OD&D/FMC Character Sheet

Above is an OD&D character record template from 1975. It looks a bit different than what we expect from character sheets now. We are used to dedicating the whole sheet to the character's various attributes and equipment, filling in neatly-aligned squares or circles with ability scores or hit point totals or saving throws or item slots. This is not that. Everything we typically expect from a character sheet is squished into the top third of the worksheet. The bottom two thirds are dedicated to a week-by-week description of the character's adventures, as well as changes to their gold piece and experience point totals each week. This sheet was unlike anything I had seen before, and yet to me it is quintessentially what sets apart this ruleset from all that had followed.

I am going to go over the different presuppositions this character record has compared to our modern ones. Then, I am going to share screenshots of a recreation I made for my retroclone Fantastic Medieval Campaigns. Spoiler alert: the record template is already available for download, as are some extra sheets for your reference! Click the link to print them for yourself, or stay a while and listen!

Strict Time Records

The original fantasy adventure game structured its campaigns into weeks. In other terms, the week is the basic unit of long-term time. One dungeon expedition is considered to take up the space of one week, even if the party only spent an afternoon crawling. Overworld exploration occurs in cycles of one week. If one week passes between play sessions, one week also passes in the game world. This keeps things simple, though not without some room for interpretation. Some people think that the one-to-one passage of time is the end in itself. I think I disagree: it is not for its own benefit, but because it helps the campaign develop in regular increments.

My friend Joel from Silverarm asked around for advice about how to handle two parties playing in the same campaign world. One-to-one time proved to be a stumbling block rather than an aid. He gave an example: suppose that Party A adventures from June 1 to June 3, and then does downtime for one week. Would Party B then begin their campaign on June 3, up to June 9 when their downtime begins?

I think the original game offers an elegant solution. You're not counting individual days; you only need to count blocks of time (formally speaking, one week). Rather than worry about on what calendar day Party A ends their adventure and Party B begins, you can abstract the passage of time during a week and simply make an assumption that whatever Party B does takes place after Party A. Thus a record of the campaign would alternate between Party A 'weeks' and Party B 'weeks'; whether these are literal weeks is less important than that we have the flexibility to say for certain that one session takes place after another.

It's not about counting individual days. It's about organizing the campaign consistently and cohesively!

Equipment & Treasure

What follows is a point I'm passionate about because it sets OD&D apart from the OSR-era play style: don't worry about resource management, at least apropos inventory management. Gear as considered on the sheet is basically static, seeming not to change within the scope of a single adventure except with the acquisition of some magic items. The only thing in your inventory that changes between the start and end of an adventure is the number of gold pieces (and other treasure) you carry.

What this means is that, theoretically, the weight of your gear is a base weight that is modified throughout the session by the weight of what treasure you find. A character who equips leather armor and a dagger has a base encumbrance of 270 coin (27 lb.). A character who equips plate mail armor and a two-handed sword has a base encumbrance of 850 coin (85 lb.). Their encumbrance will only increase from there. Who should carry the backpack with equipment? Who should carry the sack of gold?

It also contextualizes the function of containers, which is not immediately intuitive. Why not just count items and their weight in one big list? Why do we care about small sacks, large sacks, and backpacks? Well, these containers serve as... containers. A backpack with miscellaneous equipment and 4 potions weighs 200 coin (20 lb.). That backpack, for the purpose of encumbrance, abstracts its contents into one measure. It also serves, basically, as an Anti-Hammerspace technique.

I think this explains why so little space is dedicated to equipment on the character record above. Your character's equipment, what they wear or carry, is not expected to change often. It's less important than what your character does in the game, how they progress throughout their adventures.

B/X Simple Encumbrance

I think that, in light of OD&D's intended play style, the simplified encumbrance scheme in B/X represents an elegant elevation of the original (shown above: Old School Essentials). It only requires you to keep track of two things: what armor you are wearing (none/light/heavy), and whether or not you are carrying treasure. This is really all you need, considering that armor is the greatest contributor to a character's base encumbrance, and the only way to increase their encumbrance is for them to carry treasure.

This is unrelated to OD&D and FMC, but I think that B/X's basic encumbrance has interesting use cases even for a modern OSR (resource-centric) game. Substitute the treasure condition with another: are you carrying a backpack, or not? The backpack can contain some number of items, like 400 coin or 10 slots, but that is all inside the backpack and does not impact your character's encumbrance. You could even take off your backpack, like in Errant, to give your character a speed boost. I think this could be a fun way to combine degrees of encumbrance with slot inventory without having to count up 20 or more slots. It even makes it easy to track weapons and tools, since all you have to ask is: what do you have in your hands!

I talk about this as a potential solution in SADFAG, my description of the 'Standard Average Dungeon Fantasy Adventure Game'. Let me know what you think! Now back to the old stuff.

Conclusion

I couldn't help but recreate the character record for FMC. It encapsulates so much of what makes the game different from its successors, and from our contemporary rulesets. Below are screenshots of my version, as well as reference sheets to help you play: a quick start, a shopping list, class statistics, and procedures for underworld and wilderness exploration. You can download these now on the FMC itch page!

You can print them in pairs on letter/A4-sized paper, or as individual digest/A5 half-sheets! The idea is that the referee can hold onto the big book, while players can have something lighter and more intuitive for their own reference.

Finally, in case you haven’t heard, FMC Version Beta will be out on 2/22!