Shelving away a bunch of character sheets from the dungeon crawl we had in spare evening in India. I have quite a few character sheets from the last few years that I’ve hung onto. It makes me think of two things:
Firstly, I’d like it if more games that are aimed at one-shots did away with the character sheet. and explored more elegant ways to provide that function. This is both for the in-game vibe, and also to produce a single memento of the single shared experience, rather than a dog’s dinner of half a dozen identically printed sheets with minimal personalisation. I can point to The Quiet Year as a great example of success here, as we walk away with a single map which epitomises the collective session of play. Meaningful and potent.
Secondly, I’m ready again to play a game for long enough that a character sheet does have meaning; equipment aggregated and refined, character changes encoded, nicknames, mottos, pieces of history and reminders of ambitions dotting up the Notes page. I want to get sentimental about a character sheet. Somehow it feels that I can only get sentimental about the sheet if the play extends over many sessions, making the sheet the artifact of play that ensures continuity, that brings us back into the ritualised space.