Hey, how about a Character Dossier thread? Options

[KosherPickle]

So, a nice little thread about the Dossier, perhaps?

The cover is new and different old art, not the same as the old work-up cover.

My first thought, even before opening the pages, was "How is this going to be different from Wordman's sheets?" Well, the quick and easy answer is that Wordman used the "Shadowrun" font. SCD doesn't.

The best way to approach this item is to think of it as the counterpart to the GM Screen, except for players. Combat Sequences appear inside the front cover, as well as Attributes w/Linked Skills (extremely complete, as far as I can tell), and the Skill Improvement table. Next page has main character information: Name, Attributes, Condition Monitor, Skills, Reaction/Initiative, and Dice Pools. The last two have helpful boxes to write the numbers in, for easy calculation. There seems to be plenty of room to write everything.

Weapons and Martial Arts are next. No 5 by 5 ammo fill-in chart like Wordman, but there's places to write down all the necessaries. Next page is Armor, Gear, and the Athletics fill-in lines. Again, I can't stress the amount of space available to write stuff in. This is a feature that really beats Wordman sheets.

Augmentation is next. Cyber, Bio, Nano, and Genetech (!) are all here. Lifestyles and ID are across from this. Plenty of lines to describe the stuff, which is helpful now that Edges and Flaws for both exist.

A page for Contacts. Name, Contact Level, Attributes, and other necessaries. Magical stuff on the next two pages. No place for magical items like Foci, however. Very extensive box for the Ally Spirit, however.

Next page is split in half. Vehicle Data takes up both slots. About as extensive as you'll find anywhere. More rigger stuff on the next page. You can actually write down the subscribed drones in a list now. IVIS and FDDM are recognized and included in the sheet.

Combination Otaku/Decker sheet. Excellent Matrix Initiative Calculator. Adept/Otaku page on the other side (yeah, I don't get it either). Also has a random Edges and Flaws chart to list personal E&F. This obviously seems like a space issue. Copying pages is rather cheap, though. <shrug>

Personal Information on a character. Room to sketch, height, weight, etc. And a few amusing "dates and fun facts" (Biggest debt, Most people killed in a firefight, Number of times dealing with a dragon, and more).

Extremely useful character healing page. All kinds of helpful tables. Not extensive to the point of M&M (which also deals with surgery), but plenty good for determing whether or not a trip to DocWagon is in order, and how long it'll be.

Character Advancement. This is where you put your Karma, both earned and spent. By spent, I mean: <Thing I bought with Karma> bought with <amount of karma> on <date>.

Current run notes. Buncha empty lines. Write whatever here.

Last page: Summary of Actions. Very close in nature to the Actions Reference Sheet.

Nit-picky thing: Some of the pages seem a little faded. This may be a little problematic when photocopying; I'll have to test it.

This looks like it was proof-read to hell and back.

Definitely worth my $5. Thumbs up, guys.

[Kanada Ten]

How's it held together? Will it be easy to add/fit copied pages of the contacts and lifestyles pages? Must have it soon...

[KosherPickle]

[Adam]

Thanks for the review!

[winterhawk11]

[KosherPickle]

[The Question Man]

Minor Error page 3 . Second Primary Range Weapon , under Gas Venting(Rating--) instead of __"underscore" .

Personal Preferences : (Organizational)

Adept Powers , Foci , Edges , and Flaws should have their own page . The Otaku , Channels , and Living Persona should be elsewhere .

Otherwise a good purchase , but $6.95 canuck .

[Adam]

[grimshear]

Dude: I got mine for $6 even Canadian :)

As for my little nit picky thing: The space for "Corps with bounties on my head" is awfully small. :silly:

Grim Shear
"Think about taking up dumbassitude as a profession."

[252]

Yes is there a place to review how your store is doing for getting the book.


Well my store once again doesn't have it.

Okay I know you don't care, but it makes me feel better that I know I said something.

[Adam]

Have you asked them to order it for you? If they don't stock SR regularly, it's not likely they'll get copies in. However, if you ask them to bring it in, they may start carrying SR again.

[Jérémie]

It finally arrived in France, 5€. Ordered one to have something to criticize about :P

[252]

Well the thing is they do carry the stuff. He just carries what he wants to in what he sells. He is still around so I'm guessing that he is doing a good job at what he picks however I don't remember when the last time I actually got anything through him was. Now let me think Shadowrun, oh yes it wasn't that long ago he got Shadowbeat and NAN vol I. Wow did that take a long time for him to get those in, oh wait. Nooo I think he just got those in off some guy who was selling some of their older stuff. Now let me think oh yes I do the same exact thing to get my stuff. Buy it off the older guys who are retiring or whatever.

[Shadow]

Buy online, it's easier if not always cheaper.

[Adam]

[krishcane]

I just picked up two copies of it -- I like it! It's well-done.

I presume it's helpful when we kindly point out errors so the next print can be better.

-- Inside front cover, under Skills listing, under the Body attribute, you have "Athletics", "Driving", and "Parachuting". That's meant to be "Diving", not "Driving".

-- Under weapons of choice, under Ranged Attack TNs, not sure if these are wrong or not, but I want to ask:

Smart Goggles are listed with range TNs at 3/3/5(7)/8. This implies that Smart Goggles give a -1 for all circumstances except Moderate range, where you get a -2. Is that right?

I thought the Extreme Range TN for Smartlink-2 was 5? But it's listed here as 7. Is that right? It goes from 3s at Long Range to 7s at Extreme Range?



Overall, excellent work!! It's really nice to have all these charts and numbers together in one place for people. In fact, I think it will even serve to assist character-making for new players, to be able to see all the relevant stuff and possibilities reflected on these pages.

It's also marketing genius. Some people will undoubtably copy these things, but for $5, many people will just buy a new one for their PCs. My group buys a new box of dice for $8 to $11 for each one of their PCs, as part of some good luck superstition, so there's a good chance they'll spring another $5 for the Dossier. I went to my local gaming store and said, "How many of these do you have?" He said, "Just those two. You wanted more?" His eyes lit up when I said everyone in my group wants two or three of them.

--K

[Rajaat99]

I've been playing my game for too long. I know everyone will buy one. If one of my players had just a copy of the dossier, everyone would laugh at them and call their character a newbie.
I do love how cheap the dossier is though, it does make it easy.

[Shockwave_IIc]

[Adam]

It should be in the UK now; Esdevium typically gets products within a week of their UK ship date. The full title is "The Shadowrun Character Dossier"

[Shockwave_IIc]

thanks, will order from local store tho i think they get there stuff from hobby games.

[BIG BAD BEESTE]

Hoi there Shockwave - you should find one available over here now. i picked mine up in London last week. Shame that I couldn't get a copy at Speil '03 in Essen though, but FanPro are probably still translating it into German.

As for the assessment; OK its a good cheap purchase for the Player who's dedicated and has those incredibly usefule things like the Actions chart and Skill diversion table (I kinda miss the old Skill Web though...). It's got plenty of allocated areas for practically everything, although I found that some areas were woefully inadequate for the usual "What can I spend my Resources A on?" character. IE: Bioware & Cyberware - definately need a whole page for those murder machines out there. Same goes for gear - you know how those gadget freaks horde. Oh, and don't forget the Gun-Bunnies who will be bemused at only have space for a primary and secondary weapon. Better stick in a whole page there with another for the ammo and explosives.

Aside from that not bad. Nicely presented, neat and quite eye-catching. I'm still going to design my own sheets as usual though. ;D

Oh, and I'm sure that some of those Range Target Numbers are off. Check em closely.

[Vagabond]

I think it's okay. Personally I think the "dummy" boxes (My INT + My WILL + My QUI ÷ 2 = My Combat Pool) are helpful, but I think they could have been shrunken on to another table or something in favor of some other info. Overall it's about 2 or 3 pages worth of tables plus one Wordman sheet stretched out over what? 18 or so pages?

I think it would have been better to do the "Player Screen" thing and have multiple copies of different sheets. But I think it's worth the 5 bucks- at least once for a character you really want to hang on to.

Of course I'm not going to copy anything out of that book, Adam. That would be wrong and strongly discourage anyone else from doing it, too- er, either.

[JongWK]

A friend of mine showed me his dossier yesterday. I am honestly impressed by it.

-Why doesn't it have a Metatype box?
-The page with Otaku/Adept/Foci etc. seems like an effort to keep the product into a page limit, am I right?
-The Fun Facts also seems a little too cramped.

Other than that, outstanding. :notworthy:

[Adam]

[BIG BAD BEESTE]

Oooh - be careful there Adam. Hell hath no fury like a disgruntled proofreader. They can twist your words and despoil your creative license should they so desire. Beware the proofreader Adam... BEWARE!