Not too many weeks ago we discussed Paperwork, ways to keep game records that would facilitate play; and at the time I left out an item that I have found useful in more ways than I can remember, not exactly so I could write about them separately but more because at the time I thought they would overburden an already packed entry in the series. I’m thinking of file cards.
Almost a decade before I was playing role playing games, file cards had become part of my life in an entirely different context. I was directing two musical ensembles and doing some solo performances, and so had a rather extensive repertoire to organize. Buying a couple hundred three-by-five cards, a plastic box, and an alphabetical sorting set, I listed the song titles on the top line of each card and put them in the box. The cards also held other information, such as reminders of soloists, special equipment considerations, and whatever I might wish brought to mind when I was working on a concert program. As I arrived at any of our more informal concerts, I would draw out of the box all the songs I intended to include on the program and place them in the sequence I desired. Then I would fill in the gaps with notes on who was to speak and what else was to happen. It was such a vast improvement over trying to remember the songs and decide on the order on the fly that I kept the box even after my performances were rare and always solo. So it was that I already had file cards when games came into my life, and had already seen how they could be useful.
Thus as the first character party for which I refereed began to burgeon into something more than a couple of characters, as henchmen were hired and hirelings hitched, as more players joined the game, it was quite logical for me to organize them all with a stack of file cards. Each character had a card, and I could access that character’s card quickly and easily. Name, race, class, ability scores, preferred weapons, special skills all went on the card.
What made the cards particularly useful–in some ways more useful than the spreadsheet–was the flexibility they gave me. If the party split up, I divided the cards into two piles (or more), laid out so that the names at the top were visible as a list. Having included a letter-string shorthand in the top right corner (indicating whether the character had combat, spell, healing, thieving, and infravision abilities) I could quickly spot the strengths and weaknesses of each such group. If I needed more detail on one of them, it was already at my fingertips.
Additionally, I never used miniatures. We were the sort of group for whom the salt shaker became the ogre and the blue eight-sided die was the fighter, the red one the thief. These cards also gave me the ability to quickly lay out the positions of the characters if it suddenly mattered during play. They were miniatures that could not easily be confused for each other. These quickly became part of my game gear.
A decade later, a new AD&D™ gaming group posed new challenges. The options in my game had expanded; the concept of the Frontier made it possible for characters from very different backgrounds to come together. The characters in this group included a few from the traditional mix, plus several Orientals, plus a few from Krynn, a couple of Underdark races, at least one from the second edition Viking materials, and a second edition psionicist. How would these characters interact? How would they see each other? How would I even bring them together into one unified party without seeming to railroad them? Again, file cards proved a great aid to this; and this time, colored file cards helped.
I recall that I again created the basic character information cards; I also used three colors to prepare cards for other purposes. At the initial game, players were permitted to share the basic information cards with each other as a means of streamlining the getting to know you process between what was, I believe, fifteen players and two non-player characters. But they were given two other cards, and I kept one.
One of those two cards detailed certain aspects of the character’s past that had led them to this moment. The samurai and the monk needed to have some authority behind them, sending them to this place to accomplish something, which would facilitate the adventures. Each of them had to have come from somewhere, and be arriving here with some background. The drow of course were fleeing from underdark pursuers; but the svirfneblin hoped to find a way home, as the path he had followed to reach the surface had been blocked by a collapsed passage. These basic notions of where have you been and where are you going, the points that ultimately answered why are you here, were provided on a card which the characters could choose to share or not quite independent of their basic abilities. It gave them each a running start on coming together–and with a dozen players at that first session, it streamlined the process, as characters could introduce themselves individually to each other with a lot less player conversation.
The other card was a bit more personal. A high elf will not easily trust a drow; nor will any of the standard classes. But to an Oriental, what does he see when he looks at the drow, or for that matter the elf? Does the Viking distinguish either of these from the trolls of his own mythology? Does even the Silvanesti elf of Krynn know the tales of the drow? One of my players was running a Krynn Minotaur. To the Krynn characters, it was obvious what this was; but what was it to anyone else? Most characters would think it some sort of monster, and approach it with caution. Orientals would think it an Oni–except, of course, for the Wu Jen, who was familiar with Oni and would instantly realize that this was not one. Each character’s view of each other character had to be considered, and notes made, sometimes broad generalizations and other times very specific perceptions, to let the players know exactly what their character knew, believed, and did not know about each of the other characters. It would make as little sense for the Viking trollborn to understand what a hengeyokai is as for a dwarf to grasp the ancestry of a creature called a trollborn. This, too, went on a card of a different color, and players were to consider and act on this information, but keep the card to themselves.
The remaining color I kept to myself. It contained notes I had made on each that would help me understand their strengths and weaknesses. I would make reference to those cards periodically, but no one would know what they told me.
I know that there are other ways to use index cards. If you have many non-player characters you can organize them with such mini character papers much more easily than with a file box full of character sheets. You can use the colors to distinguish friends from foes, or other factional issues. You can use them for regional or location divisions. If you don’t have enough colors, you can use highlighter or magic marker strips along the top edges to make them different. Traps, obstacles, monsters, encounters, magic items, and so much more can be sorted into file cards. I think at one time someone was publishing spell cards in a similar format, but you could easily make such ability cards much more practical for your use. There are so many ways to facilitate play with these that I have only scratched the surface.
But I’ve written as much as I should, so I’ll let you explore the idea.
Next week, something different.
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M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc. His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.
