GOZR Sketch Character Sheets

GOZR is a science-fantasy post-apocalyptic tabletop roleplaying game that I wrote and drew by hand in 2020-2021... a pandemic project, for sure.

The game uses a very simple d20 vs. target system. To do an action, a player rolls 1d20 vs. their character's appropriate Action Class (AC): Prowess for all things action and fighty, Magic for all things mental and weird, and Cunning for all things social and sneaky. There's a lot of other bells and whistles, but that's kind of the core of it.

While the game has an official character sheet, I also like to doodle new ones in my various sketchbooks just for fun. Here's a collection of them.

OSR Character Sheet Doodle

While drawing in this wee sketchbook I just decided to do a very simple OSR sheet. No room for extras, dammit! This game is about the basics, you losers. Go play 5e if you want squishy drama and backstories, you pieces of shit. If it doesn't fit on an index card you don't need it, you rubes!

Ok, that's enough of my sarcasm. Play your games the way you want, you're valid, etc. Blah blah. And artful character sheets RULE!

Crits or DIE!

 

Goozing Around

Lately I've been on a GOZR kick, which is very nice because I do love the game. I'm super proud of it. The system is nice and simple and it works. The book itself, which is the most important thing for me as a creator, is a labor of love and I'm happy to have completed it.

I'm not the kind of creator who gets hung up on one thing and feels compelled to "support it". I'm happy enough to never do another GOZR project and do other things instead. But it just so happens that my muses have aligned under an ugly banner and I'm their slave at the moment. Niiiice.

Here are some little character sheets I doodled in a wee sketchbook. I started with one and ended up with a handful and counting. Here's a trick to see if I really love a game's aesthetic: can I do a million iterations of its character sheet? Obviously the answer is yes for old school D&D and it's many clones. I've also done a handful of Troika! sheets. But now it seems that GOZR hits the sweet spot. It has a discrete number of "bubbles" to draw: Cunning, Magic, Prowess, Hit Points, GOOZ, Defense, and WIZ. Each of these items has a shape and purpose and I can easily move them around on a sheet.

When I'm less familiar with a game, or it has a lot more moving parts, I find it difficult to get the vibe and make a character sheet. This why you don't seem me doing a ton of various game sheets. I need to understand a game and really get it to make a good sheet.

Aside from character sheets, I'm also working on new pages for the inevitable GOZR Rising! I'll share some of that next.

GOZR Character Sheet

Here's the first pass at a GOZR character sheet. I think I got all the major elements and kept it very simple.

CUN = Cunning

MAG = Magic

PRO = Prowess

GOOZ = Points you spend to do amazing shit.

Hit Points = duh

Natural Def = Unarmored Defence, like toughness and dodging.

Armor = duh

DEF = Defence, which you subtract from damage.

Talents = Things you're good at, like having a third arm.

Background = Secondary skill type thing.

Deed = Something cool you did before play begins.

Needs = Things you need to do, like find your brother or an antidote.

Armor+Weapons+Stuff = Duh

Money = How many tossers you got?

Ammo = Tracking bullets. Don't @ me, I like this shit.

Lucky Rolls = Keeping track of 'em.

Fighter/Assassin

Complete in his raw glory, Decius Vladrumir, Cobold Ftr/Ass.

This is waaaay old. I found it among all my oldest RPG junk. This is a typical character sheet for me from that era of my life. This would have been maybe 1986, about 2-3 years after I discovered D&D. I borrowed the AD&D DMG + PHB from a friend and copied a lot of stuff by hand.

I was versed in basic D&D and only just flirting with AD&D as I was probably just about to enter my first "real" campaign with friends and we were definitely using that witch's brew of mixing all the rule books into a pot and sipping. So on this sheet you can see he is dual-classed, for example.

I'm curious about the upper right hand corner. Bare hand combat. I suspect this is take from one of the D&D box sets bc I remember that whole "weapon equivalent" thing, perhaps from the Mystic class? I'm not sure. It's been a long time.

Cobolds were a race from my Midaka setting. Basically a riff on dark elves, but they were distinctly blue-skinned.

Art-wise, this was early of course and at this time I was definitely using nibs and bottled india ink for most things. Messy, scratchy. I did this for a few years and have rarely "dipped" back into it.

Favorite part: The AC table. I preached about how descending AC is fine and easy and all you need is that table on your sheet so it's nice to see that I was walking the walk even back then. Though going to -14 might have been unnecessary. Chalk it up to flipping through Legends & Lore (Deities & Demigods) more than ANY other D&D book.

BX Character Sheet Landscape

Here's a BX character sheet I put together by taking elements from various other sheets and Black Pudding pages plus new elements. It's landscape, which is not my usual thing. But you know in actual use a landscape sheet is more practical from what I've noticed. I did a bunch of pregens in landscape for a Nerdlouvia con and it saved table space.

GOZR Character Sheet Sketch

This is my first doodle of a GOZR character sheet. The game keeps evolving as I write/draw it. Right now it is as simple as it's been so far and I like where it is heading. But I'm gonna need a separate character sheet for wizards...

BX Character Generator

Saw this posted on FB. It's a nice little BX character generator. What I like most is how it includes the default list of basic skills from the game. Of course that game never calls them skills and it damn sure doesn't list them for you. But if you distill it, you get a list like this one. I might start including these on my character sheet designs.

There are other character generators. I might search them all up and make posts about them too. When I'm feeling froggy.

Phantasmagoria Character Sheet

Here's a character sheet I drew for the most excellent DCC RPG zine Phantasmagoria! You should check it out. I actually quite like how this one came out.

Black Pudding #6 is Alive!

I just dropped the new issue of Black Pudding on an unsuspecting population.

It's free to download if you want. Drop me a few bucks if you can and if you dig the work.

I will post about the print version at a later time.

What is that sme...OH CRAP!

ASIDE: I know it's Zine Quest month. And that's weird because I didn't time this for that reason at all. Everyone who knows me knows I named my imprint "random order" because that's kind of how I create things. Randomly.

Supercalla Character Sheet

Here is a Supercalla character sheet... for my Troika! RPG setting book of the same name. Space fantasy with a totally route 66 sort of vibe. I'm trying to keep this thing to 48 pages so I'm not including everything that might fit that theme, but it's got a lot of spark in it, I hope.

I handed the text to my sorcerous layout guy (Matt Hildebrand) after Andy Solberg took a scrutinizing gaze with his Monocle of Editing. I hope to have this sumbich shot out to the wilds by Xmas. It is not an elaborate endeavor, just a simple, fun little romp-kit.

And for some reason, motorcylces. I'm not even a cycle guy. Not sure how that happened but there are multiple biker backgrounds in this thing. In space, of course.

Supercalla!

Black Pudding Heavy Helping Vol. One... Still Alive!

Never hurts to promote your work now and then...

Black Pudding Heavy Helping Vol. One is a re-organized, slightly re-mixed hardcover collection of the first four issues of my OSR-style RPG gaming zine Black Pudding. It's heavy on style and cartoony fantasy art with plenty of game-ready stuff like character classes, monsters, spellbooks, and ready-to-roll dungeons!

Luchadors!
Catgirls!
Hoard Horrors!
Whispering Vaults!
Sinewy Barbarians!
A Goblin!

With some nice contributions here-and-there from people such as Matt Hildebrand, Karl Stjernberg, Jayne Praxis, and Ed Heil!

The hardback book is a mere pittance at $18 and if you're cheap or you don't do paper then you can get a PDF for a trifle $6. You cannot fail in this adventure. But if you do, there's a random table to find out what the monster does with your ruined corpse.

Get yours while supplies last!

Front cover

Back cover

Troika! Character Sheet #2

This is my second effort at making a Troika! character sheet. It was a lot more fun. Here's the PDF, for you weirdos who like that stuff.

Troika! Character Sheet #1

Here's my first effort at making a Troika! sheet. It's not great, but it helped me get a feel for the spacing required and gave me more comfort with the elements.

Here's a link to a PDF of the sheet.

B/X Character Sheet

Here's a new B/X D&D style character sheet. This will end up on the back cover of Black Pudding #6, most likely. For this one I was going for a cleaner look with only what I think are the bare essentials.

B/X and Labyrinth Lord Sheet

Blank character sheet for B/X and Labyrinth Lord games, as posted earlier. Hopefully no dreadful spelling errors.

Some of these elements were lifted from other sheets, such as one I did for Andy Solberg's Iron League. So it's a bit of an amalgam. But I really like the balance here. It's not too busy and it's nice and clean. Some things are not represented, such as alignment, but that's easily inserted ("chaotic magic-user"). I added "willpower" to the Wisdom uses because I use the standard modifier in my games for certain on-the-fly tests of willpower.

Hey, I fixed it!

EDIT: I corrected the sheet due to a few errors. Thanks for pointing them out, everyone!

Black Pudding Character Sheet III

Another character sheet, specifically for the Black Pudding OSR Playbook. But of course it works for most OSR, especially Swords & Wizardry.

Black Pudding Character Sheet II

Another Black Pudding character sheet knocked out today. These will appear in issue #6 of the oozy, squishy zine.

Download!

EDIT: I am getting old and confused. I had the descending AC matrix on a sheet that was meant to be for Black Pudding OSR, which uses ascending AC. Silly me. Anyway, these two versions posted above cover the two different flavors of OSR gaming. The bottom one is pretty much standard B/X flavor.

Black Pudding Character Sheet

I finally did a superofficial Black Pudding Old School Playbook character sheet!

Download it here.

DCC Character Sheet

I made a character sheet for the bodacious RPG DCC RPG.