Favorite RPG Character Sheet design/layout?

Since I've got a lot more free time these days, one of my little projects I'm working on to stay "productive" is to design some new character sheets for Dungeon Crawl Classics. There aren't really many out there to begin with, and while a couple of them look pretty good, the classes are so distinct in what info they need that it's worthwhile having class specific sheets and the only set of those I've seen is incomplete and looks pretty grim overall.

So show me what your favorite sheet looks like! Or even say what you do and don't like in sheets. I'm looking for some inspiration and fresh ideas. It's amazing how difficult it really is to do a good job with it, I wish I'd had a professor assign it to me!

My current favorite sheet is either this:
AD&D Sheet (sorry it's a pdf)

Or this:

None are really what I'd call perfect though. The balance of looking good, easily accessible info and TONS of info needed is pretty killer.

In the RPG the character sheet depicted above was created for, does the starting gear contain silicone breasts?

I don't really like sheets that list all available skills. I prefer just putting in those my char has.

I usually created my own sheets though, that is, one for every character with specific layout. For a high level D&D wizard I created a tableau listing spell slots per spell level per day, which I then filled with chits listing spell names and removing these as they were cast.

I enjoy custom made sheets, specially for CoC campaings, like these:









Those are Trail of Cthulhu sheets by Brazilian RPG author John Bogéa, for a campaign in 30's Pará (a state from Brazil)

Those are great, Rafael! And they're even in Elvish! Amazing.

Can't remember where I saw it, but there was this neat Malkavian character sheet for Vampire: the Masquerade. It was crazy-looking, of course, but somehow had a functional layout and also incorporated stuff from a Call of Cthulhu ref sheet. Might have been in the 1st edition clanbook.

that map is amazing. Loks just like Cthulu too. Really well done.

For me, nothing will ever beat the original D&D sheets I used to use when I discovered the game in junior high. I remember sending my mom to work with one of these and asking for her to bring back lots of photocopies back. I remember my first character, Linus, a fighter. He was my favourite and got so invincible over time that I lost interest in playing and grew to love DMing. Then I started liking girls and that was the end of D&D for me.

Loters sheet brought back memories of Champions. Loved drawing in features....We we usually some kind of ninja.

In general, sheets should be functional first. Especially if you're playing a horror game, where the room might be dim or candlelit, they have to be simple and high-contrast so info can be found quickly. Keep the artsy-fartsy stuff in the margins.

I'm not overly fond of the giant character portrait, mostly because I can't draw. (This is a lie, because I have a Call of Cthulhu character sheet of one Francis Marion Winthrop which I've kept for over 20 years. Hoke would modify the character portrait over time as the character drifted further into debauchery and insanity.)

Frankly, I adore the Apocalypse World playbook character playbooks. Partly because the art and bits just radiate "OMG, that's so cool."

Ah. You can find them here:
apocalypse-world.com/ApocalypseWorld-playbooks.pdf

This is the one.



I've used this since they first came out in 1980. The back has great big open spaces that were a necessity for my group since everyone created custom items. The only mismatch with AD&D is the saving throw boxes and we just wrote two numbers in each of two of the boxes.

S.

Sag, did the paper on the Hit Points and Armor Class spots get so worn out from all the erasing that you eventually tore the paper there? Then you're in a rough spot cuz the thought of transferring over all that equipment to a new character sheet is just too daunting.

Laziness 18

We cheated in a couple of ways -- we printed copies onto heavier paper and we always had a note card during play that kept track of spells and hit points. So the sheet stayed relatively clean.

We used to play every Sunday for about six hours, so we industrialized the process. I still have the same gym bag that I used to transport all my materials and I can tell you which pencils are in which pockets even today.

S.

Wow, those custom ones are amazing!

Once I get mine all done up to the point of being worthy of outside criticism I'll post em up and let the shredding commence.

I have a real nostalgic fondness for the sheets my uncle had made up on his typewriter in the 70s and had near infinite copies of since that's all I knew for the first years I was playing.

My favorite was the one I made myself for AD&D. Unfortunately it was many years ago and I don't have any copies left to scan in.