#137: Of Character Sheets, Mothership or Otherwise

My understanding is that with a long title, these subtitles aren’t displayed. If so, my hot take is that if Cthulhu does really fhtagn, then it’s just like you and me.

I. Dear Reader,

Last week, I said I might talk about the Mothership character sheet. And turns out, I am doing that. Incredible. The two things I want to do in this article is:

1. Describe what the Mothership character sheet does.

2. Explain how other character sheets might be doing the same thing also.

Let’s get into it. What are the properties of the Mothership character sheet? What does it do that makes people like it?

The way I see it:

1. The character sheet contains the rules on how to make a character. This means that you (mostly) don’t need to refer to anything else during character creation.

   • Importantly, it combines all four classes onto sheet.

2. It links the various sections together via a flowchart so you have a step-by-step guide through the character creation process.

3. It looks like a weird technical diagram which resonates with the themes and aesthetics of the game.

(Before we get to the next part, the obligatory disclaimer that the Mothership character sheet is good.)

Now, let us compare these to another character sheet. For my best apples-to-apples comparison, I will use Errant (Ava Islam, Kill Jester). I could’ve used Blades in the Dark or something but it would probably be less appropriate.

Here’s Errant (or just the main page at least, there’s other sheets just for equipment and stuff):

To me, except for point 3 (the one about aesthetics), this character sheet does more or less the same thing as the Mothership character sheet. There are instructions on this sheet. You (mostly) don’t have to refer to anything else while making the character.

There is no explicit flowchart linking the whole thing together. But there is an implicit flow to the whole sheet. I don’t think arrows are required to provide a flow but it would be essentially no work to add them. If arrows were added it would look like this. I think we can agree, they’re superfluous. (Maybe numbers would would’ve been useful though to give a specific flow through the sheet. But also it feels like you could change the order of steps and nothing would break. So maybe numbers are also superflurous)

Now, there are some arrows already which aren’t superfluous. Where two sections of a sheet are linked, there are explicitly arrows making that relationship clear. It just so happens that Mothership as a d100 skill-based system has a lot more connections between various numbers on the sheet, which necessitates more arrows.

And this gets us to the important outcome: all character sheets are conceptual models/diagrams of characters already. Whether the arrows exist or not, through graphic and information design, you can evoke the flow and logic of that model to your players.

As passionate about graphic design as other Paint users,

Thomas

PS. This weekend should’ve been the March Itch Roundup but I couldn’t get to it so expect that next week. That said, if you’ve released a new game on itch.io this month, let me know through this form so I can potentially include it.

II. Media of the Week

• Becca Scott of the Good Times Society makes a video about how to play Avatar: Legends.

• AA Voigt talks about Stoneburner, a game of space dwarves reclaiming a lost home.

• Dave Thaumavore looks at the second edition of Mythic GM Emulator.

• Please consider joining 40+ other patrons and support the newsletter on patreon to help keep me going.

III. Links of the Week

Articles

• On the Age of Ravens blog, an introduction to GUMSHOE through text and video. Recommended.

• Dicebreaker wrote about Jubensha this week. Thanks to Aaron Lim, I found this other lovely article about “China’s murder mystery escape room werewolf LARPs”. I think I’ve shared this before but it’s never too late.

• Exeunt Press analyzes data from ten years of game jams on itch with a series of cool visualizations.

• On the Molten Sulfur blog, a look at the historical excavation of Pompeii and also a way to turn it into an old-school adventure. It’s a very cool idea.

• PhilGamer is doing a Let’s Study series on Imperium Maledictum, the Warhammer 40k book.

• At GDC 2023, there was a talk about tabletop game mechanics that could be used in videogames. A pleasant surprise.

• A nice little guide on how to print your zine PDFs at home and bind them yourself.

Misc

• On a reddit, a discussion about playing Microscope for the first time.

• John Harper announced that the Paragon system now has an official SRD and can be used for making and selling your own games. (Before, you couldn’t make standalone games, only playsets for Agon.)

IV. Small Ads

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• Nothing this week! So I’m continuing my birthday sale! I realize the last one got over way too fast. Please check out this bundle of my best games at 30% off.

This newsletter is currently sponsored by the Bundle of Holding.

• A bundle of adventures for D&D 4e from Goodman Games

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