Creative Challenge #3: Create A Real Life Character Sheet

Welcome, new readers. From time to time, I organize “Creative Challenges,” that fit with the whole “playful things to think with” theme. Previously, there was a One Card Serious Game Challenge, followed by the Make a Zine Challenge.

I hadn’t planned on doing another Creative Challenge until next year (holidays, commitments, priorities, etc.), except… This one came to me, begging to happen. It seems super low-effort, high fun, and is something I’ll likely create for myself, whether it’s a Creative Challenge or not! I thought, why not invite others to join me on this quest?!

So, what is the quest… err, creative challenge?

✨ Create a Real Life Character Sheet. ✨

Context & Inspiration:

So, tabletop role-playing games, or TTRPGS, are kind of a big thing—a seemingly unavoidable big thing! RPG themes show up in all kinds of books and TV shows. This is the 50 year anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons. We have hit shows like Critical Role. Beyond the classic dungeon crawl and fantasy tropes, there’s a mountain of RPG systems and games, covering just about every theme or topic you can think of (in past issues of Thinking Things, I shared roleplaying games at NASA, solarpunk RPGs, and this text-based RPG about refugees). 🤪

A common feature of nearly all RPGs, and their video game counterparts, is the character sheet. On just one or two pages (or a menu in a video game), we can see all the essential and non-essential information for that character. Basics stats. Skills. Loot they’ve picked up. Back stories. Affiliations. Levels. And so on. (Kind of like a resume, right?!)

Hold that thought…

As some of you know, I’m looking for what’s next, job wise. Like many of us, I’ve had to dust off ye old resume, and think about how I want to reframe my past experiences to align with what’s next. As is common during this liminal period, this has also been a time of intense self-reflection followed by outward exploration into how I want to represent myself—on LinkedIn and beyond. What skills do I want to emphasize? How do I answer—succinctly—when someone says “tell me about yourself?” What next “adventure” seems most interesting? During this time, I’ve been reviewing things like The Thought Leaders Practice, my CliftonStrengths assessment, worksheets for the “hybrid professional,” a LifeLabs Learning course, I took, and other forms of professional introspection.

For many of these exercises, it’s not hard to make the leap from “you are a Venturer” profile type to “Level 73 bard/cleric.”

This got me thinking…

What if—just for fun—I made a real life character sheet?

I remembered a former co-worker at Mural, Ben Dehant, was working on just such a thing. The “Design Your Own Adventure” worksheet took familiar workshop reflection activities and placed them in an RPG wrapper:

I reached out to Ben to chat about this, and the more we talked, the more I became aware of how this notion of “playing games with your career” has, for me, been a recurring one for some time. See:

• Playing Games with Your Career (2011)
• Collect Stories (Career Advice) (2020)

I briefly set about creating the ideal character sheet for real life situations, when it occurred to me:

1. This would be more fun to do with others.
2. There are many people far more versed in RPGs than I am!
3. Not a month goes by when someone doesn’t share a new work-related book / assessment / worksheet with me, having something to do with how we work, work styles, and so on.
4. The whole point of the ‘Mighty Minds Club’ is to work and learn together …why not make this a collaborative activity?

And… Here we are!

How to participate

The Rules:

Games need rules, right?!

The Challenge: Create a real life character sheet for your professional (and personal?) self.

I see two parts to this:

1. Creating or modifying a character sheet template. Obviously, we can’t lift directly from most RPGs—some translation is needed. The same is true if you start with a professional template(s) —what kinds of RPG trappings are needed to make this feel like a character sheet? I’m hoping out of this, we can learn from each other as we share the kinds of things that could/should go into a real life character sheet.
2. Filling out the real life character sheet for yourself. Whoohoo! Self-reflection time!

I believe these two activities will likely feed into each other. Thinking about your professional self may lead you to modify your character sheet template.

Solo/Group Work
This is a solo challenge, though… I will be sharing ideas along the way, and I really, really hope others do the same! I’ll set up an email list and a Mural board where we can share ideas, ask questions, encourage each other along the way.

I’ll also be hosting two different office hours/check-ins, tentatively scheduled for

• Friday, Nov 8
• Friday, Nov 22

And…

• In the interest of closure and celebration, we’ll try to schedule a final ‘show-and-tell’ session/debrief on Friday, Dec 6th.

(Invitations with specifics will be shared via the email list and added to the Mural board.)

Timeframe/Deadline:
All participants must upload your completed real life character sheet by EOD Dec 3rd. This will run throughout the month of November, with a couple extra days tacked on, due to the timing of Thanksgiving weekend in the US.

FAQs: 💬

“What tools can we use?”
Use whatever you tools you want, so long as your filled out character sheet is sharable with others—whether that’s a link, a PDF file, an image, or something else. Possible tool options that come to mind: Canva. PowerPoint. Google Docs. HTML/CSS. Figma. Affinity Publisher. Mural. Hand drawing?! 😄

“What’s the point of all this?”
Introspection. Self-Reflection. Fun. 🤷‍♂️

I believe anyone who participates will:

1. Get value from the (professional) exercises and activities we’ll be sharing.
2. Get value from the kinds of insights that an imaginative exercise like this can unlock.
3. Have fun? 🤷‍♂️

Besides which, this kind of exercise is better together!

“I’m not very familiar with role playing games”
Neither am I! I don’t believe this should stop anyone.

“How do I participate?”
Sign up using this Google form. This will do two things:

• Give you a link to a Mural board for this Creative Challenge.
• Add you to an email list for this challenge

Hopefully you’ll join me on this quest!

—Stephen