This is a character record sheet for AD&D (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition). I drafted it on (of all things) AutoCAD and plotted it on a pen plotter on thick, A3-sized card. We used to photocopy these for each player. This is apparently the second edition of the record sheet, but I can't remember what was different about it. The first edition is lost forever.
It had some handy features:
- A roomy representation of all stats and numbers.
- Very roomy hit points line to record players' inevitably dropping hit points.
- Space for weapons, languages, proficiencies, special abilities, spells, notes, and even sketches!
- Character silhouette encoding location of weapons and equipment. Some players also recorded permanent damage (like amputations), though the hatched silhouette didn't help much.
- Version 2 of the record sheet included an additional sheet with more inventory and spell slots.
The original, A3 version of the character record sheet.
The sheets were large enough to be comfortable and folded in two to hide private information from other players. There was a third, addendum side with more inventory and spell slots. I had completely forgotten its existence until I found the original. One suspicion is that ‘version 2’ was the version with this addendum.
It Looks Weird!
And no wonder: it was drafted and plotted—not drawn and printed. The plotter was an HP DraftMaster II, which is a pen plotter, not a modern ‘plotter’ with a print-head that prints arbitrary bitmaps. The fonts are vector fonts, but with uniform line thickness. Standard architectural fare. I was learning to draft on AutoCAD at the time, and I had no other software that could do this.
The thick borders (drawn radially!) and dotted lines punished the DraftMaster II, but it worked out okay. It took a while to plot, so I plotted it on thick card and photocopied it on A3. The original seems to have survived for 29 years and is still nice and white. The original .dwg files were lost in a Stacker accident, so the last plots are all I have. The vast majority of our printing devices are bitmap ones now, so a scan works out okay. Not that anyone would ever print it!