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Dumpshock Forums _ Shadowrun _ Making character sheets

Posted by: Dudukain Jun 20 2006, 01:34 AM

Yeah, I'm trying to make a character sheet, and tried using Excel, but after what felt like 4 hours of work all I had to show for it was a sheet that DOESN'T FIT ON THE FRIGGIN' PAGE! and doesn't look very cool. So any good stuff?

Posted by: Xenith Jun 20 2006, 01:58 AM

It depends in what you're going for. If its an autocalc sheet you're going for, Excel is your best bet. If you're going for something that you want to look good, Adobe Professional is nice... but in the end its all in the ..erm... skill(if you would call it that. ) of the user. Its always okay to have multiple pages, and just remember to organize in a way that you feel looks good and limits confusion. You're not going to have flashy graphics or shapes on Excel, but theres always a way to make it look nice. It just tends to be a utilitarian style.

Me... I create the stuff in Word since I know a number of tiny details in that program. Then I use the PDF converter...(btw... the converter can only handle 1 page at a time. Annoying but... hey... you can put it back together with the Distiller.) I then use Adobe Prof to add the forms... I've yet to figure out any sort of Autocalc function with that... let alone put the effort into it. @_@

Posted by: Grogs Jun 20 2006, 02:10 AM

There's a nice excel based character generator in the Community Projects forum (by Wizdoc.) I thought it did a pretty solid job with attributes, skills, and qualities. I found it helped me a lot keeping track of BP. My only real beef with it is it's pretty limited on the amount of gear you can have. I ended up having to make my own excel spreadsheet to keep track of gear.

Posted by: Shadowmeet Jun 20 2006, 02:48 PM

QUOTE (Xenith)

) of the user. Its always okay to have multiple pages, and just remember to organize in a way that you feel looks good and limits confusion. You're not going to have flashy graphics or shapes on Excel, but theres always a way to make it look nice. It just tends to be a utilitarian style.

Me... I create the stuff in Word since I know a number of tiny details in that program. Then I use the PDF converter...(btw... the converter can only handle 1 page at a time. Annoying but... hey... you can put it back together with the Distiller.) I then use Adobe Prof to add the forms... I've yet to figure out any sort of Autocalc function with that... let alone put the effort into it. @_@

Xenith, if you have Adobe Prof, you can print to PDF from word. No need for a converter, and it gets all the pages.

Posted by: Xenith Jun 20 2006, 08:21 PM

That is the program I refer to. On my comp it takes only 1 page at a time or it simply crashes and burns.

Posted by: Shadowmeet Jun 20 2006, 08:27 PM

Ouch! Sorry to hear that.

I thought you were making one page, using a third party converter, and then a third party program to condense. My apologies for not understanding.

Posted by: Protagonist Jun 20 2006, 08:31 PM

Photoshop >_>

Posted by: ShadowDragon Jun 20 2006, 09:14 PM

I made character sheets with Photoshop easily. I made them look exactly like the official ones, but redid the box categories to be more logical and specific to difference types of characters. So I took out spell/spirit boxes for mundanes, increased the size of the cyberware and weapon boxes for cyber sams, etc.