Maybe You Don't Need a Character Sheet

Last night, I ran an introductory session for a pair of players at my Friendly Local Game Store. Both had experience in Fifth Edition Dungeons and Dragons but were unfamiliar with the OSR. They were great players and rapidly learned the lessons of the False and Upper Tombs of the fantastic and free Tomb of the Serpent Kings. It took only the first few rooms for them to become wise to the kind of dangers they would face, a credit to TotSK's utility as a teaching tool. What took longer was filling out their character sheets. This was through no fault of their own, they were great players. It was also through no fault of the system, Old School Essentials[1], which is light enough that making a character should be a brief affair. The issue was that the sheet had enough differences from a 5e sheet that many simple boxes needed explanation.

This is not the first group of new players I have had this happen with. No matter how light a character sheet is[2], if the modifiers and boxes are unfamiliar, then the average person will take time to consider them. This weakens the oft-advertised OSR benefit of fast and snappy character creation for one's first impression. Worse, it puts undue emphasis on the contents of the sheet. So much for "The Answer is Not on Your Character Sheet", we just spent a solid chunk of our session staring at it. Of course you're going to be thinking about what's on your character sheet.

Now, I am exaggerating here. Few players will truly feel disallowed from creative thinking due to a lengthy character creation process. Still, I still think spending so much time creating one's first character can skew expectations.

My solution? Ditch the sheet. Save it for after that first level shmuck meets their doom. By then the player will be familiar enough with the system to not become bogged down by it. Until then, I think a blank sheet of paper will suffice. All you need to establish at the very start are basic stats and anything requiring a player choice. Roll for stats and HP and write them down. Have them make their choices (Class, Equipment, Alignment, Name, etc). Give brief, non-mechanical descriptions of the kinds of special things their class can do. Everything else can wait to hit paper down until they are relevant.

[1] By Necrotic Gnome.

[2] There is a level of minimalism where this argument breaks down. Cairn's[3] sheet, for example, pretty much exclusively consists of characteristics that you would need to jot down right away. I would disregard this advice for those games.

[3] By Yochai Gal.