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#1 |
Join Date: Apr 2018
Location: Trondheim, Norway
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Whenever I play an RPG, I prefer to have an electronic character sheet. That way, it's easy to change things without risking rubbing holes in the sheet.
When I started playing GURPS a couple of years ago, I decided that I could use a spreadsheet to calculate all the different formulas (Basic Speed, Basic Lift and so on) automatically. It started off as a pretty simple spreadsheet with four pages (front page, attributes, traits and skills), but over the months and years I've added new content, and it's become quite large. (Of course, a player doesn't have to use all the pages of it, just the ones that are relevant to them.) At the beginning, I only used it for my own character, but the rest of my play group picked it up as well, seeing the benefit of skipping all the calculations that they otherwise would have to do manually. Most formulas in the GURPS books are pretty simple, but having to redo half of them just because you purchased another level of DX can be tedious. I know that there exists a character assistant software application, but I like to tinker with things and customize them to suit my own needs, so I decided to make my own. It's developed in Excel (desktop version) and doesn't use macros, but some of the people I play with still have minor difficulties (like being unable to add new rows to tables) when using Excel online or non-Excel spreadsheet applications. I lately convinced myself that it would be a good idea to upload the character sheet to the big Internet so that other people could reap the fruits of my labor too. Over the past few days, I've made some "final" tweaks to the character sheet, as well as writing a user manual. In addition to the user manual and the character sheet itself, there is a text document where I log step by step how to upgrade from one version of the character sheet to the next. The log exists primarily for the players in my group who wish to have the newest version, but don't want to copy all their data from an older sheet to the newest one, when they could upgrade by themselves in less time. One of my players suggested that there are some people out there who like to read such things, so I decided to publish the change log as well. Be aware that my language settings in Excel use comma ( , ) as decimal separator and semicolon ( ; ) as parameter separator, so you may not be able to just copy-and-paste them. I've put the documents in a public Google Drive folder: Character Sheet folder If you see any bugs/errors, or if you have suggestions for changes or additions to the character sheet, please let me know. New versions of the character sheet will be published at irregular intervals. |
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#2 |
Join Date: Apr 2018
Location: Trondheim, Norway
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Current Version
24.2 (released 2024-05-13) General features
Front Page sheet
Attributes sheet
Attr Mods sheet
Form sheet
Traits sheet
Trait Mods sheet
Skills sheet
Techniques sheet
Spells sheet
Current Status sheet
Calculations sheet
Equipment sheet
Diary sheet
Time Use sheet
House Rules sheet
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You don't need to spend 100 CP on Status 5 [25] and Multimillionaire [75] to feel like a princess, when Delusion [-10] will do. Or, you can run so far away that Status and Wealth don't apply anymore... Character sheet: Google Drive link (See this thread for details.) Campaign logs: Chaotic Pioneering / Confessions of a Forked Tongue / A Doe Among Wolves Last edited by coronatiger; 05-13-2024 at 11:13 AM. Reason: New version of character sheet |
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#3 |
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Heartland, U.S.A.
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Amazing. And, well done!
I've cobbled together a shadow of what you've done for Mac Pages. You've inspired me to continue working on it. If/when I do, I may steel much from your design/algorithms; with your blessing, of course.
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#4 |
Join Date: Apr 2018
Location: Trondheim, Norway
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Feel free to do so! If you have any ideas to stuff I can put into the Character Sheet, post them here.
__________________
You don't need to spend 100 CP on Status 5 [25] and Multimillionaire [75] to feel like a princess, when Delusion [-10] will do. Or, you can run so far away that Status and Wealth don't apply anymore... Character sheet: Google Drive link (See this thread for details.) Campaign logs: Chaotic Pioneering / Confessions of a Forked Tongue / A Doe Among Wolves |
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#5 |
Join Date: Feb 2019
Location: Amboise, France
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Excel'lent job ! ;)
Very useful, a interesting alternative to GCA. TY |
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#6 |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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In addition to GCA (the official character design program), there's also GURPS Character Sheet (GCS). It's in Java, and open source, if that's your thing.
Data entry for all the traits seems to me to be one of the biggest hurdles, at least measured by tedium per unit progress. One of my wish-list items for a 5e, should they ever do one, would be an official set of data files with a documented format that people could use for their own play aids. |
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#7 |
Join Date: Apr 2018
Location: Trondheim, Norway
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I entered skills, techniques and spells manually (and users may enter more), but not ads, disads, perks and quirks. One of the reasons was that players may want to look up scores of skills they haven't trained, to see their default scores, which are calculated automatically based on attributes and other skills. When I GM, I keep a blank Character Sheet open on my laptop, as well.
Players in my game can use a regular character sheet (on paper), if they wish, and optionally use the Excel file at home between sessions, but they've found that the benefits of having it during play far outweigh the bother of bringing a laptop or tablet. Admittedly, it's a bit of a hassle if one wants to have the newest version at all times. You either have to copy all the data from the old document to the new one (takes about 5 minutes) or replicate the steps described in the change log (can take 10 seconds for the simplest upgrades, or several hours if you insist on upgrading through many versions manually). When I GM, I offer to do the upgrades for my players. It's a win-win: The players get the newest version without having to do anything themselves, and I get to take a look at the character sheet, which I may not have done otherwise. I find it useful to know as much as possible about the PCs. Minor upgrades can come as often as once per week. These are usually addition or error correction of a single formula, the need for which I discovered during the latest session. Major upgrades rarely come more than once every other month, and usually include new features. Users can interpret the difference between minor and major upgrades as whether it will be faster to upgrade by copying the data or replicating the change log. If people outside of my game groups start using the Character Sheet, I'm open to suggestions, both regarding what's in the document, and concerning upgrade schemes. Things work differently over the internet than face-to-face.
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You don't need to spend 100 CP on Status 5 [25] and Multimillionaire [75] to feel like a princess, when Delusion [-10] will do. Or, you can run so far away that Status and Wealth don't apply anymore... Character sheet: Google Drive link (See this thread for details.) Campaign logs: Chaotic Pioneering / Confessions of a Forked Tongue / A Doe Among Wolves |
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#8 |
Join Date: Feb 2019
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Have you thought about converting it to a google sheet?
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#9 |
Join Date: Apr 2018
Location: Trondheim, Norway
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Not really. There hasn't been a need for it in my gaming groups. But if it could be done easily, that would make it accessible to more people.
You made me curious, so I tried just now to open it as a Google Sheet from Google Drive, but it didn't work out, unfortunately. Without analyzing it in detail, the main problem (or at least the one that pops out at me) seems to be that many custom defined names got lost in translation, and that broke a lot of formulas and data validations. If it had worked, that would have been great, but even if everything had looked all right, that wouldn't have meant that some bugs hadn't emerged. Thorough testing would be required. Doing the project as a Google Sheet from the start might have worked better, but I'm far more experienced with Excel programming, so I didn't consider Google Sheet as a serious alternative. The project is open source*, so if anyone wants to try a manual conversion or rebuilding it from scratch as a Google Sheet, they are welcome to do so**. Whenever I release a new version of the Character Sheet, the attached change log could be useful if the Google Sheet version is to be kept up to date. * You need to unhide sheets, columns and rows, as well as opening the name manager, to find all the code. ** I'd appreciate it if my name and this thread are mentioned in the credits. Also, please remember to read SJGames' policy for player created content. By the way, version 11.0 was released yesterday :)
__________________
You don't need to spend 100 CP on Status 5 [25] and Multimillionaire [75] to feel like a princess, when Delusion [-10] will do. Or, you can run so far away that Status and Wealth don't apply anymore... Character sheet: Google Drive link (See this thread for details.) Campaign logs: Chaotic Pioneering / Confessions of a Forked Tongue / A Doe Among Wolves |
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#10 |
Join Date: Feb 2019
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I play a lot of games using the google sheets. I was able to copy the excel into google sheets, but you are correct about the formulas breaking because of the name ranges, however, I have not seen any further issues, albeit that I have not looked very closely since I just found it today, but I will see what I can do to help. I am not as familiar with the google sheets formulas, but I will be interested in attempting.
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Tags |
character sheet, game aid |
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