Kids In The Dark Character Folio
Printable character sheet booklets to use with kids for their first game of Shadowdark
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Introduction
The last week or so I’ve been focused on preparing to run an actual game of slightly modified Shadowdark for my kids. As I’ve stated in previous entries, I’ve danced around it with them for quite a while, but I think they are finally ready to give a real game session for 1-2 hours a try. I fully plan to be disappointed by them losing interest quickly, but I want to give it the best chance of being a good time for them. In last week’s piece I discussed the moment I am designing for right now is that first time a new player sits down at the table. I plan to use these same ideas to entice new adult players as well, but first focus is on onboarding these kiddos. This will be a behind-the-scenes look at what resources i’m using to design that user experience, and at the end I will share the parts of this that I can.
The Thing
I need to walk these new players through creating their own characters for the first time, so I need a character sheet that is engaging and simple to fill out. Preferably with easy wording and space for big sloppy child handwriting.
This led me to messing around with laying out what I’m calling the “Kids In the Dark Character Folio”. For the most part is an easily replicable version of the Shadowdark character sheet with the terminology driven as simple as I can think to explain it to younger kids. Gearing it towards the concepts of the attributes - like Strength equals “Strong”, Intelligence is “Smart”, Constitution is “Sturdy”, you get the idea. I am sure there are other games that do things like this, but usually they reduce the number of attributes or change it in a way that tries to make it its own game - usually leading to some complexity in another direction. I want to introduce and get these players used to the concepts of the basic six attributes of a D&D - esque game, so that that conceptual understand gets a foundation laid rather than being worried about the exact naming convention. Obviously I won’t do this for the adults I am planning to onboard, but I will be re-wording things even for them in such a way as to completely remove any barrier to understanding if I can. I don’t want to say “dummed down” but I do want it to feel like direct informational payload is being delivered. We’re looking in all cases to maximize the transference of INFORMATION, not just DATA.
Information is data given context
Each character folio contains at least 4 character sheets across a two-page spread, with reminder information on the rear cover.
This is not a final revision, but it is very much in the direction I see working for this. I feel that I could have this sheet in front of my kids and walk them through rolling dice to get their attributes and having them decide - “Ok do you want to be a fighting person that gets in the bad guys face or do you want to be a sneaky person, or a smart wizardy type??” and we could get them sorted relatively quickly. Of the materials that I cannot make available with the published version of this character folio, I’ve distilled the character creation process down to 7 steps:
Roll stats and write down mods
Choose or roll an ancestral ability (I’m not forcing link to species)
Choose or roll a background
Choose or roll class (only one of the original four) and add class talents
Choose Equipment (from easy reference)
Choose Alignment and Belief (A God in setting to follow - i’ll give 2 options per alignment for my own setting)
Choose Spells (Priest/Wizard only)
I feel as long as someone has a sheet in front of them that I can point to and walk through the options available, It can be fairly straight forward. I need these kids to get excited about the decisions they’re making and imagine how it might be fun to pretend to be the character that is forming on the page in front of them - without them having the previous experience.
The current revision of the character folio can be downloaded for free from Itch.IO here:
Printing can be an absolute bear outside of the Affinity software I’m using to layout the booklet.
In case it helps someone or some reader has technical input i’m missing, here’s the settings I used to print these out of Affinity (perfect) and Adobe Acrobat (not so perfect but still works)
Conclusion
This is very much a work in progress and spending a lot of time laying out and creating little art pieces for these projects on top of the other real-world things i’m prepping keep me away from the writing block. But it is rewarding and enjoyable so i will continue to push it forward. If you you see this and think you have some input that would be useful in advancing this topic, please comment below!
More to come on this project and the other things I’m creating for this experience both with my kids and the adults I know that I plan to onboard later this year.
Till next time!
Thanks for Reading!
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Have you gotten to kick the tires on this yet?
Trying to play an actual game soon, busy schedule