RQ:G character sheets - too much art?

[Psychman27]

I just read the new Designing the new RuneQuest article, really good to hear that progress continues apace! One fastest raised slight concerns though - whole the character sheet design looks gorgeous, it would be a heavy load on a personal printer as shown. Are the team including graphically lighter presentations of the character sheet along with the full art version? 

 

Modiphius did it well with their Conan rpg, the had a full art sheet, but alongside that also had the same sheet black-and-white, and a sheet with just the structure and mechanical content but no art. All of which were in form-fillable pdf so that the sheet could be continually updated and saved between sessions. 

 

I am just looking for reassurance that that or a similar approach is being followed by Chaosium. Full colour printing of a sheet before each session could become very expensive!  

[g33k]

Agreed.

Also -- the column of spaces for skill-scores has runes as a background ...  UGH.  From prior experience of text-under-text (even when they are very different symbols) I can confidently report this is often hard to deal with.  I personally (and many others in the group) found this ranged from "problematic" to "completely unusable" (others had no problem with it).  At a minimum, I hope the final version has this MUCH more faded than how it appears in the sample pic...

I suppose the "just structure ... no art" version (as suggested by Psychman27, above) will serve this purpose.

 

[goldenwheeldancer]

I like the sheet a lot but I agree about the runes in the skill columns.

[Jeff]

I've found that newer and more casual players tend to really like the arty character sheets. Old grognards tend to like clear and plain character sheets. So we have both. But I suspect despite the comments here, the arty character sheet will get downloaded far more often than the clear sheet.

[Psychman27]

Will they be editable form-fillable? That, for me, is absolutely essential. 

[Y Mab Darogan]

I’m probably qualified as an old gamer and I love the CS, definitely print that out...just using the work printer 

[Al.]

At first glance that LOOKS like a signifiant paring down of the skills list. Then I realised that those are only the 'Knowledge' skills. Then I realised what my first house rule will be for RQG.

It is a gorgeous looking character sheet.

[MOB]

1 hour ago, Jeff said:

I've found that newer and more casual players tend to really like the arty character sheets. Old grognards tend to like clear and plain character sheets. So we have both. But I suspect despite the comments here, the arty character sheet will get downloaded far more often than the clear sheet.

As Jeff says, there is a plain text B&W character sheet as well. Here's the same section as the colour image that was posted:

[styopa]

Very nice art.

Grognards remember when "printing" a document was something you paid someone else to do, so character sheets had to endure sometimes years of constant erasures, etc.

Whippersnappers today just fill out the online form* on their phones, tablets, or browsers and dump it to handy color printer s everyone seems to have.

*there will be a fillable PDF, yes?

[jongjom]

I much prefer the arty character sheet, but would like the space where the skill numbers go to be clear. Could that not be an option? 

Edited February 10, 2018 by jongjom
Typo

[Jeff]

15 minutes ago, styopa said:

Very nice art.

Grognards remember when "printing" a document was something you paid someone else to do, so character sheets had to endure sometimes years of constant erasures, etc.

Whippersnappers today just fill out the online form* on their phones, tablets, or browsers and dump it to handy color printer s everyone seems to have.

*there will be a fillable PDF, yes?

Yes, there will be a fillable PDF.

[Psychman27]

3 hours ago, Jeff said:

I've found that newer and more casual players tend to really like the arty character sheets. Old grognards tend to like clear and plain character sheets. So we have both. But I suspect despite the comments here, the arty character sheet will get downloaded far more often than the clear sheet.

Personally, my sweet spot would be black-and-white with medium art. Enough to give flavour, but not overwhelming on the printer. Still, good to know there's plain as well as full colour, and a form-fillable.

 

Which one will be form-fillable, or will it be both? (Please both!) 

Edited February 10, 2018 by Psychman27
Adjusting for clarity re form-fillable status

[Trotsky]

As someone who will be returning to Runequest after a 35 year break with the upcoming new edition, I really like the look of the new character sheets. I agree there must be a balance between form and function but a beautifully presented character sheet just adds to player immersion.  

[Richard S.]

I would speak on this topic as one of the few younger gamers around here, in favor of plain sheets, but I guess RQ2 was still my first system and that could make me more biased. The new character sheets certainly look nice, will we ever get stuff like this for classic?

[Jason D]

9 hours ago, Psychman27 said:

Modiphius did it well with their Conan rpg, the had a full art sheet, but alongside that also had the same sheet black-and-white, and a sheet with just the structure and mechanical content but no art. All of which were in form-fillable pdf so that the sheet could be continually updated and saved between sessions. 

As it happens, I work very closely with the Conan line manager, so I'll be paying close attention to the lessons he learned on that line. 

Edited February 10, 2018 by Jason Durall
Typo

[Yelm's Light]

4 hours ago, styopa said:

Grognards remember when "printing" a document was something you paid someone else to do, so character sheets had to endure sometimes years of constant erasures, etc.

Xerox, baby.  A dime a copy, unless you had access to one at work.  (Who, me?)

I still have a few sheets left over from the original run of 100 that I made, hiding in a campaign notebook...and that was with handing them out to players over the years.

[smiorgan]

10 hours ago, Jeff said:

I've found that newer and more casual players tend to really like the arty character sheets. Old grognards tend to like clear and plain character sheets. So we have both. But I suspect despite the comments here, the arty character sheet will get downloaded far more often than the clear sheet.

My printer likes the clean sheet. 

And yes yes comments here are made only by a non representative bunch of old grognards as you have often reminded us.

This may well be true, but for instance the D&D5 sheet is quite clean. Probably D&D5 is a game played only by a bunch of old farts. 🤔

 

Edited February 10, 2018 by smiorgan

[g33k]

12 hours ago, Yelm's Light said:

Xerox, baby.  A dime a copy, unless you had access to one at work.  (Who, me?)

Just lpr a few off of the PDP-11/70.... either blanks or do 'em via the random PC/NPC generator, your choice.  Easy!   

 

[Jeff]

10 hours ago, smiorgan said:

My printer likes the clean sheet. 

And yes yes comments here are made only by a non representative bunch of old grognards as you have often reminded us.

This may well be true, but for instance the D&D5 sheet is quite clean. Probably D&D5 is a game played only by a bunch of old farts. 🤔

 

As Mob has already said, we'll have the clean character sheet as well. It seems with some commentators, the mere existence of an artsy character sheet that they don't need to use is too much.

[SDLeary]

22 hours ago, goldenwheeldancer said:

I like the sheet a lot but I agree about the runes in the skill columns.

Same here. Perhaps if they were taken down a few more %, so writing could contrast better.

SDLeary

[Yelm's Light]

2 hours ago, g33k said:

Just lpr a few off of the PDP-11/70.... either blanks or do 'em via the random PC/NPC generator, your choice.  Easy!   

Funny...I actually used to do work on a PDP-11.  Much easier and neater to copy the Sapienza sheet, though.

Edited February 11, 2018 by Yelm's Light

[jongjom]

Could Chaosium please respond to the comments about the runes / glyphs in the skills % column. Did they find that on their copies the runes / glyphs did not interfere with play testers' ease to read the skill %? 

[SDLeary]

1 minute ago, jongjom said:

Could Chaosium please respond to the comments about the runes / glyphs in the skills % column. Did they find that on their copies the runes / glyphs did not interfere with play testers' ease to read the skill %? 

They didn't respond specifically to the runes issue, but did say that they were going to both have an artsy character sheet, and a B&W one. My guess is that what we are looking at is probably preliminary, and will probably go through final tweaks.

SDLeary

[jongjom]

1 minute ago, SDLeary said:

They didn't respond specifically to the runes issue, but did say that they were going to both have an artsy character sheet, and a B&W one. My guess is that what we are looking at is probably preliminary, and will probably go through final tweaks.

SDLeary

That's my hope. The artsy one looks great, but tweaking it to make it more usable and easier to read the better. 

[g33k]

If they released a full-layers version, instead of flattened to a single layer, different elements could be rendered more-or-less transparent according to the tastes of each user.

Users would need a layers-capable editor, of course.

But it would AFAIK hit a new high-note in the industry, in terms of giving their customers "exactly what they want."