New character sheet two

Writing The Free RPG Blog has been a very valuable experience for me. Not only have I felt like I am not alone in my internet philanthropy and that every other amateur designer wants cash for their games but I can now see what is good and bad about free games. There are mistakes I don't want to repeat.

The biggest mistake free RPGs make is the lack of accessibility. An RPG can be unsurprising. It can be old school. It can even be D;D cloned for the 8 millionth time. What it cannot be is difficult to understand. Every system has its own statistical oddities and rulings, which is fine, but to depart from ease of understanding without good reason is unforgivable. If you're writing a roleplaying game to play between you and your mates (which I have essentially been doing) then you can do whatever you like, as long as you keep consistency within the group and everyone has agreed to the rulings.

I think I am guilty of the biggest barrier to entry ever: the dials/discs. By putting triangles, circles and squares onto a dial, you are essentially departing not only from roleplaying canon but from numeracy. Spreadsheet character sheets still make me wretch, grids of numbers beckon insomnia plagued nights. I'm reminded of dear old Gainesy, who after playing the game for years, still finds it easier to write the values next to the disc. He's no fool and yet there is a brutal honesty there: the discs are nice but I find numbers easier.

So, I am considering getting shot of them. The discs will remain but the dials will be gone and people will be urged to write the actual number in.

Benefits

  • It's easier to understand. For everyone, from the word Go.
  • Simplifies the rules.
  • Easier to read straight off the character sheet.

Drawbacks

  • It's not different anymore.
  • Have to redo a lot of resources.
  • Version 4 won't be backwardly compatible with version 3.x.

The benefits hardly need discussing. The drawbacks do need some attention. Icar is, and always will be both different and familiar. Its genes are rooted so deeply in Star Wars, Star Trek, Asimov, Iain M Banks and Gibson that I will never be able to truly extract it from popular culture. Icar, like tea, is a blend and it's the blend that supplies its original taste. No one has blended quite in this way before. Do I need dial trickery to provide that individual aroma? Perhaps - but I don't think it's going to change what makes the game different.

As for redoing a lot of resources, yes there is a lot but (not surprisingly) I am having to redo a lot anyway. I have received comments that it's rather odd to have a mix of 3D and flat imagery for character sheets. Wouldn't it be nice to have just 3D? Yes it would. As I am updating to print at approximately 200DPI (from 72DPI), I will have to update everything anyway and as the Equipment Index now uses a PDF with a handy templating system, it's less work than you might imagine.

As for compatibility - if you're already using 3, going to 4 won't make much difference. You're used to dials, numbers are hardly going to be a shock to the system. If you come to 4 and want to use version 3 resources then you might wander what the hell is going on. This means that the Equipment Index and Core book will need to be released concurrently. Well, I say concurrently but that might be a fib. Chances are, there will be a Chom Isis shaped gap between those two releases.

Will you weep when you see a character sheet without them or will you not be bothered? Is it something you've been expecting for some time?

Let me know on the forum!