just curious if anyone else is irritated by the current selection of "officila" sheets available. it went ahead and spent a few hours cutting and pasting bits and peices from various sheets, along with adding a few of my own inovations to make a super generic character sheet that does not waste space with redundant information, or catagories only half the characters will use (with the exception of a martial arts section). That way the "official" matrix, mage/shaman/implant/rigger sheets are not redundant. maybe i am just ranting over nothing (usually happens during finals week.... stupid professors), just wondering what everyone else's thoughts were.

Personally I use either wordman's sheets, which require me to print incredibly neat and small, but allow you to pretty much pick and choose what's best for your character, or I just use lined paper, devoting entire pages to various sections such as gear (for weight tracking and overall inventory), weapons (ammo tracking), etc.

Added bonus of tons of space for notes.

Then again, I'm a bit OCD when it comes to this stuff. (everything's organized in a binder with all relevant tables, gear list, erratta, maps, sheets, and anything else I could need all separated with clearly labelled tabs)

For a couple years I've maintained my character sheets in Microsoft Word. I'll run a character for two or three months, and then take my pencil marks from the sheet and edit them into the Word file. Each character sheet is thus custom made, with just the right amount of space. That's worked fine for me, and I don't have to write real small.

I'm currently playing with using NSRCG to create / maintain characters, and using XSL to format / print the NSRCG characters in a form that is great for a character sheet. While it's still a work in progress, here's a sample. Adept.htm

<smacks OutTeam for using "Physad" on the sheet>

I tend to make my own handcrafted sheets for each character (say hello "Mr. Anal Retentive"), mostly because I haven't found one that's well-organized or relatively easy on the eyes (there's some strange fetish for using microscopic text these days). Here's an example of one.

I've been using Word and, before it...it's been so long that I don't recall. Desktop or something for MS-DOS in the 1980s...anyway, I computerized my character sheets many moons ago. I still have some 2nd edition DnD characters on computer paper that had that punched-hole strips along its sides for the archaic printers of the day.

Anyway, my character sheets are pretty much homemade, a result of upwards of 18 years of evolution. Whether or not the official sheets stink never bothered me - as soon as I get a game, I start making my own character sheets for it.

That's beautiful, Clockwork. Amazing render.

Thanks. Glad you dig it. It's gotten a little cluttered as time's gone on, but I still like it.

I use plain ol' sheets of paper. Every few months I re-write them onto new paper when the coffee rings and chinese-food stains are too hard to see through.

Well, for other games, anyway. I never get to play Shadowrun anymore.

Your perhaps-soon-to-be girlfriend is just a Level 1 Contact? Ouch.

Blank TextEdit.app file. With the proper indenting and bolding it can be very easy on the eyes.

~J

Beautiful sheet there, ACL.

Nice character too. I was unaware that you could sell spell points for 30,000Y a pop. That's amazing; much better than the -5SP->+1BP that you get from the SRC. Where'd you find that rule?

Did I miscalculate again? Shoulda been 25k. Oh well, anyway, it was a GM ruling. She was allowing all kinds of odd things in that game, like dual-weilding with smartlinks and whatnot. It was fun nonetheless, just don't assume anything on that sheet is standard. I just threw it up as an example anyway.

The last characters I used official character sheets for were for 1st Edition AD&D. I've made my own sheets for years, change the layout around as appropriate for each individual character's quirks. Used to be on notebook paper, but, recently, I've been doing them in HTML and putting them online. This is the character sheet that I actually used while playing my most recent PC. That was an IRC game, but all that would've changed if it were a face-to-face game is that I would've had to keep it on my laptop instead of my main Web server.

The online sheet had the advantage that the GM could look at the same sheet I was working off, and HTML allows handy little effects that you can't get on paper, like the spell list that pops up the full spell descriptions when moused over (saved me no end of flipping through the books to look up minor details). And the "Money" link on the sheet actually brings up (at least it does if you're inside my firewall) a database-backed personal finance program that I used to keep track of the character's funds. Much more convenient than the old-fashioned erasing a hole in the "money" section of your character sheet method, and it lets you quickly and easily answer questions like, "Did I remember to pay my lifestyle upkeep this month?"

I usually make them out onto graph paper. In my experience, there's only a games where it's almost mandatory to use the sheets (WoD, Deadlands, Savage Worlds, AEG's stuff). The rest are more or less on paper. Heck, I wrote up my first Shadowrun sheets on graphing paper, just so I could track damage. Haven't really gotten into using the SR3 sheets; probably never will.

Don

Pre-made sheets inevitably have too little space for things I need, but lots of extra for stuff I don't.

If I've got a mage, I don't need a quarter of a sheet for bioware, but I'm gonna need more than a quarter for spells.

Where do I put my unique metamagic feats?

Notes about the contacts?

Etc...

Solution: Your favourite rich text editor. Just make your own sheets with EXACTLY what you want, and nothing but. What's that, your mage added some cyberware but you're special FASA sheet doesn't have the space? So you'll scribble in the corner?

I won't. I'll hit enter a few times, add what I need, and make it blend in. SImple, effiecent, etc. All my weapons have their ranges, TNs, ammo types and damages right next to them; spells have all their TNs, drains, notes, etc. Everything I want and need, NOTHING unused, and its only as long as I want it ot be.

Her's a little tip, chummers, from the Book of Old Skool. Put a piece of Scotch tape over sections on the sheet you'll use alot (i.e. damage track, ammo, nuyen). Use a pencil to write over it. It erases easily, leaves no marks, and doesn't tear holes in your sheet or make it into an illegible mess.

What, put scotch tape on my laptop screen? What if I move the window?

~J

Use digital post-it notes. Save wear and tear on your spreadsheet.

Hmm... got a good free post-it-note program?

Stickies.app. Comes with every standard OSX installation, as far as I know.

~J

My solution, which I've posted in just about every thread about character sheets so far, is pretty similar to Campbell's. I just write them using basic HTML to get a nice layout.

My Shadowrun Character
The resident mage in SR
My Last D&D Character - from a very odd campaign where everyone was polymorphed into squirrels

I quit using the NSRCG sheets after developing the habit of going in and editing the HTML to put Kirby in all the unused boxes.

Mind if I steal that technique you're using for your Condition Monitor, Sahandrian? That's the one part I've never been able to add to my sheet and make it look nice, and I really like how you handled it.

Go ahead. I just came up with that for game sessions run on AOL Instant Messenger. Printing it can screw up the spacing somewhat.

I just like the format of it (never thought to do it like that). I doubt if I'll use the checkboxes. Still cool, though, and thanks.

I just keep run notes in Notepad or Keynote and record damage at the end of session at either the top of the page or where we left off. Though, only two players have ever sustained heavy enough injury to actually make that worth it (myself and Phaeton).

I'll use (college ruled) lined paper in a pinch but I perfer (4 sqares/inch) graph paper. I like hard copies. I'm way OCD when it comes to that.

For computer based, either just simple Word--if I'm in a hurry to get in on a PbP game--or Excel. I do really like Dashinfen's page for the final copy, though.

You can always tell the engineering students... their characters are done on the green graph paper (5 squares/inch).