Simplifying Gurps Character Sheets

[mook]

Pip Boy, that sheet is awesome. Totally snagged, even though I'm unlikely to ever run a Fallout-specific game. Seeing these sheets is making me want to whip out Quark and fiddle.

[simply Nathan]

I personally use a slightly modified 3e character sheet since I thought it was just a better sheet layout overall than 4e's.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Cpt_Clyde

These are great fun, nice work!
This would indeed appeal to a few people I know who love D&D and refuse to play GURPS because it is "overly burdened with rules". With this they would see what their character can do right out of the gate, and understand how to make it happen in game mechanics (roll under the number beside the trait). Then when they inevitably want to alter/improvise one of the listed traits I could show how awesome GURPS rules are by easily handling their "double fisted, leaping tankard strike while balancing on a stool".

But the attraction of GURPS, and systems of the same family as GURPS (including my own homebrew project), is that the characters that players can create are true individuals, rather than the genericized and stlized "stick figures" you can make with the typical class-based systems, such as various versions of AD&D or D&D.

I want to play an individual, not a stick figure!

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Mangolaw

Anyway, please have a look and tell me what you think.

Have you thought about including some kind of explanation of the scale for Attributes, and for Skills?

I do that on Sagatafl's much more complicated (and multi-page) character sheets. The first page spends a couple of square inches defining the attribute scale, and the skills pages will in some way define the skill scale (I'm not sure exactly how I'll implement that, yet).

GURPS Lite has a good very coarse-grained definitions of what attributes mean. If you can condense that further, it might not take up much space. And GURPS Lite probably has a similarly set of coarse-grained definitions of what skill levels mean, which again can be condensed to take up only a couple of square inches, or a couple more if you want to use large type.

Or you can dump the scale thing and just go by probabilities: 10 means you have a 50/50 chance of making it, 13 is about 84%, 16 is 98%, 7 is 7%, 4 is 1.4%. That's a table with 6 lines, including the header. Or you can use steps of 2 if you're willing to devote more lines to that project.

Either way, the player is given some notion of how good various values are.



Also, on the Ranger sheet, you use inconsistent jargon. First you tal about "elf magic", then further down "fey magic". I presume that's the same thing, referred to by two different terms, which is a great no-no. Or else if it is two different things then it's a big mistake refer to them by similar names. Confusion is likely to ensue, and that's something you don't want.

[Silvermane]

Personally I use This Character Sheet assistant for my characters. It prints out easily, it's got a quick reference to all the rules, all the stats you need.

It's not 'simplified' in the way that the OP's is, but it definitely makes making sheets less of a chore.

[Pip Boy]

Originally Posted by mook

Pip Boy, that sheet is awesome. Totally snagged, even though I'm unlikely to ever run a Fallout-specific game. Seeing these sheets is making me want to whip out Quark and fiddle.

Yep, the same of me! (By the way, that sheet is NOT designed by me - but since it's just a Google search away, I guess it's public).

I like different GURPS character sheets a lot, but it almost always falls on the side of looking like a excel spreadsheets. I'd like some real art or design on them, like those D&D ones, but without sacrificing so much of the PC details.