The Parchment Paladin

SYWTBAGM Running Sheets

SYWTBAGM Book

Justin Alexander's recent book, So You Want To Be A Game Master is a stunning accomplishment: it's basically all signal. Nearly every single one of its 544 pages is valuable, chock-full of practical, usable advice. Highly recommend you get a copy today!

Some of the first things that jumped out at me upon first read-through were the running sheet templates Alexander provides for running Dungeon and Hex crawls. I was immediately inspired to put together versions I could use at the table.

Dungeon Running Sheet #

Dungeon Running Sheet

Based on the template Alexander provides on p71 of SYWTBAGM, this running sheet has a few slight modifications:

  1. I noted that the 2d6 roll for Reaction could be combined without harm with the 2d6 roll for Starting Encounter Distance. I've tweaked the procedure to account for this: just take the Reaction result and multiply by 10 to get the starting distance in feet.
  2. Giddy with all the time saved in the above step, I went and added an additional roll for Encounter Activity, to give the encounter a little more context. This is a 2d10 roll, so it can be rolled at the same time as the roll above without muddying the result.
  3. I've juggled the layout just a bit to accomodate the additional table.

Justin was kind enough to link to this sheet on his Alexandrian blog, and even host a form-fillable PDF version.

Hexcrawl Running Sheet #

Hexcrawl Running Sheet

This version is essentially unchanged from the format found on p396 of SYWTBAGM. I think in future revisions, I'll tweak the coloring to be less green-heavy.

Mr. Alexander also kindly showcased this sheet on his Alexandrian blog, and once again prepared and hosted a form-fillable PDF version.

Route Running Sheet #

Route Running Sheet

Based on p381 of SYWTBAGM, this sheet, notably, is NOT provided by the book. However, I think something like it might be useful, and though I haven't yet had an opportunity to run a route-based scenario at the table, I look forward to experimenting with it.

All My SYWTBAGM Resources #