[Visions of Gaslight] Character Sheet Draft, for Critique and Suggestions.

[Benjamin Grove]

Title says most of it actualy, here is a link to the image(keep in mind I have a High res version still inPhotoshop, and this is a draft, so its bare bones and lacking in pretty details and flourishes)

Just interested in peoples input, I already re-arranged it some based on prior suggestions.

[Benjamin Grove]

Helps if I actualy give the address I guess, sorry, its late, and I'm cute, forgive me.

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b166/Carpe-Mortem/Sheet.png

[Nathan P.]

Hey there,

I know nothing about this game, so take this as a cold test...

I like the title font a lot, actually.

Experience (Experiance), Intellect (Intelect) and Presence (Prescence) are all misspelled.

Is there any reason not to add more lines to the Spells area in order to put the bottom line of the Taint boxes on the same level as the left hand column?

You might want more space between Experience and Skills, or put one of them in a different font or style.

Is the black bar at the end of the box units intentional? It looks fine, I'm just curious.

It looks a little wierd to me that Wealth and Reputation jut out into the white space in the middle, but it's not a huge deal. I could see a cool little graphic either going in that column, or going on the right border and pushing some stuff into the middle. The white space is fine, this is mostly my aesthetic sense and not really a usability issue.

Hope thats helpful.

[Jack Aidley]

Hi,

I also know nothing about your game, so I can't tell if everything that needs to be there is on it.

Content observations:

* There is no player name box.
* Experience will be updated regularly, I'd therefore give it more space for crossing and rubbing out.
* There's no space for physical descriptions, or equipment.

The layout is very poor. I strongly recommend you pick up a copy of Robin Williams Non-Designer's Design Book for a good introduction to the important principles of layout. But, in particular:

* There is no contrast between heading text and subheading text. I suggest you consider putting titles in a heavy sans-serif font and the sub titles in a lighter serifed font. That should gvie a better contrast.
* The alignment is all over the place.
* You have failed to clearly group connected items.
* It's just very, very bland.

I hope this is helpful.

[Benjamin Grove]

Well, made some editations to her today. Its still going to be fairly bland put I hope she looks a little better now.

"For god's sake Jim, I'm a physics major not an artist"

[Nathan P.]

Mmm, very nice! Maybe you should try left-aligning everything in the right column, and doing any graphical prettiness on the ragged right-hand side, if any. I'd take a look at left-aligning that column anyway, its very "bottom-heavy" with the text lines being so much wider that the higher content. Again, maybe a little more vertical space between groups. At this point you may want to just play around with those kinds of things to see what you like best.

[Jack Aidley]

That's much improved! Much better use of alignment and whitespace and much better choice of font faces.

I'd left align the second column as well, and make the titles share a common centre line or (probably better still) right align them within the columns. Also I'd expand the sex___ and age__ sections to make them span to the same point as the other details grouped with them; ditto experience.

Good stuff.

[Benjamin Grove]

I have someone who is going to try to make some sort of illustration to fill the white space. I did a version left aligned after nathan suggested it. But all it did was move the big empty around, and I like haveing all the slots for trait numbers in a line. Perhaps haveing some sort of human figure in the middle there would be nice. Like a less overwhelming version of that they had on the 7th sea sheets.

Going to rename the wound bar to injury though... thats a sore thumb if I ever saw one

[Balbinus]

Some questions.

Why do you have age and gender on the sheet?  Gender is a very non-Victorian word and both arguably would go in the description anyway.  Are they important or are they there because most rpg sheets have space for that stuff?

How much equipment do you expect someone to note?  The space for it is very small, if there will be nothing noted but character defining or important stuff I'd personally suggest renaming it to something more appropriate (key possessions or some term or phrase which communicates that this is stuff that matters to the character, not how many pairs of boots they own).  If it is for more general equipment, it's far too small so I'd suggest putting it on the back as a second page.

Great font.

How many flaws and advantages will a typical character start with?  How long are the names and descriptions of flaws and advantages?  How many will an experienced character have?  Can you fit all those neatly into the space you have provided?

All those questions about flaws and advantages?  Same again for skills.  If a player can end up with more than ten skills then you don't have enough space.

Can you ever have more than one Thaumaturgy path?  If so, how does the player record the second one?

This looks like a fairly traditional sim game, that is in no way a criticism (in fact it's my play preference more often than not), but is that what you want?  What mood do you want for your game?  This sheet says to me that this is a game about Victorian occultists, that they face conflict and risk and that they may end up killed or perhaps worse corrupted by their own magics.  Is all that right?  If not, we should probably discuss the mood you are seeking to achieve.

Hope that helps.

[Balbinus]

A couple more thoughts.

I note that you added equipment and player name in response to feedback.  Both are open I think to question.

Equipment matters in some games, maybe even most games, but not in all.  If you are running a game in which a small and intrepid band of heroes venture underground into an abandoned tomb to seek glory and defeat evil, equipment choice may matter greatly to their prospects of success.  If you are running a game of privately wealthy Victorian occultists equipment may be largely irrelevant partly because it is far less key to what happens in play and partly because they can probably buy whatever they need whenever they need it.

So, do you need an equipment section at all?

Second, player name.  Most games have this, I'm not really sure why.  If you can't tell who's playing which character then I would suggest you're not playing the right game, if the characters are not sufficiently memorable to be distinguishable you have an issue a sheet won't fix.  If it's to help people remember who their character is, again if you need help it's probably time to generate a more interesting character.

[Benjamin Grove]

Very good point regarding the Equipment issue. Its probably goung to have to go.(might do a two page sheet, so that there is more room for background and description)

I've made some system changes and will likely redo it from the ground up anyway.

And as for the Player Name Buisness... I realy have no Idea... maybe its so people will know who to return it to if it gets lost?

???

[Josh Roby]

To echo Balbinus' points, I'd highly recommend you print up a dozen (no really, a dozen) of these and make twelve sample characters.  You will quickly find if you have some spaces that are too small or if there are things that should be on there but aren't!

[Jack Aidley]

I like having a player name on character sheets because I can usually manage to remember the names of my players while I may struggle to remember their character names for the first few sessions.

The content observations I made were, obviously, made without knowing what your game is about so you shouldn't take them as canon. You know better than I what should be on the sheet, I was just flagging up things I thought you might have accidently missed.

[Balbinus]

To echo Balbinus' points, I'd highly recommend you print up a dozen (no really, a dozen) of these and make twelve sample characters.  You will quickly find if you have some spaces that are too small or if there are things that should be on there but aren't!

This is a tremendous suggestion actually, very useful indeed I think.  I'd suggest giving this a go and letting us know if it flags anything up.