Redesigning your own player character sheet for a tabletop roleplaying game is frustrating to say the least about the endeavor. Depending on your knowledge of how to use the office program, this can be a frustrating side project to engage in since unexpected problems can arise. Yeah, I designed a character sheet as well as other forms for other purposes such as the stronghold sheet, the custom monster sheet, et cetera. Currently, I am designing an animal companion sheet and a spellbook sheet. I hit a writer's block sort of a wall regarding my spellbook sheet since I wanted to number every line of the spellbook's contents by inserting a field but I keep running into problems. I will figure something out but I hate the alternative of typing stuff up manually over 100 lines. UGH!
So why did I write up all of these forms? Well, back in 2006 approximately, I was really frustrated with the design of the character sheet in the back of the book for some reason. I think the issue I had was how they tried to cram everything onto two pages of paper. Then they did the same thing in the expanded psionics book in the back, and then in the Incarnum book as well. I wanted to combine all of these rules, but create separate sheets for each type of character.
I ended up creating a 10 page file. WOW right? A general character sheet for pages 1 & 2, a Basic Magic sheet for 3 & 4, an incarnum sheet for 5 & 6, a psionics sheet for 7 & 8, and then a cleric/paladin sheet for 9 & 10. It works very well generally, but I keep reviewing the file to find ways to tweak the form to design it to trim down certain sections or clean up the look of the sheet. Microsoft Word can be a little unforgiving at times so I try to save often.
Then I discovered the printer margin problem, so I had the help of the officemax people to resave the file in a PDF format. I was proud of my work but at the same time I felt a little bit of embarrassed. I think about 95 % proud of my work for hearing the praise from the officemax worker but 5% embarrassed for how crazy and geeky I sounded describing my work. I wasn't sure but the guy sounded like he was pretending to be fan of tabletop roleplaying.
So now I am tweaking the character sheet file as well as designing a spellbook statistics sheet and an animal companion sheet. Yeah, a little bit of a headache but in the end I think the efforts are rewarding. The game is about adding unique presentations and roleplaying afterall, so adding flair in description and design can be fun afterall. Even if printing the pages out at the Officemax makes you feel proud to be a geek. YAY!
PS: My document files are a trade secret so I won't share my files with just anyone.
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