BlackKnight wrote:

Looks good, I was thinking that you should put the Turn undead on the same sheet as the Spell tracking sheet, But then Paladin... (Though Eventually, he'll get spells, but not for a long time after starting).

You just went through my entire thought process, point by point. It was a tough decision!

Ghul wrote:

Hello friends,

So, here is my work-in-progress 3E character sheet. The concept this time around is a simplistic, non-artistic design. Everything is presented in two pages, which, if you use two-sided printing, will fit on a single sheet of paper. I am doing two more sheets -- a spell tracker (for sorcerers) and an experience point tracker / random notes sheet. I'm still tinkering around with all of it, but I figured I'd share my current work with my august peers here at the forums before making any official announcements. Print it out and see what you think!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OgTIpmcwsMmybWbonNvizD8afoh4ZvOY/view?usp=sharing

Cheers,
Jeff T.

Looks pretty as the base sheet. I’m looking forward to the additional two pages!

Spider of Leng wrote:

As I've said many times I greatly prefer a two-page sheet to anything longer.  It would be cool to have one for casters too, but that would obviously entail a fair degree of tinkering.  But they are out there.  I still use my old Armory sheets from the early 90s for just this reason.  Castles & Crusades also has a decent two page sheet that includes space for spells.  Ditching the character sketch can help free up space.

The problem is, sure, you can shrink this or that, or remove the character portrait / symbol area (which is fun -- that would be a shame!), but for a game like HYPERBOREA, how much can you fit for spell casters who are beyond level 1 or 2? A priest has eight spells by level 2! We've got spells known and spells memorized -- there just isn't enough space unless we start eliminating other sections, which I'm reluctant to do. I've seen some of these sheets that amazingly cram everything needed for the respective system onto two pages, but everything is SO TINY. I'm not a fan of it in the practical sense of real playing utility, maybe because I'm older now and have no patience for tiny writing that doesn't fit in the field it's intended for. 

Notwithstanding, I sympathize with your POV! I like a two-page record, too, all contained on a double-sided single sheet of paper. So, my compromise was this: We can have a single sheet for 11 classes (becomes 9 once paladins and rangers can start casting spells), and 15 classes (again, later becomes 17) can have the extra sheet reserved for tracking spells. 
 

As someone a little (a lot) concerned (ocd) with players being consistent with how/where they record info the little notes about what goes where are greatly appreciated. Very fond of this sheet. 

Awesome, I'm a fan of how clean this sheet is and how it is shaping up!

I think of the character sheet as one of the primary user-interfaces for everyone playing the game at the table. Some of my immediate thoughts of usability that are hopefully constructive, but certainly subjective!

- As the combat matrix is the most often referenced item on the character sheet, having it towards the middle of the page makes quick recall slightly more taxing on a player, versus having it under the weapon combat table. I believe a typical flow for reference would also originate from the weapon combat table, looking for modifiers, and then moving on to the combat matrix - where a "underneith" grouping feels natural

- The various bits currently of italicized helper text are fantastic! For example "Apply weapon's "Attack Modifier" to d20 attack roll". It reminds me of Steve Krug's "Don't make me think" in that players at the table are going to be in a hurry to accomplish the task right before them, and guides like these help reduce cognitive load. The mothership character sheet is a fantastic example of this done to an extreme - tho, I don't think that would work here.
Some possible similar text could be adding the exchange rate for currency to the gold standard.

- Speaking of the currency part - a potential "prettying" formatting change that would free up room to write in those larger sums of gold: moving the shorthand formats to suffixes and having them be all right-aligned (and possibly slightly muted so they could be written over if desired).
e.g.
`Gold (gp): 100` becomes `Gold: 100 gp`
Which allows taking advantage of the proximity effect for the shorthands, since it gives the ability for them to be vertically aligned together. Similar to page 1 with the "%"'s built in

- Going from one gestalt principle to another, the "continuation" of the character sheet is fantastic in regards to the combat section on the bottom of page one, and generally quite strong on all of page 2. The top half of page 1 reads as one large section, but is comprised of 6 subsections. Playing with distance between the sections and potential dividers or other clues would help the eyes more quickly understand what they're looking at.

- The connection of score to boxes and how they relate is great! One of the complaints of the 2e character sheet that came up last weekend when running our first 3e game was that the disjointed alignment on the items made it difficult to quickly find. I think an easy change here that would make it even better would be removing the attribute shorthands and just strengthening the proximate relations to those attributes.
I would raise a question if having # of bonus languages is useful on the character sheet, versus just having an italicized or similar text augmenting the languages box with something akin to "Languages modified by intelligence".

- The physique block, perhaps coupled with the place of origin, feel like they should belong next to the character portrait? I'm not certain how strongly I feel on this, and think it is more my brain saying "page 2 is less often used information" and mentally grouping them together.

- In the attack rate column, it would be aesthetically pleasing, and also perhaps provide an opportunity for reinforcement of concept, to put the "/" in the block for the player to fill out either side of the rate. Similar to how the "%"'s and "/6"'s are above.

- I also wonder if there is a way to bake in "unskilled weapon attack penalty" into the weapon combat chart - perhaps as it's own line with the other pieces grey'd out? That would require two vertical lines of real-estate to accomplish, and may not be worth the space/effort.

Sorry for the semi wall of text - mixing usability, psychology, design aesthetics, and super awesome ttrpg's together got me all excited!

I love all the comments and observations, and I am deeply appreciative of all the great suggestions and thoughts, but between the comments I've received from close friends, emails I've received from various gaming peers, and some social media direct messages, the following has become abundantly clear to me: We are all a crusty, opinionated lot who share a love for gaming but have some wildly differing views on how a sheet should be organized. I love it, though, because it means you guys enjoy the game, are invested in its usage and utility, and that it means something to you. If I posted a character sheet and then heard crickets, then it would imply the HYPERBOREA is yet another game that people may pick up but ultimately relegate to a shelf relic. I'm certainly guilty of doing the same for a great many games. I swear, one of these days I will run a Cyborg Commando game, for instance! ;) 

All that being said, I do intend to study lykathea's points more closely. Oh, and welcome to the forums! 

EDIT: Oh, and one more thing I have heard time and time again -- our eyes are failing! ;)

  

Last edited by Ghul (1/09/2022 11:40 am)

Ghul, yea, I think lykathea made some good points. I've also been meaning to re-read them as well.

In general I think it's an "improvement" over the 2e. Have a "base" sheet for that covers things needed by all classed and a "supplemental" sheet for the rest is not a bad thing I think.

Mostly to see if I can "improve" my markdown character sheet. Only really useful to me probably. Since I have one campaign that I use github for stuff.

It's "easier" for us to use this (we are all IT people) and are used to using github. However, I am working on a refactor of my pc_gen app and it will create this as an output as well, for those that might also be in this very, very small niche.

Anyhow, here's what it renders to:

https://github.com/gizmomathboy/hyperborea_apps/blob/main/Kallisto_Aelladoros.md

File Updated:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i0i1tdwPXFDlwQXt-dg5TV9_-VxgghXe/view?usp=sharing

Ghul wrote:

File Updated:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i0i1tdwPXFDlwQXt-dg5TV9_-VxgghXe/view?usp=sharing

Looks cool! Form-fillable coming soon? ;)