First, where on earth could you even find a pencil in 5 years? 10 years? Everybody will be rocking a tablet of some sort for sure. So I got to thinking about the character sheet of the future. I even turned D&D 5e into WFRP 3e (see image). I designed some of my own cards for Genesys none the less.Īfter WFRP 3e I couldn’t play another game without all the bits again.
My players LOVED their bundle of a “character sheet”, and I loved the easily managed monster cards which FFG thankfully created for Genesys as well. Because the rules were never an issue that took the players’ attention, we ended up having the best pure role-playing sessions of our lives in this game.Īnother element that WFRP 3e did really well and no TTRPP ever did (previous or later) was the thrill of achievement when receiving a new physical item at the end of each session, either a weapon, talent or action card, with gorgeous graphics and a unique function. This character management wonder freed up a very significant amount of session time for us, leaving us the opportunity to actually just play the game. Players didn’t have to rummage through pages of their sheet or the rule books to figure out what options they have - it was all laid out graphically in front of them and they just needed to pick. Even at higher levels with dozens of cards and abilities, players would never get too confused because of the visual element of it all. Finally! A game that I don’t need to design a character sheet for!Įvery card and token had a purpose and clear visual style. I think I got Jay Little(and team) vision from the get go. Being a long time fan of Fantasy Flight Games‘ board-games I was thrilled when they announced that they were going to make a roleplaying game with all the wonderfully designed board game elements they are so good at. I mostly designed intuitive web interfaces for sophisticated web applications, basically using the same skills as for RPG character sheets, but with different styles and purpose.Įverything changed in 2009 when Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd Edition came out. Little did I know that all this time spent creating character sheets will lead to a successful career as a UI/UX designer and developer (Until I quit, went to film school and started my VFX career). Moving forward, I designed a bunch of character sheets for a bunch of systems, never satisfied with any official or fan-made sheets I’d find, with a continuous objective to minimize player confusion and maximize quality game-play time.
I have no way to either confirm or deny both suspicions p Bear in mind that I also think that when a basketball coach and players huddle up, they are probably talking about me. I figured someone at Green Ronin Publishing saw my RM character booklet and got the idea from that. I remember smiling to myself when Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition came out in 2004 and I saw the landscape oriented fold-in-the-middle style of character sheet it had. The final version is the Rolemaster Character Booklet you can get here (and for Spacemaster here) and it was popular on the ancient Ironcrown Enterprises forums.Īs far as I know, I am the original inventor of the character sheet in booklet form - I never saw any before 1996. Even though there were a lot of fan made character sheets I obviously had to design and redesign my own, converting the entire complex machine of a Rolemaster character into an easy to use tool. I think.īut the official RMSS character sheet just wouldn’t do - for me. It didn’t, but we got over it eventually.
Our core group was looking for a more in-depth game, foolishly thinking it will prevent our many rule arguments. Then we started playing the Rolemaster Standard System RPG. It also got spread around to other groups of friends.
#Yggdrasil rpg character sheet update#
We ended up using this character sheet design for 7 years, where I continued to add to it and update it. I moved some stuff around, added some information for easy reference and generally designed it so it made sense to me.
It was the type of word processor where you literally had to type in all page elements, including table borders - underscore by underscore and pipe (|) by pipe. I used a DOS based word processor called Einstein, now long-forgotten since the entire country of Israel used the same bootlegged copy. I just started playing D&D and after a single short session (My first character died after 10 minutes of playing) I decided I wanted to be the Dungeon Master… and also that the character sheet needs a redesign. I designed my first Dungeons & Dragons character sheet in 1988 at the age of 12.