the feeding ground for my urge to create some damn cool and useful (yes Mister Internet Troll you read that right) character sheets for D&D and other TTRPGs. After many months of excessive thinking and overthinking, I came up with my first design. My Adventure awaits character sheet was born. A bold, colorful, retro bomb that not only hit a nerve in the D&D community but also was a slap in the face of all the rainbow haters out there (a little joke for everyone who read the comments when I first posted it on reddit). But how is that much different from the status quo you may ask? Well it’s your luck day, because I am here to answer this question I just asked myself on my own little blog.
The Visuals
The bold font, the vibrant colors and the handdrawn icons. All these features create a unique, retro 70s/80s look that I really love. This design is one of the few projects I realized that I am honestly proud of. It exactly resembles the vision I had in mind when I first thought of this. And it always makes me very happy to hear from other people how cool it looks. The benefit of it looking very cool is, that the player simply likes to look at beautiful things. And the character sheet being beautiful makes it less of a chore to search for certain stats or numbers on it.Less information overload
One of the keys to make the character sheet more clean and easy to comprehend was to get rid of unnecessary information. I scrapped everything from the main sheet that was not a core stat or a core character information. Things like items, weapons, armor, spells, feats and coins are found only on playing cards. Those playing cards have special icons on it. The same icons as on the corners of the sheet. This way the player can organize the cards around the sheet and the main character sheet only has the necessary information it should have.Color code
What stands out the most to many people is the color code I used for the connection between the Abilities (or Attributes how I call it) and the skills and other stats like Initiative. This helps especially newbies and players with ADHD or Dyslexia to find the numbers they are looking for faster and without much confusion.
My own first character sheet design.
A colorful, bold, adventurous sheet of paper to help newbies & all the players who like things tidy and beautiful.
Why am I so obsessed with character sheets?
I really hope you now see how useful all those features are at the RPG table. And while I am always incredibly happy to hear from my customers how helpful my designs are for them. The main reason why I focus on designing new character sheets is, because I would like to see a shift in the TTRPG culture towards more high quality gaming materials. Not only character sheets in fact. Also maps, playing cards, cheat sheets or other stuff. I think, using really good designed supplements, helps new players to find into the game and also keeps the fun at a sky high level. For an awesome Dungeons & Dragons campaign, the table has to be bursting from cool materials and props in my opinion. We need cool handdrawn maps, awesome villain portraits and also freaking lit character sheets. And I am here to serve you exactly what you need!