You don't get your character sheet, I have that.

[Alhallor]

Hi playgrounders,

a potentially GM had a kinda strange idea that first sounded kinda good but then detoriated more and more for every step made in the direction, and the GM withdrew himself from actually playing the game but it still got me thinking how would you try that?

The basic idea was that we have to provide the GM with a background (first it was a series of questions without a background, then the series of questions with a background then we had to answer some additional questions but these never came.)

From the information he would have gotten from that stuff he would create a character sheet he had total controll off and we would really get a character sheet, but instead of Climbing 8, we would read Climbing = You're pretty confident. Or base attack: 0 = You never attacked someone before (I draw that characteristics purely out of nothing just to give you some context.)

My questions basically boil down too: Would you have try'd this as a GM or Player? Or are you totally against the idea? Do you have another idea despite providing background to give the GM information that he can use for character creation?

The claim was that way we would try stuff that we would normally not try because we know that we are not that good in a certain field and we could surprise ourselves and it would lead to more roleplaying if we don't have hard numbers before us. I can't say if that would have worked because as mentioned we could never give it a try.

[Mastikator]

As a GM no I already have too much paper work, best I can do is hold the character sheets between sessions.

As a player yes but I'd very quickly start treating it as a free form, and don't expect me to remember what spells or abilities I have so I'll just invent spells on the spot and cast them if I need to. Seriously do not expect me to know anything about my character if I do not have the sheet. I'll just assume I have everything that is appropriate for my character to have.

Edit- I just read my own post and came to this conclusion: no I would not. I would not be able to play this as a player without totally derailing or bogging down the game. I honestly believe it's beyond my ability to play this way. I've never tried it but I only foresee doom and gloom

[Anonymouswizard]

'You don't know your abilities to the point the GM ha your character sheet' is an actual disadvantage (total amnesia), although not Evercreech the player I knew with problems learning rules considered it worth they points (although I think our GM had said he'd allow you to know your Attributes but not your Skills, Advantages, and Disadvantages).

I have had some success with 'you don't know your exact hp total, only a rough idea', which works better than normal if the GM is willing to do the extra paperwork.

Another idea is that Fudge is built around the idea of non-numerical values, using a seven step adjective ladder. A roughly similar idea without GM paperwork exploding.

[RazorChain]

I once had a character with total amnesia in Gurps. The player just wrote down his stats and skills when he found out about them. It worked out well for us but then again it was only one character.

[Anonymouswizard]

I once had a character with total amnesia in Gurps. The player just wrote down his stats and skills when he found out about them. It worked out well for us but then again it was only one character.

It's kind of what you're meant to do, the long term element of the disadvantage is that the GM has complete control of your backstory (the short term element is discovering your abilities via trial and error).

[King of Nowhere]

It's meant to stop metagaming, but it doesn't work.
Knowing that you are good at jumping or that you have a +8 is the same in term of decision-making. Heck, i know exactly my bonus, but i generally don't know the dc, so i am the first to ask my dm if my character feels confident about making it.

So it adds nothing and makes the game more complicated.

[MoiMagnus]

No.

But maybe I should goes into "why do we have character sheet anyways?"

1) Technical games like D&D just require a character sheet to run smoothly. The DM cannot reasonably handle all the work.

2) Technical games like D&D rely on predictability. The reason why there is all this mechanical madness behind D&D is to allow the player to reasonably predict the result of an action, and the set of actions available to them. If you remove predictability then you have the cost of D&D (mechanical complexity) without any of its advantages. So just stop playing D&D. And play a system (maybe in a D&D universe) where your character sheet is already build with "you're good at it" or "you never tried this" rather than numerical values.

3) Character sheets are here to give inspirations/ideas to the player. Most players are bad at finding ideas. The character sheet (and the rules) is there to say "hey, you can do that".

4) Character sheets are there to remind to the player all the information the character has from the few decades he lived in the universe. You can consider yourself "reasonably good" at climbing, and in front of a cliff think "yeah, no way I'm able to climb that", and you will now it quite intuitively (with some error, of course). When you're a player, with on your character sheet written "reasonably good at climbing", and in front of a cliff "hard to climb", you have no clue whether or not your character would think "hard, but feasible" or "no way I'm able to climb that". Whereas if you have "+6 at climbing" and "DC 20 to climb", you know that your character is probably thinking "no way I'm able to climb that". Numbers are good at communicating information.

[False God]

As a Dm, I have enough on my plate to be running your characters for you, so heck no.

As a player, the character is my little zone of control in the game, so heck no.

I get what DMs are going for with this. But I feel a more free-form role-play with simple action declaration and a die-based resolution with few actual mechanics like feats and classes and weapon damage charts and so on would be much more effective at this style of play, like...larping but with sitting down and with dice, but no books or sheets.

[Cygnia]

I would have to be really comfortable with a GM to attempt that.

That being said, I've assisted other players with total amnesia characters before. A friend of mine asked me to make his sheet for him and send it to his GM for a 7th Sea game he was in. The only thing he asked for was that his character knew a certain Swordsman school.

I had some fun there -- especially when I gave him "Unsanctioned" as a background.

[MrStabby]

I kind of love the idea.

Obviously it would depend on the game system used, complexity and so on but I would love it.

It would let me describe my back story and what I wanted to be good and and the broad themes of the character and then let the DM determine how applicable it is.



On the other hand it is somewhat hell to DM. "I am the cleric of a god of pottery, my magic is associated with forming and hardening earth and the role of the household in maintaining civilisation". What should they set my abilities at? what tools should I have with what chance of success?

[Jay R]

I'd have tried it forty years ago, when I was new to role-playing (and to mathematical simulation). I would not do it today.

The player has knowledge the PC does not have, in the form of precise quantitative measurement of her skills. The PC has knowledge the player doesn't have, in the form of having lived in that world all her life, and actually seeing the room, instead of relying on the DM's description.

[I once saw a DM ask a player to roll on his INT. The player succeeded, so the DM reminded him that the world had two moons. A PC shouldn't have to roll for that knowledge; she's lived there all her life. She doesn't even have the idea of a world with only one moon.]

So, yes, the simulation is inaccurate: the player making the decision has a different knowledge set than the PC whose decision is being simulated.

The character sheet idea you're talking about is trying to fix the positive half of this inaccuracy, without changing the negative half. The result isn't going from inaccurate simulation to accurate simulation. It's going from inaccurate and balanced simulation to inaccurate and negative simulation.

[SimonMoon6]

I have thought about doing this sort of thing in simpler games, where it is far easier for a player to remember basically what they can do and what they possess. For example, if you're a strong guy who owns nothing but a sword (and clothes), then it's pretty easy to mentally keep track of what your options are. So, in those situations, you don't really need to look a character sheet with numbers on it before deciding what to do.

But, if you're a D&D character? No way. Imagine a wizard with thirty-something spells to keep track of, and an inventory list that's five pages long. How do you remember what you've got, what you can do, etc? Can you remember if you still have a cure light wounds potion when you own 70 potions? Probably not.

And if you go, well, okay, I'd let them have the list of their equipment and spells, then the question is: what benefit do you get from keeping the character sheet secret? The OP suggests that the DM wants "more roleplaying" but I don't think that's likely to happen. Is there a real difference between role-playing a character with "Climb: 35" and "Climb: really really good"? Either way, the character will climb a lot. Maybe they don't know which penalties are "safe" (can I automatically succeed if I try climbing a greased wall with no handholds while carrying an elephant in one hand and a gorilla in the other? Are the penalties too severe or can I still succeed?), but I don't know how important that is and whether it's worth the extra work.

When I was planning to do something like this once (though I never actually did it), it was in a game with very simple mechanics and very few fiddly bits. The only reason I'd want to keep character sheets secret is so that the PCs wouldn't know how many "hero points" to spend to increase their chances in combat, with the possibility that they would spend more than was useful (or not spend at all when they would need to). But in the end, I never did this because it's just so much easier to let the players see the numbers on their own character sheets.

However, I am a firm believer in the notion that the GM/DM should at least have a copy of the PCs' character sheets (to know their capabilities in order to know how to challenge them).

[Telok]

Yes, but...

Not D&D. Probably something with a lifepath system where the player & DM will go through the character creation togather, but the player just won't know exact numbers. That means you need a decent way to understand your chances of success and to agree on what being good or bad at a task means. Which leads to...

Also probably not any d20 system. They tend to have lots of little abilities and modifiers that get hard to track. They also don't tend to have enough granularity or predictability in some places to make this possible. If your "heroic expert level skill" is +9 on a d20 and the average task is target number 15 that's still a 25% fail rate and your roll on the die is probably more important than your character sheet. Whether that's OK or not depends on when you roll. Rolling to guide a ship through the Reefs of Doom in a hurricane is probably fine. Rollng to hear a waterfall in a quiet cave before you go over it is not OK. Which leads to...

Only with an above average DM. Clear and complete communication will be important. The ability to accurately describe interactions and expectations is critical. It should not be halfway through the second session when a player is told that this world doesn't turn and has no night (although that was standard d&d, just a comunication failure).

Or honestly I can see playing Paranioa that way.

[Pex]

There's a reason I haven't played "Simon Says" since I was 8 years old.

[Alhallor]

My main problem was the fear that the gm would use our "not" knowledge to say that we would not succeed on a task that we should not. I somehow liked the idea at first but my main problem became the questions that became more and more targeting to what we want our characters to have.

And that he wanted to start our characters at different power levels we really didn't see the need in that.

And apparently he didn't look at the background of one player because after the gm told us the campaign pitch that player said that he would have to become a fallen priest pretty soon, because the pitch was that some priests would lose their power. (including him) all in all pretty strange but I still think I would give it a try.

[JoeJ]

I wouldn't want to do that as a GM. I've got enough to keep track of as it is. I do require a copy of everyone's character sheet, however, mainly so I can refer to them while I'm planning.

[GrayDeath]

As a DM I did something similar for a group of total Newbs tot ry out if they liked RPGish games AT ALL.
Half did, and we continued with them doing most of their Charactersthemselves (though as DM I tend to keep the Sheets at the house whhere we mostly play, saved us many a session from "Oh, I forgot my character, let me drive home, ill be back in 2 hgours"^^).

As a Player..... Well, no.
I generally am too much into the mechanical stuff to do this excepot in specific situations (the aforementioned Amnesia comes to mind) and even then it requires a DM I explicitely trust AND that sees general Competence similar to me, to prevent some of the possible problems mentioned above.

I only did that once as a palyer, and o0nly for one session. it was a Blast, but again, requirements were met ^^

[KaussH]

I played a cuthulu game like that. All stats and skills were in word version only, the keeper had the master list. It was awsome as a player. I am too lazy to do it as a gm long term, but I have done it in little ways. (Gurps amnesia character, a woke up mystery for cuthulu)

[False God]

Took me a while to remember, but I did this once in one game. The players rolled the d20, the DM had the sheet and then did the rest. We got to create our characters in the sense that ya know, we declare we're human, male, elf, w/e and that sort of thing, but beyond that the DM had all the stats and abilities. It was mostly dull, since I enjoy rolling a lot of dice. The part that made it BAD was that the DM starting making our "level up" decisions for us, pushing our characters in specific directions he wanted, rather than how we imagined them. And when "imagination" is all you've got, it means A LOT.

[oxybe]

Nah.

My character sheet reminds me of a lot of stuff, not just abilities, spells, gear and skills.

special documents, rubbings of a carving we found, a medal of office, the fact the longsword I have has special markings that signify it belongs to an officier in an organization, that weird crystal i picked up 6 sessions ago, etc... these are all collected on my sheet.

does no sheet mean i don't have access to that stuff? I've flashed that medal of office only once or twice, but it wasn't used lightly and it was revealed as a veiled threat to a shifty fellow and their group that the party aren't just some random schmucks lost in the woods... but I might not have remembered that medal had i not had my sheet.

[Jorren]

In a simple rules-light game where everything could be tracked on a single page rules reference, sure I could see going for that.

In a tactical combat-centered rpg like D&D? You've got to be out of your mind.

[Knaight]

I've almost done this in the context of weird experimental one shots where part of the hook was that:
1) The characters all had amnesia.
2) Because it was deliberately inflicted on them for their crimes, and that tiny bit they remembered.

A more standard game? That's not happening. I also kept skill categories unknown while letting skills be discovered by use, which was one of the vectors for self discovery (e.g. the dubious necromancer rediscovering necromancy) and also a way to drastically reduce overhead, which would only be more important in D&D.

[Alhallor]

We did that once as a one shot with three amnesiac characters that was pretty cool, but I really think for a longer campaign is just a bad idea.

We would still have an inventory but probably wouldn't know if anything of that is special in any way.

[Asmotherion]

Seems fun for a game heavy in RP and non-combat oriented. If the game is expected to have more than 1 combat encounter every 2nd session I want to know my stats.

[Mordar]

Way back in the day (like 1985 or 1986) we set out to do this in AD&D. A solid group, all friends, had played various RPGs together for years (at least a few years, anyway...) and thought it would be a great idea to try for immersions' sake, with a healthy dose of wanting to discover things about our characters more organically. Certainly not in the least motivated by any metagaming concerns (pretty sure that wasn't a word then).

We did the rolling, we knew relative values...Craig just did the calculating. Worked out well but fell by the wayside...mostly because we wanted to play Call of C'thulhu more than AD&D. Different era and certainly different game, so not sure how it'd work now.

- M

[Man_Over_Game]

'You don't know your abilities to the point the GM ha your character sheet' is an actual disadvantage (total amnesia), although not Evercreech the player I knew with problems learning rules considered it worth they points (although I think our GM had said he'd allow you to know your Attributes but not your Skills, Advantages, and Disadvantages).

I have had some success with 'you don't know your exact hp total, only a rough idea', which works better than normal if the GM is willing to do the extra paperwork.

Another idea is that Fudge is built around the idea of non-numerical values, using a seven step adjective ladder. A roughly similar idea without GM paperwork exploding.

I could see it working well on an electronic format, like Roll20. A video game where you have strict stats, but you can only gauge those stats based on context clues. We do this already with things like HP in the Call of Duty games.

Otherwise, I think it wouldn't work quite as well on Pen and Paper, as it'd be hard to have a constant reference to your character's state compared to the challenge in front of him. That is, you have to be constantly asking "Does it look hard" and "How tired am I from doing that?' and neither sounds all that fun.

[Beleriphon]

In a game like Roll for Shoes, sure why not. But anything that requires decision making at character creation from the player I wouldn't do that.

[KineticDiplomat]

There are systems where that could work. D&D - particularly it’s modern incarnation that is an endless list of very specific spells and abilities meant to be played off at MMORPG style combat - is probably not the one to do it with. Systems with more generic or more realistic systems could be viable though.

[Porcupinata]

I've played a campaign like this and enjoyed it, although I'd agree that D&D isn't the best suited set of rules for doing such a thing.

When we did it, the pitch from the GM was basically "You're someone who lives in London, and has a dark secret. Tell me (but not the other players) who you are and what it is."

I chose for my character to be a homeless 16 year old whose dark secret was that he'd run away from home and ended up on the streets of London after witnessing his alcoholic and abusive father accidentally kill his mother in a drunken fight. Somewhat ironically, three of the four of us chose to play characters who were destitute for one reason or another, and only one chose to play a relatively wealthy character - even though there was no guidance on this.

Not only did we know nothing about our characters' abilities (other than that they were basically what we'd expect from who we said we were - so we had a vague idea what we would be good and bad at) we had no idea what the game mechanics were or even what the genre of game was that we were playing was. In fact, while the GM used the setting of the game he chose and the basics of how things worked, we played it freeform and didn't use any dice or anything.

Circumstances forced the characters together at the start of the campaign and when weird stuff started happening, and we had no idea what it was. Theories ranged from having been kidnapped and put in some kind of virtual reality to aliens to magic. We really had no clue what was going on, or even whether it would end up as a fantasy, horror, sci-fi, or even superhero game. (Spoiler: It turned out we were playing Kult, so it was fantasy-horror, but none of us had ever played that game before or since and I still have no idea how much of what we went through was normal for that game and how much was the GM's invention).

The game was lots of fun, but the campaign ended up folding when we ended up getting into the position where the pcs were not only not acting as a team, but were actively working at odds with each other. I'm talking to the extent of one pc moving house and not giving the other pcs a forwarding address, so the only way they could be contacted was by text message (which they could ignore or reply to as they saw fit); when events meant that the pcs all ended up in the same place at the same time, and we compared notes about what was going on, the pcs would actively lie to each other; the pcs sabotaging each others' plans and selling each other out to npc factions that they were working against.

That all sounds fairly typical for a politics-heavy Vampire game or similar, but we'd taken it to the extreme where we would basically be sat in the lounge chatting out of character and taking it in turns to do short (five to ten minute) one-on-one sessions with the GM in another room. Only occasionally would two or more of the four pcs be in the same place at the same time and therefore both players would go off to chat with the GM.

As I say, we had lots of fun, although I wish the campaign hadn't folded - I'd have loved to find out where the story would have ended up. That type of limited information game certainly isn't for everyone, though, and even though we enjoyed it we've not done that sort of campaign again in the fifteen years since we played that one.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

Playing something like D&D with the character sheet obscured seems like a terrible idea.

OTOH a game without stats where your odds of success are based on your and your dm's perception of how good your character is at a thing could be great.

Games like PbtA ask the player to justify knowledge and skills that are discovered after successful roll. A check to climb a wall may lead to an account secret tryst that required climbing a wall to reach your lover's window. Later the gamemaster could forgive the strength check to climb similar walls as the character's climbing skills had been established.