Archive for the 'the secret language of character sheets' Category



File this under "the secret language of character sheets".

Make a spreadsheet.

Give each character their own column, starting with the second one.

In the first column, list all of the skills in your implementation.

Under each character's name, put the ratings they have next to their skills.

Now analyze:

Highlight their Superb and Great skills, use a color that says "yes, use me!". These are what they're best at and where most of their shticks live. You'll want to lob them multiple opportunities to show off how cool they are at this sort of thing.

Highlight any skill that only one character took, that no one else did. Even if these aren't the character's Great or Superb skills, they have a leg up on everyone else, and thus are people of distinction in that field relative to the rest of the assembled. These can be good skills to let someone shine and be useful to everyone else. For example, in the game I'm running tomorrow, only one character took Investigation -- at Fair. That's a hook. (Also look for sub-Great skills that folks still took a stunt for -- that's another flag to give them a chance to shine.)

If there's a skill that everybody took, highlight that skill with a color that says "yes, use me!". Your adventures should probably give folks challenges of this sort that everyone will have a chance to try their hand at. Did everyone take stealth? Time for some sneaky-sneak! (You may also want to look for some odd-man-out ones, where everyone but one guy took the skill, but what you do with that info is up for discussion.)

If there's a skill that nobody took, highlight that skill in a different color than the rest, something that says "avoid" to your eyes. These are skills you may want to avoid testing -- nobody was interested in them.

Note that this may ultimately tell you that you should hit all the skills on the skill list at some point. That's fine. In my case, I know to avoid Might, Performance, and Survival for sure, and definitely to hit another 10 skills with some regularity (leaving 8 which can come up, but don't need to as often). Pretty useful for encounter design, and a good way to get to know the PCs that will be coming to the table.
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