Invisible Sheets

[Afgncaap5]

I've been pondering things best left unpondered lately, and the question came to my mind: how would you react to a D&D game where you didn't have access to your own character sheet?

The DM has them all, and the nefarious scoundrel is keeping them and all of their delicious secrets to himself. The DM just says "Hey guys, for this next series of adventures, I've got a cast to fill. There's an apothecary, a farmhand, a librarian, a city guard, a card shark, a minstrel, and the child of a local nobleman available, figure out which one you wanna play."

Sure, the DM gives you a kind of fact sheet about the character you pick, and there's even a few places for writing in some details of your own choice (name, motivation, etc.), but there aren't any details on class, feats, skill points, or the like. You're assured that they exist, and you can probably infer things from the fact that the rich kid loves climbing trees or that the city guard's gear specifically mentions a mace, but you don't really have the numbers for hit points, armor class, or anything like that.

I can see this kind of game really appealing to some players, and also being really, really horrible to other players.

[AvatarVecna]

I've been pondering things best left unpondered lately, and the question came to my mind: how would you react to a D&D game where you didn't have access to your own character sheet?

The DM has them all, and the nefarious scoundrel is keeping them and all of their delicious secrets to himself. The DM just says "Hey guys, for this next series of adventures, I've got a cast to fill. There's an apothecary, a farmhand, a librarian, a city guard, a card shark, a minstrel, and the child of a local nobleman available, figure out which one you wanna play."

Sure, the DM gives you a kind of fact sheet about the character you pick, and there's even a few places for writing in some details of your own choice (name, motivation, etc.), but there aren't any details on class, feats, skill points, or the like. You're assured that they exist, and you can probably infer things from the fact that the rich kid loves climbing trees or that the city guard's gear specifically mentions a mace, but you don't really have the numbers for hit points, armor class, or anything like that.

I can see this kind of game really appealing to some players, and also being really, really horrible to other players.

For a game more focused around RP than tactical combat, this could be an interesting approach. You're given a vague skeleton of a background, a personality, and your personal capabilities, and you have to roleplay most of your actions, which might add circumstance bonuses/penalties to the rolls as the DM sees fit...and only for the times the DM decides rolling even matters. For a game more focused around tactical combat...it wouldn't work out well. Even with only your vague personality to guide you (the nobleman's kid would avoid combat, probably the card shark too, but the guard would try and defend them) doesn't give you much to go on as far as what they do when combat breaks out. Would they try and hide because they're good at slipping away unseen, or would they try and talk their way out of problems? Does the guard even know what all equipment he has? If so, he might have a decent idea of his damage and AC, but that's about it, meaning there's gonna be a lot of questions like "does my character think he has enough of a chance in this fight to try and defend himself, or should he be trying to get the hell out of dodge?", which bogs down combat in a system that's already ridiculously slow even when everybody knows their full capabilities. And that's not even touching on the possibility of a spellcaster - you'd basically have to avoid casters completely if you were doing combat stuff, since they'd either have some idea of what their spells do, or they're basically useless.

It would be neat for a low-level, low-magic game doing some kind of Slice Of NPC Life instead of "group of non-adventurers going on adventures together".

[GilesTheCleric]

It sounds like a fun game to me, provided that the GM wasn't petty and would help give you hints over time as to what things you can do. For example, if you're a guard, maybe after a few combats the GM would say "you've noticed that your leg sweep has worked pretty well for you in the past few combats" or if you're a caster, "every time you've been in combat, you've felt a rush of blood and your fingers tingle. It's as if there's something right on the edge of your mind.".

Of course, those types of 'reveals' would work best if the game started you off as an expert/ aristocrat/ commoner, then you gained your first PC level over the course of 3-10 sessions. Or as Vecna so elegantly put it, "Slice Of NPC Life".

I'd think it would work better in a more freeform system, maybe something like Whitewolf's Scion or WoD or something.

[Afgncaap5]

The equipment issue and caster issue would, I think, need some information even if it's not on a character sheet. I expect most characters would have a rough idea of personal belongings (leather armor and a copper knife for that guy, heavier chain mail with a sword for the town guard, simple tunic and breeches along with three different kinds of cards for the card shark, etc.) but I wouldn't expect any hard numbers to be given. This sort of touches on an issue I couldn't really figure out for myself, that being the numbers of weapons. There's a kind of continuum of options between "players know how big their damage dice are and what to roll when they hit something" and "the DM doesn't even let the players know that, rolls everything for the players, and doesn't reveal how much damage has been done beyond using it to flavor description of combat." Both extremes have problems; I think I prefer the latter conceptually, but it's problems would arise more, I think.

As far as magic goes, I think the element of mystery here would be less in preventing the players from knowing what spells they have and more in what they can do with it. Might also be fun to have some history with how a player knows something. If the minstrel is a bard (PLOT TWIST!) he might have determined over time that his music spoke to people on a more intense level, and his spells might've grown out of figuring out just how that works. A sorcerer might've gradually picked up on certain hand gestures and phrases being more and more persuasive until he or she develops magic words capable of charming a person.

If a player was a wizard in this route it'd probably feel more like a traditional wizard in D&D, though. Pretty hard to tiptoe around "well, there's this book of spells, y'see..."

[Khedrac]

A fair number of 1st Ed games used to play like this when I was at Uni (not any I took part in though). The most interesting bit was not knowing one's own hit points....
(Though I think they did know their character's base stats, just not their current condition or hit points after levelling).

I am told it could work very well.

But, 3rd Ed - ugh. As AvatarVecna said 3.0/3.5 is a very tactical game - it's the first edition where a fighter is harder to play at low levels than a caster (specifically the sorceror). Worse, I don't really see this working for a game with as many little special rules as 3.5. If one knows the base rule says you cannot do something, would you even try if you did not know your character had the ability to break that rule?

[PrismCat21]

I was disappointed when I read this thread. I thought it was going to be about 'blanket-like' sheets that possibly turned anything they cover invisible :elan:
Oh well

[eggynack]

I feel like, in order to have this work to any extent, the characters would have to be generic to the point where it's irrelevant that the players lack their sheets. Give them anything less generic than a list of skills, and feats like toughness or weapon focus, and you'll start to run into situations where the character is clearly activating an incredibly specific thing on the character sheet that the player really should have known about beforehand. Imagine a character having improved trip. If they try to trip someone at any point, they get this really obvious extra attack, and the idea that this character that's really good at tripping wouldn't ever choose to trip, simply because the player is unaware of the character's tripping expertise, seems super weird. Even something like dodge would cause problems, and the magic system seems to just not work.

What you end up with, then, is a party full of experts and maybe some especially generic warrior/fighter types. Which, I suppose you could do that with hidden sheets, but, honestly, why would you want to? Does it really make sense that an expert wouldn't know that they've studied a particular subject for years? I don't see that much utility from it, and it seems like you're inevitably creating more of a metagame produced divide than exists normally.

3.5 is a system of specifics. You don't sing songs, and then get numerical benefits, but if you're a bard those songs are more successful. You become a bard, and you learn a set of extremely specific songs, and those songs do specific things. You don't use fire magic, or darkness magic, and have that vague capacity build itself up over time. You have specific spells with specific effects, and you have them in specific number. Anyone can trip, but trip based feats don't simply make you somewhat better at doing so. They give you really well defined capabilities that are clearly visible, to the point where you could identify a lot of a melee opponent's exact feats by observing them fight.

If you want to do something like this, you probably want a system that isn't composed of specifics.

[apocryphaGnosis]

I feel like, in order to have this work to any extent, the characters would have to be generic to the point where it's irrelevant that the players lack their sheets. Give them anything less generic than a list of skills, and feats like toughness or weapon focus, and you'll start to run into situations where the character is clearly activating an incredibly specific thing on the character sheet that the player really should have known about beforehand. Imagine a character having improved trip. If they try to trip someone at any point, they get this really obvious extra attack, and the idea that this character that's really good at tripping wouldn't ever choose to trip, simply because the player is unaware of the character's tripping expertise, seems super weird. Even something like dodge would cause problems, and the magic system seems to just not work.

You're definitely right, but I think the solution is quite obvious. A game like this would simply be one where everything is really general, where characters have more basic options and less of the fancy schmancy stuff. Obviously playing a factotum or something without a character sheet would be insanely confusing, so just don't have any factotum characters available. The no-sheet style lends itself well to a simple, low power configuration. I think in a situation like this I would find it just as exciting to play a fighter as a wizard (as long as the encounters were balanced for a lower tier party).
And I think it would be easy to work out giving the players more complex abilities that only make sense if they know that they have the ability. I think it would make sense to level the characters up for them, and give them feats and skill ranks related to what they have been doing, so if the town guard has been tripping a lot, give him Improved Trip, and tell him "In practicing your tripping maneuvers, you realize a new strategy which could prove useful the next time you trip" or something along those lines.
I've considered playing a game like this, and this thread is getting me really pumped about the idea. I think I'm going to try it.

[eggynack]

You're definitely right, but I think the solution is quite obvious. A game like this would simply be one where everything is really general, where characters have more basic options and less of the fancy schmancy stuff. Obviously playing a factotum or something without a character sheet would be insanely confusing, so just don't have any factotum characters available. The no-sheet style lends itself well to a simple, low power configuration. I think in a situation like this I would find it just as exciting to play a fighter as a wizard (as long as the encounters were balanced for a lower tier party).
And I think it would be easy to work out giving the players more complex abilities that only make sense if they know that they have the ability. I think it would make sense to level the characters up for them, and give them feats and skill ranks related to what they have been doing, so if the town guard has been tripping a lot, give him Improved Trip, and tell him "In practicing your tripping maneuvers, you realize a new strategy which could prove useful the next time you trip" or something along those lines.
I've considered playing a game like this, and this thread is getting me really pumped about the idea. I think I'm going to try it.
It's not just a factotum problem. The issue is that there is essentially no interstitial state between not knowing you have improved trip and knowing you have improved trip. You can't just have greater yet undefined tripping capacity. The first time you trip someone, you'll get a free attack and know exactly what your sheet looks like in that area. If there were, like, fifty subtly different variations on improved trip, with interesting branching upgrades, then that'd be one thing, but we're talking about this system, and in this system there's just the one thing that does that. And, if the player definitely knows the most important part of their sheet, why have the sheet be invisible? Just to hide HP? Might as well hide the HP but keep the sheet or something. there are incredibly few configurations, low or high power, that avoid these problems.

[Grod_The_Giant]

...You know how movies or TV shows will sometimes hide information that the CHARACTERS have from the viewer? Like, the last shot in one episode is the villain saying "I'll kill one of you right... now" and pulling the trigger, and the next episode starts after the funeral but everyone is carefully avoiding saying the dead person's name? It's irritating, it's cheap drama, and it adds unnecessary distance between you and the characters-- it drives home that you're not there, that this is a created narrative rather than "real" events.

That's what this would do, I think. It puts arbitrary distance between you and your character. Outside of amnesia situations, the characters would know these things. The Cleric would know that he can pray to his gods and get so many spells of such and such types; the Rogue would know that he does more damage when he can take people by surprise; the Fighter would know that he's trained in tripping people. I mean, I can't see my character sheet either, but I have a pretty good idea of how well I can climb a wall (poorly), what my best move in a fight would be (crying), what kind of lab techniques I'm good at (not enough). Your characters have presumably practiced all these things; they know how they work. Thus, you know how they work, because otherwise you're trying to roleplay while taking wild guesses at things your character should know.

I really don't see this going well at all. At the very best, it's ten times more work for the poor GM. At worst it turns into an obnoxious guessing game-- "I try to shoot him." "Ha-ha, you have a negative Dex modifier and no Precise Shot, you hit your friend instead."

[prufock]

It could be fun, but I wouldn't really consider it "D&D" at all, but more of a free-form game. If you don't know your stats, and have only descriptions, you may as well not have stats from the player's perspective.

[Afgncaap5]

It could be fun, but I wouldn't really consider it "D&D" at all, but more of a free-form game. If you don't know your stats, and have only descriptions, you may as well not have stats from the player's perspective.

I was thinking this, actually. Even if it was rooted in d20 mechanics, you're starting to move away from a lot of the norms of the system.

If I ever did something like this (which I doubt I'd do, but I'm thinking about it now) I might just want to build a new system from the ground up. For now, at least, the "undefined resources" itch will probably have to be scratched by games like Cosmic Patrol.

Regarding the fact that there's no difference between knowing you have improved trip and not knowing that you have improved trip, I agree, but only to the extent that Improved Trip is, itself, a knowable feat. Case in point, a note on the... "dossier?" It's tempting to still call it a character sheet... might indicate that the player's time getting dead-beats out of the tavern where he or she works has developed great propensity for flooring opponents and making sure that they stay there. It's possible that this means the Improved Trip feat (no AOO for initiating trip attempts, gaining a +4 bonus on trip attempts, immediately getting another melee attack against a successfully tripped enemy as if you hadn't used an attack to trip them). It's possible, though, that this could mean some other custom ability; +6 bonus to tripping but no melee attack, possibly, or maybe a kind of "bum throw" maneuver where a successful trip attempt will, instead of granting a bonus attack, allow you to hurl them a short distance (possibly even into other enemies).

Granted, people highly familiar with 3.5 or d20 rules might have more issues with that. If I was a player and tried using that to trip an opponent, I might be surprised if the GM said "Success! Do you want him on the ground in the square he was in, or do you want the trip to have him be twirled and tossed a few feet?" I might drop him into the square I'm in, hoping for a free attack (though I could also see myself asking if I could just take the bonus attack instead when asking that.)

[ExLibrisMortis]

I won't say it's a terrible idea, but I like tactical combat and complex character-building, so this is not for me.

3.5 is probably way too rules-heavy for such a game - with the DM in control of all stats, and the stats licensing so much of the roleplay, the DM has REALLY huge power over the game, while the players do not even know what actions they can legally take, and how that prevents them from performing other actions. Actions that are purely mechanical - say, rerolling a save with a luck feat - are really, really difficult without a sheet.

[Yahzi]

provided that the GM wasn't petty and would help give you hints over time
The DM already has a massive bandwith problem; he is trying to communicate an entire world to his players. Words are his primary tool, but minis, maps, props, and character sheets are incredibly helpful too. Combined with the rule-set, a simple number (like 18) can communicate a wealth of information about a character. For instance, if it's Will, you know your guy is determined, good at spotting things, and probably a cleric.

Absent the rule set or even the number, the DM has to communicate all of that with words.

Sounds like a recipe for frustration for both DM and player, to me.