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RQ:G character sheets - too much art?


Psychman27

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On 2/10/2018 at 12:36 PM, MOB said:

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:

27545347_10156179892663336_4509073846155

That looks like a proper character sheet to me. Reminds me of the John Sapienza ones in RQ2.

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10 hours ago, Jeff said:

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.

Good that there will be both. ☺️

(My post was about clean sheet not being a grognard thing, but I let the matter rest ☺️).

 

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18 hours 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

Correct. 

You're looking at the un-modified initial version of the color sheet.

In fact, that picture is of the first version, and many small tweaks have already been made. Many more will be made, including intensity balancing for areas where the image interacts with text. 

 

 

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On 2/10/2018 at 10:36 PM, MOB said:

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:

27545347_10156179892663336_4509073846155

Absolutely love the artistic flavour of the coloured character sheet; but it just feels way too detailed for gameplay for me, much like the new CONAN sheet.

However this one above reminds me a bit of RQ3, and MW, and it will be the version at my table. Looks sensible, nice and clear.

(Now it's time for me to tell those damn kids to get off my lawn heh heh)

Edited by Mankcam

" 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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On 2/10/2018 at 8:58 AM, 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.

One of my players worked in a print shop. They did a photo stencil and ran off a ream of sheets on an old gestetner. It was some kind of clone of the Sapienza sheet with a nicer font and proper lines instead of typewriter style dots.

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1 hour ago, Numtini said:

One of my players worked in a print shop. They did a photo stencil and ran off a ream of sheets on an old gestetner. It was some kind of clone of the Sapienza sheet with a nicer font and proper lines instead of typewriter style dots.

I did about 14 months in a print shop in the 1980s myself, and was much beloved for my access to tools that could do so as well.  I made myself a lovely black and white 'poster' of the 2-page Dragon Pass/Prax map in the back of RQ2.

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I'll be making my own, again.   I prefer the blank line for the skill to be in front of the skill name, that way it's close, instead of far to the right where it might be difficult to tell which number goes to what skill.

Ugh. tick boxes.  I created holes in my character sheets at those spots.  I also hated the tick rules.  Looks like I'll have another house rule to make.

 

Now, as a game store owner, pretty character sheets means more sales of "official" character sheet portfolios.  If you have those to sell, might want to make sure the customers can see some of the artsy character sheet through the shrink wrap to entice them to buy. 

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40 minutes ago, GamingGlen said:

Now, as a game store owner, pretty character sheets means more sales of "official" character sheet portfolios.  If you have those to sell, might want to make sure the customers can see some of the artsy character sheet through the shrink wrap to entice them to buy. 

Fascinating perspecetve, here!  Most fans I've seen hate -- and resent as a "crude and blatant cash-grab" -- these sorts of things.  But on the "customer is always right" POV... well, sounds like this is actually kinda popular...

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10 hours ago, GamingGlen said:

 

Now, as a game store owner, pretty character sheets means more sales of "official" character sheet portfolios.  If you have those to sell, might want to make sure the customers can see some of the artsy character sheet through the shrink wrap to entice them to buy. 

People buy them?  Seriously?

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2 hours ago, styopa said:

People buy them?  Seriously?

<shrugs>  He just said so, and as a FLGS owner he's in a better position to know than you (I presume you aren't a FLGS owner) or I.

Like you, I've seldom heard anything but disparagement.

 

I've got a spare rocking-chair and a cane, if you wanna join me in screaming "get off our lawn!" at these young slackers who buy ready-made "pretty" character sheets...

Bring your own Metamucil.

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attractive character sheets are a great way to introduce the game to new players and help set the tone for casual players. I think the colour sheets look great and would use them for pick up games and the like. I've long since given up using character sheets for campaign play as I find serious players will each have their own style and preference. 

The B&W would make great work sheets though for the initial stages of character building.

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1 hour ago, g33k said:

<shrugs>  He just said so, and as a FLGS owner he's in a better position to know than you (I presume you aren't a FLGS owner) or I.

Like you, I've seldom heard anything but disparagement.

 

I've got a spare rocking-chair and a cane, if you wanna join me in screaming "get off our lawn!" at these young slackers who buy ready-made "pretty" character sheets...

Bring your own Metamucil.

I'll sit there beside ya, but near the cash register, and yell "Buy my stuff, ya young whippersnappers!  Why, back in my day we had to chisel our character sheets out of rock slabs!" , while sipping some strong drink laced with Geritol.  Never mind, skip the Geritol.

You haven't seen the fancy D&D5e character portfolios?   It's got a plastic cover and inside are pocket protector sheets for spell cards.   

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13 hours ago, g33k said:

Fascinating perspecetve, here!  Most fans I've seen hate -- and resent as a "crude and blatant cash-grab" -- these sorts of things.  But on the "customer is always right" POV... well, sounds like this is actually kinda popular...

I think it’s only really a cash grab if there’s no ‘download and print yourself’ option.

Simon Hibbs

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13 hours ago, g33k said:

Fascinating perspecetve, here!  Most fans I've seen hate -- and resent as a "crude and blatant cash-grab" -- these sorts of things.  But on the "customer is always right" POV... well, sounds like this is actually kinda popular...

The real blatant cash grab is the special dice you have to buy to play some of the new games.  The new Star Wars RPG has them with special symbols, the new Star Trek Adventures RPG has 3 color sets of D20s and D6s, gold, blue, and red (based off color of TOS uniforms).  The Star Wars RPG has a "role-playing" die, depending on what it rolls tells you if you sort of were successful or failed so you can add a bit of color to the action (I swung across the gap in the Death Star but almost fell backwards into the abyss before catching onto the door edge).  Or something like that, I never really learned the full details.  My response to that is, with a 2 die system (works for Traveller also) if you roll doubles that can have a similar effect.  RQ has this: a 99 or 00 is a drastic failure. :) 

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5 minutes ago, GamingGlen said:

The real blatant cash grab is the special dice you have to buy to play some of the new games.  The new Star Wars RPG has them with special symbols, the new Star Trek Adventures RPG has 3 color sets of D20s and D6s, gold, blue, and red (based off color of TOS uniforms).  The Star Wars RPG has a "role-playing" die, depending on what it rolls tells you if you sort of were successful or failed so you can add a bit of color to the action (I swung across the gap in the Death Star but almost fell backwards into the abyss before catching onto the door edge).  Or something like that, I never really learned the full details.  My response to that is, with a 2 die system (works for Traveller also) if you roll doubles that can have a similar effect.  RQ has this: a 99 or 00 is a drastic failure. :) 

We played Fate in our group not too long ago and I went looking for some Fate dice. Now I don't mind supporting game developers, heck, I purchased the BRP Gold Book numbered unedited edition (that's the 285/420 BRP book in my sig), just so I could have it and have bought both a softcover and hardcover version of the final release, but when I saw the price of the Fate dice, I just used some of my d6s and let my GM know, 1 & 2 were minus, 3 & 4 were nothing and 5 & 6 were plus. Worked really well for me.

Edited by Skunkape
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2 hours ago, GamingGlen said:

I'll sit there beside ya, but near the cash register, and yell "Buy my stuff, ya young whippersnappers!  Why, back in my day we had to chisel our character sheets out of rock slabs!" , while sipping some strong drink laced with Geritol.  Never mind, skip the Geritol.

You haven't seen the fancy D&D5e character portfolios?   It's got a plastic cover and inside are pocket protector sheets for spell cards.   

Spell cards.  /facepalm.  Don't get me wrong, I get their utility.  It's just so... foreign.

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At least fate dice are easily emulated with a regular D6. Not so much with Star Wars dice.

Back to RQ:G. I'd like to see something in between the colored full graphic sheets and the plain boxes. The plain sheet is almost punitively plain. How about a little artistic flair to the frames and a less utilitarian font.

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I use graph paper...in a pinch unlined printer paper or standard lined paper works just as well. It's a blank canvas on which to put whatever your heart desires.

As a GM I will only provide premade sheets that are four to a page size. It says to the players "I need to get a bigger piece of paper or print my own if I want to keep playing."

In all seriousness, I think no matter the game you should be able to fit everything for a character on one side of a sheet of standard paper. Anything more than one side of one page is an abomination. We play these games for fun, not to emulate our jobs in the real world.

 

EDIT: In before "what about x?" comments.

 

If whatever you need to write on there is going to take up a lot of space, I have found writing the page number in the book as a referential shorthand to be a great space and time saving practice. In most games, special abilities that are not used often or have a number of special conditions are the only things most people need to look for in a book during a session.

Edited by tedopon

121/420

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10 minutes ago, tedopon said:

If whatever you need to write on there is going to take u a lot of space, I have found writing the page number in the book as a referential shorthand to be a great space and time saving practice. In most games, special abilities that are not used often or have a number of special conditions are the only things most people need to look for in a book during a session.

Yeah, I do this too!

Sometimes you need a bit more than a page-number -- e.g. if I'm using some form of expansion/supplement/splatbook I might note "Expn1/P42" or "Supp3/P105" or the like.  Some game-lines virtually mandate a "Title/PageNo" format unless you HR a "core only" limit.

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3 hours ago, styopa said:

Spell cards.  /facepalm.  Don't get me wrong, I get their utility.  It's just so... foreign.

There, there, Styopa.  <pats shoulder sympathetically>  You can just play a Praxian, and use Khan of Khans cards instead!

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If you really want to know how we feel about the range of character sheets that will be available for RQ, please take a look at chaosium.com in the free downloads section for CoC character sheets. There are fancy ones, plain ones, in between ones, auto-calc ones, to name just some of the ones available.

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On 2/13/2018 at 8:10 PM, styopa said:

People buy them?  Seriously?

I bought a pad of Games Workshop RQ2 character sheets in the 80s when we were all still poor and happy. Used them sparingly until I only had a few left, then I started photocopying them, until I had too many RQ3 rules in my game. I recently (well, a few years ago) bought another copy of the Games Workshop RQ2 softcover and was pleasantly surprised to find an unused original of the sheets tucked inside. :)

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Character sheets in any RPG are always the subject of heated discussion. Fancy, plain, not enough info, font too big font too small, should be serif, should be readable, font is not readable, I'm colour-blind I can't see this bit of the sheet or that bit, too much info, no space for a pic, hate spaces for a pic. single sided, double sided, or single sheets. Character portfolios, homemade or bought, needs an inkjet, needs a laser, has self calculating fields, has fields, is a rights enabled form-fillable pdf, why do I need pdf, wrong version of pdf, only works with acrobat, is too big to email, is too big for a tablet, is for US A4, is for UK A4 is some weird size that wastes my paper, ink, toner, time filling it in, is landscape, folds in a weird way to make a three column leaflett, has character generation info I don't need, has character generation info I do need, has character generation info I don't need but you do, doesn't work for my race, career, etc, not enough room for my spells, too much room for my spells, hit location table, actual pic of person with hit location table, but no duck version, troll version, female version, why did you buy those when plain paper will do, has a giant graphic I don't need, has no space for my name, not enough space for my character's name and middle name and surname, a spreadsheet is the best, a spreadsheet is the worst, this spreadsheet doesn't work properly in Excel, Google Docs, Numbers, ... Have I missed anything?

It's an entirely personal thing. At our group over the last 30 years I think I've heard all of the above. We're a diverse group playing a wide range or old and new stuff. I've just been playing Iron Kingdoms - fancy sheet, looks good, works well, but the hit point section was a bizarre unreadable spirally thing. The biggest problem we have is that the light levels where we meet are so low that you often can't read you character sheet without extra light. So please guys just make it self illuminating or I won't buy any of your product again.

Edited by David Scott
added spreadsheet section - I hate spreadsheet character sheets, they always look bad.
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