What about forms for character sheets ?

For some of my characters, I use the variable font size format with tables to get a more pleasantly looking character sheet; it is very readeable but not that more usable than fixed-font space-delimited sheets, because all the formatting (bold, italic, centers, etc...) is getting in the way when modifying data.

I have started to think about it, and I think there could be a system of ~xml templates with tables, formating etc... that would form a template for a charsheet, with the corresponding data kept in the database.

For example, a template could be something like (I put out the ending </table> to show the source):


Source:

<table>
<tr><td>Intelligence</td><td>##data1##</td></tr>
<tr><td>Strength</td><td>##data2##</td></tr>

Values for data1 and data2 would be kept in the database.
When a charsheet would be displayed, the ##data1## and ##data2## would be replaced by the corresponding values.
When a charsheet would be in modify mode, the data would be put in html form textboxes.

The GM would be allowed to choose if the players can choose or modify their template.
Data for a template would consist of a list of text values, so it is easy to apply the same data to any template.

I don't know if my explanation is clear enough :) Also, perhaps there have already been a lot of discussions on this subject that I am not aware of. I thought here was the right place to put those thoughts, all comments and additions are welcome :)

I have programs that make character sheets in html format. Could you just copy the code for them? (I use mostly GURPS, but the idea should work for any, if someone else has them, if it works at all.)

If you use the [ code] tag, you can display code without leaving off tags.

Example:

<table>
<tr><td>Intelligence</td><td>##data1##</td></tr>
<tr><td>Strength</td><td>##data2##</td></tr>
</table>


(You can click the [quote] link to see my code.)

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On the topic of character sheets: depending on how it was implemented it could be a great addition or a pain in the neck.  I know some of my RL friends complain about having to use text-only character sheets.
This message was last edited by the user at 23:27, Mon 30 Mar 2009.

I'm personally preparing to spend a few nights working on tables to see if I can create character sheets because something just seems wrong with the character sheet part of the game forum, it's just not responding to codes properly and looks like crap generally.

I would love to see a unified feature where the GM submits the character sheet content they want to use in their game to an ingame section which automatically inserts the character sheet into the character sheet section of each character's information area.  Of course though, to mantain stability/security, it would be best for that data to be read by a button that says "Display Default Sheet Format" and shows you all the code on another page and then has a button that says Input format and plugs into the character sheet area to be edited.  I'd do it this way as opposed to auto inputting because if there were a reset, a failed cookie, or somethingof that nature, it might whipe your character sheet with all it's info and replace it with the auto generated blank one, which would be a travesty and typically cause 80% of players to quit right then n' there.

Because the character sheet would be generated/provided by the GM, they could make a table'ized version and submit that and it would be great.  Of course ideally we'd have a nice plug n' play type of userfriendly table thing we could build a sheet from instead of doing all the code by hand, but I don't suspect that'll be doable.

Character sheets here aren't forced to plain text.  They're wrapped in <pre> by default, but that's simple enough to turn off when editing the sheet and you can use any formatting that's available when composing a message.


As for external data in character sheets, I've actually contemplated this many times but always fail to come up with a good way to implement it.  The 3E profiler has a very complex and quite strict way of doing things, something that unfortunately doesn't translate to a non-system centric site like RPoL.

Any when I say "good way", to me "good" to me means functional, flexible, easy to use (i.e. by 90% of the users, not by a select few) and also hopefully easy to implement and maintain.