Or, why you should use a backpack sheet.

Seth Skorkowsky posted a video about Backpack Sheets and why they are important. I happened to come across the video three years after it was published, and exactly when I needed it.

We were in the desert north of TenKeep and approached by a Hobbit named (as usual, I forgot his name. I would call him Darlene except that is the name of my mule and the barmaid in another world), let’s call him Joe. Joe was pretty beat up, but on two furry feet. He told us about three of his companions who were in the desert a couple hours away. One of them was in bad shape. Three of us (and Darlene) headed toward where Joe said his friends were and eventually we found them. The one Hobbit who was hurt bad was hurt real bad. I remembered that I had found three potions of healing a while back (this is where the bad memory that led to cheating comes in), and that I had two left. I used one of them to help out the injured Hobbit, and he was better than new.

Let’s dig into to this some:

• In another life I did find three healing potions
• I also died afterward
• I took over one of the NPCs in the game
• There is a good chance that one of the two healing potions was stashed in a safe place when I died
• There is also a good chance that the other healing potion was lost when I died, as my body and belongings were not recoverable
• Because my new character (the NPC named The Real Arnosto) is a Magic User it makes sense that I would have inherited the old player (Largo Highhill) potions that were stashed away

With the above info in mind, I don’t think it was cheating, but I do feel like I need to do a better job of keeping track of who I am and what I have. So, I am going to be using a backpack sheet from now on, and I am going to make sure it has zero healing potions listed until I acquire another one (there were three, and I used one as Largo, one was lost when Largo died, and The Real Arnosto used the third to heal our new friend).

You can download Seth’s backpack sheets from the description in his video.