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Player Character Record Sheets
Paperback
Published January 2, 1984
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 25, 2018
Character creation is where it all began and often ended for most players and ex-players of the ever popular Dungeons & Dragons.
The Player Character Record Sheets booklet is exactly what the title says it is, a bunch of pre-printed character sheets, mainly for lazy kids to use to create their adventuring characters. Most of us more enterprising players (aka poor) would just make our own. I splurged and bought this, but only because I was already a "working man" in my early teens and could occasionally afford such extravagant opulence. Turns out it was a waste of money, but more on that later.
The sheets are crowded with information that needed filling out and the space to do so was very cramped. You don't just record the basic physical attributes, but also how they apply to actions (say, pummeling and grappling for strength considerations,) which may or may not ever be used in the game.
I know some people loved to use everything D&D had on offer, such as psionic abilities (mind control) or keeping close tabs on character weight encumbrance. Personally, I always found that too much detail bogged down the game and killed the overall enjoyment.
There are a lot of blank sheets left in my copy, so obviously I didn't get much use out of these. Money wasted. But hey, at least they made the sheets out of fairly thick paper, which was mainly needed to stand up to all the writing and erasing of hit points, so what characters I did create were at least durable....Always look on the bright side of life *whistles*
Even though it's nearly thirty years on since I last used this book, I can pinpoint exactly when it was (see "start" and "finish" reading dates), because I dated the characters I made with it. One of them, the most detailed, is a ranger I called...oh god...Jockery Sapton. Really? That's...I don't even know what I was thinking there. In the little "character sketch" box, I drew him all shaggy-bearded, disheveled and sad, like some homeless dude. Why? Why would I do that? Here is a game in which the sky's the limit, you can take this thing wherever your imagination wishes to soar and I went with a hobo? Fuckin' hell.
In the beginning I said that "this is where it all began and often ended for most players and ex-players," because many people struggled with creating their first character, this first step into D&D, and gave up on the game altogether. I nearly gave up myself. I was nine-years-old and thoroughly clueless. I couldn't have figured it out without mom's help and wouldn't have bothered trying to persevere if it wasn't that my two older cousins were already playing. I wanted in on the fun soooo bad!
The Player Character Record Sheets booklet is exactly what the title says it is, a bunch of pre-printed character sheets, mainly for lazy kids to use to create their adventuring characters. Most of us more enterprising players (aka poor) would just make our own. I splurged and bought this, but only because I was already a "working man" in my early teens and could occasionally afford such extravagant opulence. Turns out it was a waste of money, but more on that later.
The sheets are crowded with information that needed filling out and the space to do so was very cramped. You don't just record the basic physical attributes, but also how they apply to actions (say, pummeling and grappling for strength considerations,) which may or may not ever be used in the game.
I know some people loved to use everything D&D had on offer, such as psionic abilities (mind control) or keeping close tabs on character weight encumbrance. Personally, I always found that too much detail bogged down the game and killed the overall enjoyment.
There are a lot of blank sheets left in my copy, so obviously I didn't get much use out of these. Money wasted. But hey, at least they made the sheets out of fairly thick paper, which was mainly needed to stand up to all the writing and erasing of hit points, so what characters I did create were at least durable....Always look on the bright side of life *whistles*
Even though it's nearly thirty years on since I last used this book, I can pinpoint exactly when it was (see "start" and "finish" reading dates), because I dated the characters I made with it. One of them, the most detailed, is a ranger I called...oh god...Jockery Sapton. Really? That's...I don't even know what I was thinking there. In the little "character sketch" box, I drew him all shaggy-bearded, disheveled and sad, like some homeless dude. Why? Why would I do that? Here is a game in which the sky's the limit, you can take this thing wherever your imagination wishes to soar and I went with a hobo? Fuckin' hell.
In the beginning I said that "this is where it all began and often ended for most players and ex-players," because many people struggled with creating their first character, this first step into D&D, and gave up on the game altogether. I nearly gave up myself. I was nine-years-old and thoroughly clueless. I couldn't have figured it out without mom's help and wouldn't have bothered trying to persevere if it wasn't that my two older cousins were already playing. I wanted in on the fun soooo bad!
August 24, 2025
Original review, 2014: Is this a book? Well, it has an ISBN and words on a page, so I guess so. This “book” was actually a set of record-keeping sheets for players of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, first edition. They allowed you to have a standard format for keeping track of the characters you played, including their descriptions, possessions and game statistics.
Until I got these, I had always just kept track of my characters on loose-leaf paper. It struck me that those records were far less detailed than what was recommended on these sheets. This was both a benefit and a disadvantage. The benefit is that seeing the area for a given stat on the sheet would cause me to go look in the rulebooks to find out what I should know about: “What the heck is a ‘saving throw?’ Oh – that’s useful to know”). The disadvantage was that the sheet always looked cluttered, and it was hard to remember where specific pieces of information were. On the whole, the sheets reflect the somewhat cumbersome rules of 1st ed AD&D, but they also have a certain aesthetic appeal and nostalgia value, now.
UPDATE, 8/24/2025: Unlike the “Dungeon Masters Adventure Log” (recently reviewed), which contained new rules that were missing from the DMG, and thus was a fairly vital “errata” supplement, this one has no new rules for players in its “Explanations” section. Rather, it gives summaries and references to pages in the Players Handbook, and so serves as an oddly-organized index to that volume, in the order that things appear on the character sheets – which may be helpful, if you have one of those character sheets in front of you as you use it.
The gold sheets will always look beautiful to me, even if they are far too complicated and cramped to be useful, and the print is too small for my aging eyes.
Until I got these, I had always just kept track of my characters on loose-leaf paper. It struck me that those records were far less detailed than what was recommended on these sheets. This was both a benefit and a disadvantage. The benefit is that seeing the area for a given stat on the sheet would cause me to go look in the rulebooks to find out what I should know about: “What the heck is a ‘saving throw?’ Oh – that’s useful to know”). The disadvantage was that the sheet always looked cluttered, and it was hard to remember where specific pieces of information were. On the whole, the sheets reflect the somewhat cumbersome rules of 1st ed AD&D, but they also have a certain aesthetic appeal and nostalgia value, now.
UPDATE, 8/24/2025: Unlike the “Dungeon Masters Adventure Log” (recently reviewed), which contained new rules that were missing from the DMG, and thus was a fairly vital “errata” supplement, this one has no new rules for players in its “Explanations” section. Rather, it gives summaries and references to pages in the Players Handbook, and so serves as an oddly-organized index to that volume, in the order that things appear on the character sheets – which may be helpful, if you have one of those character sheets in front of you as you use it.
The gold sheets will always look beautiful to me, even if they are far too complicated and cramped to be useful, and the print is too small for my aging eyes.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews