This post is about what is and is not on the character sheets, and why. I'll start with a picture painted in quotations:
"..,Dave played things so close to the vest, when I
asked him questions at the "My Awesome Gaming Group" panel, he
answered my "is it this or that" question 'yes' because 'some of my
players are here'" Tavis Allison, commenting on the 'blog Beyond the Black Gate
Monday, July 25, 2011, "Dave Arneson and Impartiality in the Temple of the
Frog"
"Dave did lots of secret rolling and never showed us the results
or explained what he was roling for. I am sure that sometimes he rolled dice
just to make us nervous..." Greg Svenson Nov 27, 2009, http://odd74.proboards.com/post/40731/thread
"
We were not keeping our own
records or character sheets as they are called now. Dave had an index card on
each of the players (and NPCs) with their attributes, HP, possessions and other
useful notes. I only remember seeing Svenny’s character card a couple of times....
he kept our character cards,... We didn’t track our experience points as is
done now. Dave simply told us when we had transitioned from one level to
another." Shams
Grog.& Blog Q AND A-with-Greg-Svenson
"To
be honest, I never had a character sheet. Dave A. had my character (Svenny) on
an index card that he kept. He let me use it during a couple of game sessions
(maybe 2 or 3) but always collected it again. I never thought to make a copy of
it, either." Greg-Svenson, Post
subject: Re: Megarry's Blackmoor Characters Posted: Oct 24, 2016 5:08 pm Comeback
Inn forum.
"Don't ask me what you need
to hit. Tell me what you're character is doing. I'll tell you what dice to
roll" - Dave Arneson
If you are an OD&Der, it is only natural for you to be
looking at Megarry's characters for signs of familiar stats, but you will be
hard pressed to find them. A few of the
"ability scores" are there, albeit in 2d6 instead of 3d6, but the all
familiar hit points, level, saving throws, etc., of the D&D are
conspicuously absent. Is this because these things were not a part of the
Blackmoor game? The answer to some
extent depends on the particular stat. In
fact, while there seems to be a lot missing from the sheet, we can be
certain nonetheless that there were some items of character information, that the players weren't allowed to
know.
As the quotes above show, Arneson prefered what we might
call an immersion game, with as little "out of character" talk as possible.
"Just role playing not roll playing." Dave
Arneson, Blackmoor at the Piazza, Sep 30, 2008 at 10:09pm ODD74
forum
Perhaps the genesis of this disposition lies in Arneson's contrasting
experience of Wesely's nearly rule-less Braunstein games and all the "rules lawyering" that took place in his own Napoleonic
games. Arneson made a number of comments
that one of the reason fantasy appealed to him was that no one could argue
historical facts with him. In one interview
he said:
"How did it all start in Blackmoor?..... I was also
quite tired of my Nappy campaign with all its rigid rules, etc., and was
perhaps rebelling against it (in fact I'm sure I was!!)..... (For Blackmoor) rules were actually written down (but closely
guarded by the referee and subject to change without notice if things got out
of hand)." Different Worlds magazine, June/July 1979, p6-7.
Given the context, it is pretty easy to see what is going on
with Dave Megarry's character sheet.
Arneson apparently preferred to keep important rules details out of the
hands of his players, including things that we would now think of as a part of character
information. The information the players
had about their character was not the whole picture.
Hit Points are perhaps the most obvious omission. We might also expect to find Hit Dice, Level,
and Experience Points.
Despite not being directly referenced on the character sheet,
we know these things were a part of a characters makeup. Hit points and experience points are discussed in this POST, for example.
That post references Greg Svenson notes in the back of his 2nd edition
CHAINMAIL. Svenson had these notes, no
doubt, because he was one of the first persons Arneson turned to with help
refereeing Blackmoor adventures. It was
"need to know" information.
There's a bit more to be said about experience points,
however. Although it is true there is no
XP total listed, Megarry does keep track of the monsters his characters have
killed, and in the single case of the Scholaress character, he also writes
their point value. Which tells us at
least something about the characters earned experience (more on this in a later
post).
Academically, this is all kind of interesting (to me
anyway), but imagine for a moment, if Arneson's approach had become the norm
for D&D. Imagine character sheets where the only statistical
information a player has is their ability scores, saving throws, armor class,
and maybe their level. It is the
referee, not the players, who track the characters hit points and damage,
experience points, and other "rulesy" type
information.
So, you don't know what your hit point total is, or how much damage
exactly (in points) you can do. You
don't know how close or not you might be to leveling up. You probably don't know how much of a bonus
that magic weapon has either.
Descriptions of action, especially of fights, would
naturally be less laced with statistics and mathematics. Instead of "You take 4 points of
damage" it would necessarily come out as "You receive a deep gash and
your character is feeling very weak." or some such.
One wonders what direction D&D would have developed in
if the D&D player's character information had been limited in the same way
it was in Blackmoor.
