German Inspirations - An Unformed Idea

The Control Sheet is probably the wargaming precursor to the Character Sheet so important to RPGs. As a youth the control sheet I was most familiar with was the Mech sheet for BatteTech, with its critical hit locations and checkboxes for hits. Some of the new German games I have been playing have nifty Control Sheets, Puerto Rico in particular strikes me as a great example. Could German style control sheets be adapted to RPG play? Imagine a charsheet with larges boxes representing say Melee Attack, Melee Defense, Missile Attack, Missile Defense, Perception, Spell Readiness, or any other of a number of stats. Players then place glass beads or cardboard chits on each are to represent their combat stance. Or thing of such a display as a way to track spell usage, especially if using a spell system like in Arcana Unearthed, where one can trade up or down in spell levels. For resource management based systems with multiple interacting currencies, a good control sheet could be a lot of fun.

The secret dial from El Grande and the flipbook from Knights and Cities of Catan also strike me as potentially useable in an RPG.