Anyone ever play a no character sheet game?


Homebrew and House Rules

Scarab Sages

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I'd love to run a game with no character sheets. You know your character's name, background, physical description and have a list of their equipment and spells (without any descriptions). I'd even consider doing all the dice rolling (Abed style).

Has anyone ever tried this? How did it go?

Silver Crusade

Er, once long before PF was printed? Played in a purely verbal RP campaign, no dice or sheets or anything. For the randomization of chance, the GM thought of a number and it's corresponding opposite between 1 and 20 as the 'nat 20' and 'nat 1' of that particular roll and told the players to pick a number between 1 and 20. He treated success as equivalent to rolling a dice's equivalently-close-to-20/1. IE, GM picks 17 and 3 as the nat20/nat1, and the player picked a 14, he'd be treated as having rolled a 17 base.

We were working with our hands in a little startup, and were both quite busy and quite bored. (Also we couldn't actually use dice, as we were working...) So, to keep our minds occupied, one guy came up with a story, and told us to come up with a couple of characters. I was the only one who'd even played 1e/2e/3.0/3.5 at the time, the others hadn't ever cracked open a single rulebook in their lives but enjoyed a good bit of RP/mutual story telling. So we essentially came up with 1st level characters and instead of focusing on skills or BAB or anything mechanical, focused on coming up with clever solutions and descriptive role playing. (Oh and our employer didn't mind as long as we were on top of the workload, and having our minds engaged actually ended up helping us stay ahead of the deadlines.)

Was extremely fun, although partly only because of who (all of us being best friends) was in the small group (3 people total). The 'campaign' went on for 5 years, actually. Any larger of a group or not as close of friends, without the framework of the rules mechanics would probably have fallen apart long before that point.


Not with pathfinder, bt with other systems. One i enjoyed in particular but cant remember the name of (pocket planes? Adventure pockets? Something with pockets). It had a very nice and simple system. Iirc it was something loke this:
Open a book at arandom page. Pick a noun that you are, an adjective that applies to you, a noun that you possess and a verb that you can do from the book page.

You char is thus described as: I am an "adjective" "noun" with a "noun" that can "verb".
Skill resolution was with cards, dont remember exactly but something like: you start with 4 random cards from a standard deck. At appropriate poibts you get an extra card by the GM. Anyone can do anything a normal person could do. Anyone can use their abilities as a very competent person can do. By playing a red card, you canuse your ability in an extraordinary way. By playing a black, you can use your skill to counter someone elses acrion.

Something along those line. Each game was pretty short, maybe two hours. I remember at one poibt i played a hot orc with a sabre that couldrun. The orc could run that is, not the sabre.

Great fun it was. I prefer systems with very light rules systems to those which are completely reeeform


I did this once with the Palladium RPG waaay a long time ago.

I had the players roll their character's stats behind my screen, and then I described their characteristics. I asked the players what they were doing, and rolled for them behind my screen. I would describe how wounded they were, that sort of thing.

It was pretty good, but it was quite a bit of work.


My memory is not that good. Now if it was a game purely based on cooperative story telling then I think that might work because stats would not matter.


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This is how I played Paranoia....
... because who cares what my character sheet says, it is full of treason anyhow.


Is this supposed to be the counter to the "rollplayers" ???


I did something like this when I was a kid. We just sort of made things up, its ok, but it doesnt realy work for a system like dnd. On the other hand there are systems where its meant to work that are alot heavier on the story telling and a lot lighter on the rules. There just isnt a way to interact with a rules system as complciated as pathfinder without some notes on how your character works within them.

Shadow Lodge

Yeah lots of people do that, it's called larping or improv.


Reebo Kesh wrote:

I'd love to run a game with no character sheets. You know your character's name, background, physical description and have a list of their equipment and spells (without any descriptions). I'd even consider doing all the dice rolling (Abed style).

Has anyone ever tried this? How did it go?

Oh yeah, it was pretty memorable!


Yeah, on a few occasions. It's good fun for co-operative storytelling as suggested above but for my money it doesn't have much longevity.

I've played games where a single d10 is shared by the whole table and the storyteller occasionally invites the players to dabble in chance by rolling to find the outcome of their actions. The higher the more favourable and vice-versa.


I often play gurps like that, because my little sheet is often disappeared between mighty tomes of other players or GM is too lazy to get it out from his bag. Well, I usually have more fun with my 20-50 point servant/lizard/something/girl than my friends with their 200-1000 point demigodly wizards with huge list of disadvantages and responsibilities of holding up realities.


gnoams wrote:
Yeah lots of people do that, it's called larping or improv.

Isn't LARP live-action roleplaying, and improv improvisational theater? Those are very different things from freeform or sheetless roleplaying.

LARP = You act out roleplaying scenarios in person, dressing up and playing your character in first person. Often there's some kind of before-hand determined story that will happen, though the details aren't there. Unlike most RPG's, you don't TELL, you DO.
Improv = Theater without a pre-written script, where the participants improvise - generally improvising the whole setting and story, in front of an audience.
Freeform roleplay = Roleplaying without a heavily defined system. Generally there are no real mechanics, except some kind of rule about how decision making is done. Often there's a GM who determines most successes, but sometimes there's no GM. Like most RPG's and unlike LARP, you TELL, you don't DO.
Sheetless RPGing = Playing an RPG where you don't have possess a sheet with specifics on your character, where you don't generally know more about your character than a person knows about themselves in real life. Can have a complex system where the GM handles everything, or have a much lighter system.


MC Templar wrote:

This is how I played Paranoia....

... because who cares what my character sheet says, it is full of treason anyhow.

Citizen MC Templar please report to Execution Room 23C in Orange Security Zone West immediately.

ATTENTION ALL SECURITY PERSONNEL: ex-citizen MC Templar has had his security clearance removed pending an investigation of treasonous characters in his bedding and is now security clearance Infra-red.

Ex-citizen, you are not cleared to be in this area.

Citizen MC Templar, why haven't you reported to Execution Room 23C?

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