I see why GMs opt for detailed character sheets, but I think that there are possibilities for refinement. An elaborate CS will cut down the amount of really rough roleplayers (and maybe curtail powergaming if that’s a big concern for the RP), yet I think most of the details that are provided aren’t really useful in the context of the RP. Appearance descriptions have always been something I have difficulty with, especially because the level of detail usually expected in them isn’t something you’d see in the literary world outside of 19th century novels (and those are great but pretty far removed from what’s popular today). The personality sections are even more troublesome. I respect Lady A, but I think that simply listing positive and negative traits is one of the worst ways to describe who a character is, and outside of RPing the only place you’ll find it is when someone is interviewing with a particularly uncreative hiring manager. It doesn’t get into the real interesting parts, the way a character thinks and decides, what drives their emotions and goals in life.

	EM Forster has some good insights in his book, “The Art of the Novel”, and I was surprised at how it made me think about roleplaying when I was reading it. There’s a part where he talks about flat characters “In their purest form, they are constructed round a single idea or quality: when there is more than one factor in them, we get the beginning of the curve towards the round. The  real flat character can be expressed in a single sentence” Now, in roleplaying most people would like their characters to be round, when the whole point is playing your character we view it as a failure if we don’t have all the details on hand and ready to flow. Yet, Forster offers us insight into why flat character exist “One great advantage of flat characters is that they are easily recognized whenever they come in – recognized by the reader’s emotional eye” When you can tell what a character should be, when you can tell where a writer is going or what they will do when confronted with a new scenario, it makes it easier to react to them, easier to think up an interesting turn of events because the players involved are so simple.

	I’m not saying that we should aim to make flat characters, that is not good roleplaying. What I like is interesting characters, and a flat character can be more interesting than a rounded one. Personally, I prefer to start with a flat, simple idea and then build off of it, rather than starting from a complex whole. I’ve tried it the other way and I end with an amalgamation of quirks and personality but no direction, no clear psychology for me to roleplay. Maybe other people know some tricks I don’t when it comes to this method. Going back to character sheets, I wish I saw more character sheets that gave me an idea of what Forster called their “inner life”, what he talked about when he said “ We know each other approximately, by external signs, and these serve well enough as a basis for society and even for intimacy. But people in a novel can be understood completely by the reader, if the novelist wishes.”
	
	This has gotten off topic, and I’m afraid I can’t offer any clear solutions. I’ve seen some CSes include something like “Character Concept”, or maybe a field like Worldview would help, but I am always in search of something that will show me not just what a character is but why they are that way, their thoughts and the creative vision behind them. I fully recognize that some people want to keep those private. Perhaps it’s the mark of a true roleplayer to make a good story without any of this, in life we make do without insight into any of this. I just wonder if there’s a way we can start working more like coauthors of a story instead of passing strangers.