this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2024
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Obsession with character sheets comes from the misapprehension that the R in RPG stands for “roll” and not “role” imo.
Obsession with character sheets comes from pen and paper and a desire to simulate every aspect of the world. Without the tools to tweak your ability to interact with the system you can pretend to be a master thief, but unless the game reinforces that with its behaviour you're just pretending. Like you can pretend to be a vampire in Skyrim, sure, but it's more fun when you've actually got the curse and the game reinforces that.
Fundamentally a stat sheet is just a way to tell the game what your character is like in a way that it understands and can reinforce that's more granular than definition by class or by what skills you've used. And every game has one, whether you can see it and change it or not.
It's why "everyone" ends up as a stealth archer in Skyrim. Because stealth and ranged attacks are something every character would try to do, Skyrim's design means if you as much as try something it makes you better at it, even if you want to be a clumbsy barbarian.
Which ironically makes it so you can't just roleplay, you have to avoid trying anything that isn't what your character is best at. It means you can't hide from a patrol you can't handle, you have to just charge in and swing, because the game will change your character otherwise and you can't tell it not to.
When Elder Scrolls had a character sheet, you designated specific skills that would contribute to leveling. Stealth archers were only as common as the people who preferred that play style.
Archery did kinda suck in ES3 though. Point being, incidental play didn't sabotage your character authorship. Character sheets are great.
Well, there’s no reason why the DM couldn’t hold the character sheets and you only perceive that your character is good at certain things from your choices and their outcome in the scenario (but you could be wildly wrong). In real life you don’t know exactly how many charisma points you have.
True, but you do learn what you're good at and what you're not. You don't play as a child or teen still learning their place, though you could, but generally that's not what's done. People generally have a decent grasp on their capabilities, though they can surprise themselves it's rarely orders of magnitude out like it would not having a sheet.