We've been toying with different character sheets to take to con games. The character sheets in the book are good for longer campaigns, but when someone sits down at a table for just a few hours, we're guessing they might want something less detailed.

For example, some of the sheets we're using for con games now have a brief background on the front of the sheet, along with all the necessary stats. We're using the backs to explain some of the Talents, combat maneuvers and spell examples in detail.

Does anyone have any opinions on which is better? Short and sweet for the con demos? Or is part of the demo experience seeing the official character sheets and discussing how mechanics work as they come up during play?

I think the longer character descriptions are a very important to the con games. Since the game's about "normal" characters in a strange land, the player needs to understand how that character used to operate in the "normal" world---and how they have changed to deal in the After.

I'm not sure how you would manage it, but if you could make the characters gender neutral, that'd be cool.

Whatever you do, please keep those tent cards you used! They were great. (For those who haven't seen 'em, the front has the picture, the name, and some vital stats about the character. The back has the same info plus the flaws.)

One method I use to keep characters gender-neutral is to use second-person in the decriptions (i.e. "you grew up in a small town" as opposed to "He grew up in a small town") This avoid the his/her conundrum and makes the background a bit more immediate.

I've created a few sheets for demos. My usual tactic is to provide a sheet with all the necessary stats and a separate sheet with background, roleplaing notes, and any rule-specific info (such as Talent descriptions).

Sechin used a rather nice layout for his HEX game "Dread Pirate Scrumtumbler" where he put stuff like the effects of boosted Taletns and such on the front sheet.

You have inspired me to look into this. Let's see what my not merely twisted but actually sprained mind comes up with.

Oh, and I concur on the tent cards. They made me wish I'd thought of them for my games.

One of my players is neck deep in making an Excel Character Sheet for Desolation...but, I was wanting to make sure that something like that wasn't already available.

Hate for him to go to all that trouble if someone else has already done it.

Anyone?

I used an excel with formulas and such for my horde NPC creation for Survivors - just to make sure the math was correct for secondary attributes, skill ratings, etc... But to the best of my knowledge there is no character sheet suitable for mass consumption.

I wonder if we should make our logos available for people to grab to toss on top of their home brew sheets...

Yes you should. That would be mightily appreciated.

I was gonna ask Nestor to send me the one he used, but a color one would be nicer.

...and the more community provided tools and resources you have available on your forum and site, the more you're likely to get return traffic. (In my most humble opinion.) ...and it's getting people to come back and engross themselves in spirited discussions that will get the blood really pumping through here.

My sheet was just a basic layout partially cribbed from my HEX demo sheets. I can send you the basic Word doc if you want, but I know it's not very fancy.

I have a quick and dirty Excel worksheet, too, which I've used to keep track of what little math is involved. That's also available if you'd like, but again, it's not anything fancy.

For a character sheet, you probably want something that will display nicely on the site, I would think. Let me play around with some HTML and see what shakes out...

Ooooh! Good idea. I didn't think about displaying them, since I don't in my other game. But, I think it would be cool for this one.

Thrak did an excel one, that looks pretty cool, but it's missing the racial abilities, and i haven't tested it yet. It seems as though he swiped your Desolation graphic as well.

I don't know if that would be helpful or not, in your attempts. I'd be happy to forward it to you if you'd like.

I can embed any html file at NextGen, pretty much.

Hey - we could always do a Drupal custom content type, write up a template for it (you'd need Contemplate installed for that) and do the characters and sheets directly on the site. It'll even do some computed fields so we might be able to get it to do the math for us...

That sounds one step away from a character generator. Or, am I misinterpreting what you're saying? In which case, methinks we'd need the blessing, of the Desolation crew. This sounds way cool...but Character sheets would suffice, if this isn't something that could be endorsed.

(mumbles: What I really need is a style chip counter - *hides*)

Unless the content would actually do things like list all the Skills/Talents/etc. the characters can take, and manage all the adjustments to stats, I think character record is probably a better moniker.

I hadn't thought of the Drupal angle. I'll defer that effort to someone who's actually spent time on the software.

Right this very minute, I'm at a pit stop on my travel back from Rochester, NY, where I dropped one of my daughters off for college, so any work I do won't start until tomorrow or Monday.

If you have any special requests on what you'd want to show up on the sheet (beyond the stats), let me know by PM or e-mail.

Llevalak finds work for idle hands...

Can anyone help me?

One of my players made a nifty Desolation Character Sheet in Excel, but I don't have excel.

I have Open Office and Works, and I can't figure out how to get it saved as a file that one of those programs can read. The tables are all off, like the archetype dropdown values show in the race box, and the skills drop down doesn't show in the right place.

I would use this a lot to make my NPCs if I could get it to work in one of my programs.

I have all those programs and more ... if you'd care to forward it to me at "cdwjava AT sbcglobal DOT net" I would be happy to reproduce it in a form that Open Office or Works can read.

Do you use Mac or Windows?

- Carl

Done.

and

Thank you!

I'm actually trying to make a sheet that is 'Google Docs' friendly... Makes sharing it in real-time with players a snap... You also have a complete revision history