dnd

In my last post, I talked about the basics of bullet journals and the utility of the concept when it comes to gaming. I even showed examples of how to layout helper charts for running a BubbleGumshoe game. This time, let's explore how we can use any dot grid journal for keeping character sheets.

Just a quick reminder, I use the Rhodia Webnotebook. Each journal manufacturer may have different page measurements as well as placement and spacing on the page.

D&D 5e

One challenge I want to set for myself soon is to make a bunch of characters. I want to make a portfolio of these, so keeping them in a gaming journal makes a ton of sense. If I didn't have a separate journal for gaming, I'd be tempted to keep them in my primary bullet journal because I would have it handy whenever I wanted (no more "where did I put that sheet?" as I look at a pile of at least dozens of sheets).

For the first one, especially since it's meant to be an example, I largely just reworked the character sheet presented in the back of the player's handbook.

D&D Character Sheet Stats
D&D Character Sheet Character Info
D&D Character Sheet Spellcasting

Supplies Used:

• Watercolors (Van Gogh student set)
• Sakura Pigma Micron pens (.005, .01, .02, .05)
• Copic Multiliner in Cool Gray
• White Gelly Pen
• Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pen
• Prismacolor Color Pencils
• Scotch Washi Tape
• Tombow Adhesive Tape Runner

One key is that the washi tape on the right hand side can make it super easy to find your character sheet in the future and gives you an additional opportunity to customize for your character.

Of course, this is just the basic character sheet. One of the benefits of the dot journal is that you can customize however you wish. For instance, I might rework this to do the spell casting sheet as the second page if I had a spell caster. I also would come up with trackers for various character classes, such as anything that is limited to a certain number of times between rests or tracking consumables.

After I shared my work in progress, my friend, Chelsea Kerr, rushed to create a version of her own. Here's her version.
D&D Character Sheet by Chelsea

You can find Chelsea online on Twitter @chelseachan.

BubbleGumshoe Character Sheet

After I made the D&D character sheet, I had a cute (to me at least) idea for how to do a BubbleGumshoe character sheet. I thought about some of the items that a high schooler might have in their backpack. (I couldn't find a plain old ballpoint pen in my bag of tricks, but it would have been a great addition).

BubbleGumshoe Character Sheet
BubbleGumshoe Character Sheet Secrets

Supplies Used:

• Highlighters
• Small colored notepaper
• Sakura Pigma Micron pens
• Sharpie Art pens (from the set of 12)

Where to get inspiration

If you're looking for more inspiration on how to draw your character sheet, here are some great resources:

• Dyson Logos has links to download a bunch of interesting character sheets as well as his hand drawn 5e version.
• I found another 5e character sheet drawn in a dot grid journal. They also made class specific versions.

If you create your own, feel free to share them with me via Twitter, Instagram, or via the contact form on this site.

Note:
Character art:
D&D: "Half-Elf Paladin" © 2012 Brian Patterson, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ http://www.prismaticart.com/collection/half-elf-paladin
BubbleGumshoe: From example character sheet available on Evil Hat's website. https://www.evilhat.com/home/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Sleuth-Amanda-Ba...

I have taken part in conversations regarding pregnancy in D&D for about as long as I have been talking about D&D. My general guideline about it is this, any subject that is incredibly difficult to have a conversation about in real life is likely to be nigh impossible to create rules for within D&D.

At this point, someone is likely to pipe in, "But it's hard to have a discussion about killing goblins in real life but the game handles that just fine," to which I'd reply that 1) clearly you don't have enough fantasy and gaming nerds as friends and 2) if goblins existed in real life such discussions would likely be a lot harder (but not impossible as ongoing bigotry demonstrates).

But I digress.

A more apt follow up question might be, "If it's so hard, why are you here talking about it?" And in some ways it's a really good point. It is likely that at some point in the following paragraphs I will mess something up. I will offend someone. At the same time, if I were to stay silent, what then will be the result? It's not like my silence will silence others.

Besides, as some of you may know, I've spent the past 18 months or so being pregnant and then taking care of a small human. And all parents have a need to give unsolicited advice to strangers. ;)

I kid.

I spent a lot of the time over the past 18 months thinking about pregnancy and parenthood in games, especially D&D. I planned to write about those thoughts anyway but at some future date when I didn't have to steal 5 minutes at a time to write a thing. But then two things happened. First, I realized that that future date was likely years away and, second, someone posted their homebrew pregnancy rules to a Pathfinder group and I realized I had things to say.

Before anything, I'd like to give a bit of a disclaimer. Any criticism and/or critique I give here is not intended to be a blanket banishment or condemnation of D&D rules regarding pregnancy in general or in specific. Also I will keep my conversation to D&D (including Pathfinder) in contrast to games with more narrative focused rules. I do not intend to suggest that pregnancy in D&D should be forbidden or that people who include it are bad because they include the topic of pregnancy.

With that out of the way. Let's start at the beginning.

Why do some people want pregnancy related rules in D&D?

There are plenty of motivations here.

• Some folks live in cultures that are family and child focused and they can't imagine a world without pregnancy and children.
  Some can't get pregnant and want the chance to experience something in game that they will never be able to experience in life.
• Some want to be pregnant at some point in their lives and use games like D&D (a form of play) to process and understand their feelings, fears, etc regarding pregnancy.
• Some people would like to use the safety of a game to deal experiencing a infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth, or the death of a child.
• Some people have been pregnant, loved it, and would love to recreate those feelings within a game.
• Some people think pregnancy should be in the game but it feels less real to them if there aren't mechanics (crunch) that accompanies the story.
• Some people desire a fuller model of the world so if their game has sex, they feel it should also have pregnancy.
• Some people can't think of women without thinking of pregnancy and want to bring their real world baggage regarding female sexuality into the game.

Some of these motivations, to me at least, are more positive than others. The first five in particular show compelling positive reasons for including pregnancy in D&D and show that it can be a positive experience. The last three, however, tend to be the more common drivers and why a lot of D&D rules for pregnancy make some people, such as myself, want to run away from any discussion involving the topic.

More importantly, it's nearly impossible to design rules that meet all of these motivations and it's the last three that make it particularly hard to do so. For example, in order to have pregnancy mechanics, there often has to be an oversimplification of pregnancy. In movies and literature in the US, for instance, we often "show" early pregnancy by portraying a woman throwing up right after waking, commonly known as "morning sickness."

This oversimplification, however, is a common issue because while nausea is a common sign of pregnancy, it is not universal and for many pregnant people, it comes at a different time of the day. Most pregnancy mechanics that can fit on one piece of paper are likely to insufficiently recreate the experience for people who love being pregnant and want their characters to have the same experience. They are also unlikely to help a person prepare for pregnancy or to help them really understand what it is like to be pregnant. They might work ok for someone who can't be pregnant and wants to experience something like it in a game since it might feel "right" to them if most of their experience of pregnant people has come through fiction. For those that come from more family focused cultures, whether or not the mechanics feel "right" comes down to what the pregnant people in their life have experienced.

Now that we have a bit of understanding of the motivations, next time I'd like to explore prioritizing them, especially when it comes to conflicts between them. In the meantime, here's something real about pregnancy.

Pregnancy Fact:

A common test, at least in the US, for newborns is called the Apgar score. The test is done to measure the physical condition of a newborn child based on 5 criteria: Appearance, Pulse, Grimace, Activity, and Respiration. It is also named after the person who developed it, Dr. Virginia Apgar, an anesthesiologist. More info on the Apgar score

Over the past year, I've been watching a lot of art videos on YouTube. Originally I started with videos about art journaling but over time the algorithms started adding in bullet journalling as well. At first I wasn't sure that the videos were for me but as I saw more examples of what people were doing with them, I got hooked and decided to give it a try this year.

Here's the description of what bullet journaling is from the website, BulletJournal.com:

The Bullet Journal is a customizable and forgiving organization system. It can be your to-do list, sketchbook, notebook, and diary, but most likely, it will be all of the above. It will teach you to do more with less.

One of the keys is to number each of your pages and to leave a few pages at the start of the journal to use as a table of contents. What you decide to put on each page is up to you. Also key is that you never go too far in advance. This allows you to experiment with new ways of recording and presenting information as well as figuring out what your style is.

At first, I did some really basic page setups, drawing boxes for the three types of daily items: tasks, events, and notes. For example, here's a Sunday from January.

Attempt at BuJo Dungeon

Drawing these boxes reminded me of creating dungeon maps, so the next week, I decided to draw a dungeon instead.

First, I decided the path through the "rooms," the various sections on the page that I will later do my planning within. All of the lines are done with Pigma Micron pens in black ink and various nib widths.

Next I went through and added the typical journal information, in this case the days and dates of the week. I also started some of the decoration, such as creating the chessboard pattern room. The days of the week were written with a Pigma Micron pen and the dates, headers, and coloring were done with Faber Castell Pitt Artist brush pens.

Finally, I decided to add some stamping to the page. I used Tombow markers to "ink" the stamps and then applied them to the page. Most of the stamps were from the Lawn Fawn Critters Ever After set (affiliate link).

BuJo Resort Town

The next week I decided to go with a town map instead of a dungeon. I wanted to do a resort town with a large hotel with attendant stables and carriage house. First, I drew in the corners of the planning boxes and penciled in the town map.

Next I went through and started inking the buildings and environment. For this I used Staedtler Triplus Fineliner pens, trying to keep to colors that would be easy to write over without interfering with readability.

Finally, I colored in with colored pencil the areas that I had inked with the Fineliner pens. I also used stamps inked with my Tombow markers to add some additional features and added dates and headers with Pitt artist brush pens.

BuJo Cliffside Town

This week, I went with a town map again, but this time I decided to explore a cliffside town. Again I only drew the corners of my planning areas. I had an idea of a society where people built octagonal houses. When their children were old enough to start a family, they built off of one of the walls of their home, so that the homes were interconnected. My inspiration for this was spending last week with my parents with my little one. While I worked during the day in the garage, they took care of little dude in their home, which gave me the idea of what if we could live in separate but connected homes that made this sort of community care easier.

I didn't have as much time to spend on this map as I had my previous ones, so it's a bit simpler. All of the map inking is done with the Fineliner pens and instead of coloring in areas, I drew lines to delineate areas such as woods, water, and beach.

So why do this? I've found that as I spent more time designing my bullet journal pages, I've been more likely to use it to plan and record information. Also, this is a good way to get in map design practice. Finally, much like coloring, I find it relaxing and a nice creative outlet while not requiring a ton of time, important when I'm taking care of a seven-month old in addition to working full time.

While I've concentrated on my weekly/daily spread, there are many other ways that a bullet journal could be useful for someone who likes to play tabletop roleplaying games. I could just as easily use a page or two to create random tables or plan my next campaign. Having the table of contents at the front makes it easier to not lose that information.

In preparation for my new campaign, I'm taking a look at the various character classes in hopes that I can add moments of cool regardless of which characters my players choose to play and also can sidestep some awkward moments at the table. I'm hoping to go through the core classes (from the 5e player's handbook) in alphabetical order which means we start with the BARBARIAN! (Sorry, couldn't resist the all caps there.)

The primary mechanic for barbarians is their rage. Rage lasts for up to one minute (essentially an encounter) and how many times per day they can rage is linked to their barbarian level. It ends early if the character is knocked unconscious or if they end their turn and either haven't attacked a hostile creature since their last turn or have taken damage since their last turn. During their rage, barbarians gain access to the following modifications:

• Advantage on Strength checks and Strength saving throws.
• Melee weapon attacks that use strength gain a bonus to the damage roll (tied to barbarian level).
• Resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage.
• Lack the ability to cast spells or concentrate on spells already cast.

There's a lot here. The first thing I note is how simplified rage is, especially compared with the Pathfinder barbarian. It feels to me like a good middle ground between the Pathfinder and 4e versions.

In Pathfinder, a barbarian gets to rage a number of rounds per day determined by their barbarian level. Here's what happens when they rage:

• Gain a +4 morale bonus to Strength and Constitution and +2 morale bonus to Will saves.
• Suffer a -2 penalty to Armor Class.
• Gain 2 hit points per Hit Dice (due to Constitution increase). They disappear when the rage ends and are not the first lost.
• Lose access to skills based on Charisma, Dexterity, and Intelligence or abilities that require patience or concentration.
• When the rage ends, they are fatigued for a number of rounds equal to 2 times the number of rounds spent in the rage.

In 4E, barbarians gained access to special Daily powers with the rage keyword. Once a barbarian used one of the rage dailies, one of the following things happened: the encounter ended, the barbarian chose to end the rage or switched to a different rage, or the character became unconscious. Each rage had an ongoing benefit that was tied to the theme of the rage and other abilities might interact with the rage keyword.

The 5E rage acts a lot like the 4E version in terms of the mechanics of how often one can rage and when it ends. One of the nice things about not tying it to rounds is that it lightens the cognitive load of players trying to determine whether or not *now* is a good time to enter a rage.

What further lightens that load is the lack of penalties for entering a rage and for deciding to come out of it. I know when I played my barbarian gunslinger, most of the time I didn't even bother to rage because determining which rounds were the best to do so in and what I'd give up to do so was often more work than I was prepared to spend.

Some people will enjoy that sort of decision making and they'll still have the opportunity to make those sorts of decisions. Instead of making the penalties part of the core raging mechanic, 5e separates them out into additional decisions. For example, at 2nd level, they gain access to Reckless Attack, which allows them to decide on the first attack of their turn to throw caution to the wind, gaining advantage on melee weapon attacks that use Strength during the turn, but granting advantage to any attack rolls against them until their next turn. I need to play it to find out, but this version feels much more dramatic to me than the +4 bonuses to Strength and Constitution and the -2 penalty to Armor Class (but your mileage may vary).

Moving penalties to more precise decisions, with their own carrots, gives the player more control over the risk they are willing to take. Additionally, the added risk due to the resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage a barbarian gets while in a rage (Note to DMs, make note of the resistance rules at 1st level if you have a barbarian in the party). Obviously, there are plenty of monsters, especially at higher levels, that do other types of damage, but this combination sounds like it can set up some great scenes with a cinematic feel to them.

For those who like the ongoing penalty after the rage, the Path of the Berserker offers players the opportunity to go into a frenzy starting at 3rd level. While in a frenzy, barbarians can make a single melee attack as a bonus action on each turn after entering the frenzy. When the rage ends, the barbarian suffers one level of exhaustion (which is some potent stuff). Again, this feels a bit bolder to me.

Also, by not providing default penalties to Charisma, Dexterity, or Intelligence skills, the barbarian is less likely to be turned into a caricature during play. Other options are still available during the encounter. For instance, in 5E barbarians also gain a danger sense at 2nd level that boosts their Dexterity saving throws. This sort of dodging figures strongly in many barbarian stories I've read, it just never was as iconic as strength.

However, I think there are a few complexities to the 5e barbarian that players should be aware of. In addition to the resistance, I'd like to pay particular attention to tracking barbarian resources during play. For instance, there's a bunch of information to keep track of that resets each round while the character is in a rage. The player needs to know if they took damage and/or attacked a hostile creature since the end of their last turn. If they haven't, then they will lose the rage. Also, the damage done by attacks differs depending on whether or not the barbarian is in the rage. The generic character sheets don't really help with this record keeping. (Fortunately, the record keeping ends at 15th level.)

Another area to keep in mind is that the Path of the Totem Warrior gives the barbarian access to some spells, allowing them to cast them as a ritual. At 3rd level, the barbarian may cast beast sense and speak with animals spells as a ritual. For DMs who want to make non-combat encounters an important part of their game, they may want to plan in opportunities where these spells are one way to gain a favorable outcome in the game. They may also want to prepare for clever players who use these spells to gain what could be considered "too much" information about a combat encounter ahead of time.

I'm not going to look at everything that gets added at higher levels, at least not in this post. I hope this helps illustrate some of the cool things about the 5E barbarian as well as some of the areas to be wary of, especially for DMs. One last thing, however. During the design of 5E, there was some talk about wanting to make ability scores important again. One area in the barbarian class where that comes up is with the 18th level barbarian class ability called Indomitable Might. This ability allows the player to substitute in their Strength score if the total for a Strength check is less than their score. That's pretty cool!

Note: There's one thing I'd like to point out regarding the barbarian, in particular the Path of the Totem Warrior. Barbarians that follow this path pick a spirit animal as a guide. There has been a lot of discussion about the spirit animal meme online and I think it's something to be aware of. Here's an Atlantic article the discusses some of the appropriative nature of this concept. This is also a great discussion of usage of the term "spirit animal" and counters some of the arguments that the term is not tied to Native Americans and/or First Peoples.