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No Character Sheets

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No Character Sheets

Postby SheikhJahbooty » Fri Jul 16, 2010 8:07 pm

Which RPGs don't use character sheets?

Link if you can.
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Re: No Character Sheets

Postby madunkieg » Fri Jul 16, 2010 8:37 pm

Spirited doesn't, though it pushes the envelope of what you might call a rpg. It was made for Little Game Chef 09, which is why it's only 2 pages. You can get it here:

Why the interest in rpgs without character sheets? Is there a particular quality you're looking for?
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Re: No Character Sheets

Postby SheikhJahbooty » Sat Jul 17, 2010 9:21 am

I'm not really sure what I'm looking for.

I expect some will be short little games like haikus of RPG.


I expect some will be convoluted games about navigating a web of interrelatedness.


I expect some will be heroic games about how you meet your destiny.


I think maybe I just want to see what's possible.
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Re: No Character Sheets

Postby pstmdrn » Sat Jul 17, 2010 4:28 pm

Makes me want to think about it.
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Re: No Character Sheets

Postby pstmdrn » Sat Jul 17, 2010 5:02 pm

I suppose using something to replace the character sheet is not the same as not-having a sheet? I was thinking of a game that possibly used some non-game source for character stats and abilities, like Nutritional Information from a food label, information about a particular stock, track listings on an album.
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Re: No Character Sheets

Postby madunkieg » Sat Jul 17, 2010 10:10 pm

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Re: No Character Sheets

Postby SheikhJahbooty » Sat Jul 17, 2010 11:57 pm

Oh, that gives me an idea.

This isn't really what I'm looking for, but...

I've always wanted to do a RPG inspired by Mark Sumner's News From The Edge novels or the Sci Fi Channel show, The Chronicle which was on like 10 years ago or something, and the comment you just made about non-game sources for character information made me think that in a game in which everyone is a reporter writing real honest articles for a tabloid newspaper, character sheets could be replaced by portfolios which are actual clippings from newspapers, and the more of your clippings (kept in a folder) that you can relate to what your character is doing, the bigger chance your character has of pulling it off.

That's off topic, because the portfolio would, in my mind, be a character sheet of sorts.

But maybe there's another type of game that could be played with a newspaper. We can all get free newspapers, right, Village Voice, Creative Loafing, maybe day old papers set outside a market for the recyclers to pick up...

Maybe the PCs are all spies, and the players have to go through the newspaper with a colored marker, pointing out secret messages, like John Nash did back when he was bat-shit insane. And depending on the subject matter of your secret messages, you earn different color tokens that you can use to kick butt, or trap villains in compromising situations, or arrange daring escapes or other coincidences in your favor, etc. respectively. This would be a game without a character sheet, because your character would really just be a collection of tokens.

After collecting a bunch of games onto a directory on my hard drive, I'm starting to notice a few trends.

a) Some games are so limited in scope that they don't need character sheets, because you pretty much have to play a certain role, games like Heavenly Kingdoms or Madunkieg's Spirited.

b) Some games have a game play sheet that contains all the relevant information about the game setting, including the character information. Verge does this, but other games, like Shock (social science fiction) or Geiger Counter (survival horror role playing) come close to this as well.

c) Some games have characters that are so simple that you don't need to have a character sheet because everyone can remember the relevant details of the characters. Archipelago fits this mold, but I've also played quicky games of Amber and Nobilis in this way. In the Amber game the GM just allowed us to pick whatever we wanted to be first in, as long as everyone picked something different, so if warfare and intrigue, etc. were already picked you would have to be first in beauty or luck or riddles. In the Nobilis game we just picked god of <blank>, and started playing, and we all picked silly things, or things that would have been awesome gods in their original contexts, but would be totally goofy gods to have to a modern sensibility, like god of chocolate, god of manly boasting, etc. and that was a goofy evening, but I laughed quite a bit.

There might be other trends that I haven't found yet. I'll probably eventually find an example of a game that uses character mats that your character is defined by arranging tokens or dice or polyhedrals on a place-mat in front of you that you never have to write on. I'm not sure if I consider Shadows an example of this or an example of trend c, because the "character sheet" in Shadows is just a crayon drawing of yourself, and your antagonistic alter ego, and a space to keep tokens. I think its an example of trend c because you can play Shadows perfectly well without paper or crayons, just using half of a backgammon set.

I mean, just think of how cool you would feel if your RPG knowledge and expertise were such that you could throw together a really exciting Princess Mononoke RPG with a deck of playing cards, a blank sheet of printer paper, a pencil, and a box of animal crackers.
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Re: No Character Sheets

Postby madunkieg » Sun Jul 18, 2010 7:38 am

I forgot about jeepform. Really, though, they sit in my head under "improv exercises" rather than "rpgs" since I don't see any game features in them. They tend to fall under two categories, since you only have to remember a character name, and they're so narrow as to not require much, if anything, to remember.

A list of downloadable Jeepform games:
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Re: No Character Sheets

Postby pstmdrn » Sun Jul 18, 2010 8:55 am

I like your newspaper/secret message idea! Will the game master give the players instructions as to what the subjects of the secret messages to look for or how will they determine the quality of a good message?
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Re: No Character Sheets

Postby SheikhJahbooty » Sun Jul 18, 2010 4:38 pm

I made my own go board, and bought glass beads for it, orange and sky blue, but then I found clear and purple glass beads and liked them better because they looked more normal, and I sewed four pouches to hold them about 200 of each.

So that's what I have to work with as far as tokens, clear, orange, blue, and purple glass beads.

The GM awards blue beads for finding messages that deal with relationships.
The GM awards orange beads for finding messages that deal with violence or threats.
The GM awards clear beads for finding messages that deal with technology or gadgets.
The GM awards purple beads for finding messages that deal with sneaking, hidden things or stealing.

You get1 bead if you need to explain the message because it's really cryptic (i.e. it's a stretch, but we'll give you something). You get 2 beads for clear messages. You get three beads for impressively clear messages. The beads awarded need not be all the same color. If you find a clear message about stealing a proton evaporator ray, you get a clear and a purple bead.

When and if I type it up, I'll probably call them con tokens, threat tokens, techno tokens, and stealth tokens.

That's all I got so far. I'd like spending beads to be really powerful, but if you don't have appropriate beads, I'd like PCs to still be able to try impressive feats, even if it's likely they'll lose.

Thanks, I'll check out the Jeepform link, but I tend to agree. Jeepform seems as much like a RPG as children running around playing pirates. It can be fun, and I still do it as an adult (last Hanuka party I was at we all made balloon swords and had a historical reenactment), but I don't think of it as a proper game.
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