Blog Post of Note: Character Creation in 5 Sentences

I know I said I was taking this week off, but decided I needed to draw attention to a blog post.

Justin Alexander of The Alexandrian has a post on Character Creation in 5 Sentences, a way to make running an open table easier. It only takes five minutes for someone to join a game if all they need to do is to write down these simple things listed:

1. Roll 3d6, total them, and write them down in these six boxes in order.
2. Are you a human, an elf, a dwarf, or a hobbit?
3. Are you a fighting-man, magic-user, or cleric? (If they picked a dwarf or elf you can skip this step. Randomly roll hit points and the magic-user’s spell.)
4. What’s your character’s name?
5. You have a sword, chain armor, a shield, 8 rations, a small silver mirror, 2 torches, flint and steel, a bedroll, and 16 gold pieces. (Customize equipment list appropriately.)

OD&D is uniquely suited for this of the various official versions of D&D because of the simplicity of the rules. I'll add, though, that you could speed up the process even more by skipping Step #1. Just roll and explain each ability score when it's actually needed.