Making an RPG Based on a Character Sheet
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When I was around 13, I discovered RPGs. After playing Star Wars (WEG) for a while, I didn’t have the ability to get my hands on any RPGs, and I didn’t have any books. What I did have was a lot of six-sided dice, the internet, and a printer. So what did I do?
I went online and looked up character sheets, I downloaded them, printed them, and then deduced how the rules worked based on the sheet. Then, my brother and I would make characters and play in a world we made up. There wasn’t even a DM. We were both the DM and the players. We had some great games, primarily with two knights known as Sigusmund and Magnus.
So I’d like to put out a challenge: Find a character sheet online of an obscure RPG and make a brand new, simple game based on it. You could even print out enough sheets for everyone in your group, and in one night, make your characters and come up with the rules as you go. That’s what we did.
Have any of you ever done this? Or were we just two crazy youngsters who didn’t know what they were doing?
Dude this sounds like a fun idea! Your blog post sparked my interest, since right now I’m actually working on my own homebrewed system that essentially started out with me making a prototype character sheet, and working in reverse.
I agree! There are dozens of online sources for character sheets, usually for free. In a time when RPG sourcebooks can cost $40 a pop, I can’t really find much of a downside to reminding gamers that the whole hobby started with a couple of guys trying to make something fun all on their own. Exercise your creativity and maybe you’ll make something phenomenal! Even if it isn’t stellar by your own standards, all that matters is whether you had fun.
You were definitely crazy youngsters. Although there has been at least one RPG challenge based on this premise – where each competitor made a character sheet for a game and then passed them around randomly to other competitors who reverse-engineered a game from it.
Personally ever since I got involved in RPGs I’ve had access to the games themselves – I got involved by purchasing a copy of D&D, and then learned the game the hard way.
Oh my God! I did the same thing!
Though it was before the Internet, Dragon magazine used to run adds that were basically a certain character’s sheet. Or else you’d get stats for stuff, and then I would fit them into a game.
It was all homebrews for a few years there.
Magnus and Sigismund, how I miss thy adventures. Oh the Griffin skulls I took and the ornate armour Magnus wore. One day their adventures will be chronicled.
That’s how I’ve always played Toon. I learned from a guy who had the rulebook, but I’ve never laid eyes on it. I once played three games of it while stuck on a train with nothing but a notepad, a pencil, and a handful of change we flipped in lieu of dice (three heads was a six, three tails a 1, etc).
I would suggest Midgard, because its character sheet is pretty fun.
It’s a cool idea for sure. My friend when he designed his own game included all the data needed to play the game on the sheet it’s self, it meant that all us players ever needed to know a rule was the sheet. Not bad, but once his hard drive got corrupted and he lost all his rules it sucked.