I’ve run several Homebrew World games at this point (and will run two more during GauntletCon), and the only major note I have about these is that they work way better printed out than they do for on-screen usage. That is to say, if we’re playing online as 99% of my games are, they are a little more difficult to navigate.
Character Sheets and Information Design
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Ah! Then may I present to you…
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I actually agree!* I liked the post anyway. And if I recall correctly, Ben does make a distinction in there between the sheets that are visually evocative and those that he feels have more functional design, which is part of what I appreciated.
*I can attest that the Numenera sheet in particular got me excited to run the game, and turned out to be a huge pain in the ass to use at the table. I ended up going and making my own instead (and then finding some fan made ones I liked even better), with extremely different priority given to certain elements. The ones for The Strange are even worse, because they make an attempt at clever information design, designating part of the sheet as replaceable as your character changes from world to world, but failing to recognize that the part of the sheet they expect you to cover with another sheet also includes information that doesn’t change, and will need to be accessible still. It drives me bonkers.
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With booklet sheets I think it’s important to use the format to actually hide information that isn’t currently relevant.
This is where you can actually see improvements in the Monster Hearts 2 sheets over the MH1 sheets, actually.
For my Moth-Light six-fi blades hack I have the downtime phase actions on one back page, the resource management and character background info on an interior page, and the character advancement and color elements on another interior page. The smaller profile of a booklet also means it can be folded comfortably to save significant table space.
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