No gaming makes Carl a sad boy

Ya know, I have played in only one roleplaying game (a convention demo) since last December, plus a smidgen of running a game for my seven-year-old son. I am coming up on one year with no regular roleplaying. I consider roleplaying to be my primary hobby, yet I'm spending all kinds of time doing everything but roleplaying.

I think I'm going to put all activities about roleplaying on hold and not work on any of it until I start roleplaying again. I found myself saying, "I need to run a game," and then coming up with a long list of "obligations" to do roleplaying "work" for other people (roleplaying club game day, online community stuff) that keep me from having the time to play games.

Thing is, actually playing makes all those other things fun… and not playing makes all those other things just work. And when they're work, I start resenting them, which means I start resenting the people I do them for.

So I'm going to go play some games. I'll see about all that other stuff later.

Faery's Tale character sheet

I recently bought [[http://www.firefly-games.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=25|Faery's Tale Deluxe]] by Firefly Games (and published by Green Ronin), with the intention of running it for my son and friends.

It's a cute little game about faeries, and I wasn't sure if my seven-year-old, who's into Harry Potter, Avatar and "chapter books" a bit more advanced than the typical second grader, would get into it. But he's all excited about playing his brownie named Sparey. (He's named after his family's dog, Sparky Sparrow.)

Anyway, the art in Faery's Tale Deluxe is great… most of it is just perfect for the mood and setting they're trying to convey. And the layout is mostly adequate, until you get to the character sheet and stat blocks… straight out of an 80's Champions product. It does nothing to evoke the mood of the game.

So I decided to put my meager design skills to work and come up with something a bit more to my liking…

Click on the image to get a larger view. Let me know what you think. It's a full-page character sheet, even though there isn't much on it, because second-graders often write pretty large. :)

The background image is [[http://www.stockxpert.com/browse.phtml?f=view&id=4230141|Floral Frame]] by -MISHA on stockxpert.com. The font is Swingset from Blambot Fonts.

When I'm finished with the final revision, I'll post a PDF.