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[BRP Space] Smartphone Character Sheet


clarence

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In recent months I have, for various reasons, kept character sheets on my iPhone while playing. It's worked surprisingly well, using the annotation function in Evernote to keep track of changes. 

But the constant moving and zooming around the sheets made it a bit cumbersome after a while, so I have designed a smartphone-sized character sheet in PDF. It's made to fit an iPhone screen, but I'm sure it will work fine on most devices. 

The PDF consists of eight pages: Characteristics, Combat, one page for each skill category, Powers and Equipment. Fonts are big enough for easy reading and empty space generous, to make editing less fiddly on a small screen. Color coding is used to make navigation between the pages easier. 

Stats are for BRP Space, but as it's based on the BGB it will fit reasonably well with other games too. 

I also couldn't resist trying it out as a small printed folder - see photos below! I can see this come in handy in a crammed space. 

Let me know what you think of it. Are smartphones banned from your gaming table or is this solution something you could use? Is a "character folder" an interesting development?

 

Characteristics.jpgPerception.jpgCombat.jpg

IMG_8750.JPG

 

Edited by clarence
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M–SPACE   d100 Roleplaying in the Far Future

Odd Soot  Science Fiction Mystery in the 1920s

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Here's the complete set:

Complete set.jpg

When it's folded, characteristics go on the front and player/description on the back. It measures 120x70 mm.

For the digital version I tried to place characteristics in the middle, with skills on the pages to the right and combat plus the rest on the left - to minimize flicking. The problem is that most PDF readers ignore the command to open a file at anything but the first page. For now the digital version will have the same order as the printed one, until I find a workaround.

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1683589267_frostbyteloggaFsvarttiny2.jpg.22ebd7480630737e74be9c2c9ed8039f.jpg   FrostByte Books

M–SPACE   d100 Roleplaying in the Far Future

Odd Soot  Science Fiction Mystery in the 1920s

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I'm happy you like it! With BRP Space getting closer to publication, I could release these too I suppose. If there's enough interest. A simple PDF as a free download and prints to buy. 

A question for all of you: If I print them, should the back side be kept neutral or contain, for example, rules and tables for the players?

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M–SPACE   d100 Roleplaying in the Far Future

Odd Soot  Science Fiction Mystery in the 1920s

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4 minutes ago, clarence said:

With BRP Space getting closer to publication ...

Now this is excellent news !   :D :D:D

As for your question, I am one of those people who prefer PDFs (a matter of storage space in a small apartment ...), so I leave the answer to the potential customers of the printed version.

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"Mind like parachute, function only when open."

(Charlie Chan)

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Wow !!!

All that's needed is a character portrait / digital picture import, and perhaps some genre/setting 'skins' for flavour

This is really cool innovative stuff - go professional with this if possible !!!

Edited by Mankcam
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" Sure it's fun, but it is also well known that a D20 roll and an AC is no match against a hefty swing of a D100% and a D20 Hit Location Table!"

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7 hours ago, Mankcam said:

All that's needed is a character portrait / digital picture import, and perhaps some genre/setting 'skins' for flavour

Unfortunately, this is hardly doable with a PDF. A micro-app could in fact do this, although you might lose compatibility with PC/Mac/Linux platforms in this way. But given the format, it is already thought for mobile platforms only. And giving it more interactivity would be a big plus, again obtainable with a mini-app.

Proud member of the Evil CompetitionTM

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14 minutes ago, RosenMcStern said:

Unfortunately, this is hardly doable with a PDF.

The best attempt I've seen at that sort of thing is Greg Porter's EABA, which has all manner of bells and whistles built in. Unfortunately, on mobile platforms only one iOS app handles it well and virtually nothing for Android copes adequately. If you're aiming primarily for a portable system then I'd be wary of getting too fancy with the PDF. 

Edited by BigJackBrass
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Yes, I have thought about turning it into an app too. Here’s what it could look like:

APP Characteristics.jpg

Bottom left corner: Tap to roll 1d100.

Bottom right corner: Tap to unfold a menu with additional dice (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20).

Bottom middle: App menu containing save/load character, create random character, show EDU on/off, etcetera).

Characteristics work like this: Tap-&-hold to enter starting value. During play, slide from the left edge to reduce the characteristic temporarily (as in Revolution d100 - I rarely play without this concept of characteristics as “conflict pools” any longer). A character’s overall health can be grasped at a glance by the size of the stacks.

Skills are simply represented by their values, entered by tap-&-hold. Base chances for skills should ideally be added automatically. Tap empty box for skill usage to the right; this adds a checkmark.

Unfortunately I have no idea how to code an app. All suggestions welcome : )

@Vexthug Aha, pocket mod looks interesting!

On 11 juni 2016 at 9:35 PM, rust said:

Now this is excellent news !   :D :D:D

Stay tuned, more information very soon : )

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M–SPACE   d100 Roleplaying in the Far Future

Odd Soot  Science Fiction Mystery in the 1920s

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22 hours ago, clarence said:

Are there any coders here on the forum?

Clarence,

I know enough Perl scripting to write random number and character generators to use on a command line (available on my website) but nothing about app development. Perl can be made to run on Android tablets but I'm sure a better alternative could be found (Python, maybe, which is on my list of "things to make and do").

Colin

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You could consider using Xamarin (based on MonoDevelop, now owned by Microsoft) - Info here.

"With a C#-shared codebase, developers can use Xamarin tools to write native Android, iOS, and Windows apps with native user interfaces and share code across multiple platforms."

Also targets MacOS and Linux. Not sure how the licensing currently stands.

Edited by dragonewt
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  • 3 weeks later...
On 14/06/2016 at 5:40 PM, clarence said:

Are there any coders here on the forum?

Slight necro on this thread (sorry). I've been working with Python over the last few weeks and, so far, I have a script that will do something like this:

223 colin@rokk> ./brp_chargen.py -r human
Characteristics
    STR [7] CON [9] SIZ [16] INT [14] POW [9] DEX [13] APP [12] EDU [10] 
Characteristic Rolls
    Effort 35% Stamina 45% Idea 70% Luck 45% Agility 65% Charisma 60% Know 50% 
MW Skill Category Modifiers
    Physical 4% Communication 6% Knowledge 7% Manipulation 7% Perception 5% 
BRP Skill Category Bonuses
    Combat 4% Communication 5% Manipulation 4% Mental 4% Perception 4% Physical -1% 
224 colin@rokk> 
It generates basic stats for humans, Elves and Dwarfs, calculates their Idea, Luck (etc) rolls and the bonuses or penalties of skill categories for BRP and Magic World-style skill groups.

The next step is to "appify" it to run on Android - iPhone is beyond me I'm afraid. Once I have that accomplished, I can add skill generators and dice rollers as needed. But I really need to see BRP Space in its final form (whether BRP-based, BRP Essentials-based or whatever) before I can get into the details.

I can make the scripts available if anyone (maybe Questbird?) is interested.

Regards,

Colin

 

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9 hours ago, ColinBrett said:

Slight necro on this thread (sorry). I've been working with Python over the last few weeks and, so far, I have a script that will do something like this:

223 colin@rokk> ./brp_chargen.py -r human

It generates basic stats for humans, Elves and Dwarfs, calculates their Idea, Luck (etc) rolls and the bonuses or penalties of skill categories for BRP and Magic World-style skill groups.

I can make the scripts available if anyone (maybe Questbird?) is interested.

Definitely interested, Colin.

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13 hours ago, ColinBrett said:

I've been working with Python over the last few weeks and, so far, I have a script that will do something like this...

You could use the Godot Engine (free). It uses GDScript, which is loosely based on Python, and so it should be fairly easy to port your code.

The main benefit is that Godot targets (makes programs for) many platforms:

  • Mobile platforms: iOS, Android, BlackBerry OS
  • Desktop platforms: Windows, OS X, Linux, *BSD, Haiku
  • Web Platforms: HTML5 (via Emscripten)
  • One-click deploy & export to most platforms. Easy to create custom builds too.

More information:

There are a lot of tool kits out there, but this is one of the few that has a Python-like language, and easily creates for (and can be used on) many platforms without the need for complex and cobbled-together build environments.

An alternative would be something like Kivy (here).

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