I have never been truly satisfied with Character Generator Tools software for RPGs. I find most suffer from a visually underwhelming interface, are overly restrictive, or difficult to customize for the House Rules that every gamer, including myself, seem to employ, which software sometimes follows overly-enthusiastically, thus reducing it's usefulness. So, I decided to design my own. Or rather, I described how my ideal software would work to
create, configure, edit and use dynamic, autocalculating Character Sheets for electronic use in-game or to print for use on paper. I then realized that a Character Sheet was just a kind of Form, so this system could also be a generic electronic Form Builder and filler.
Note that my programming skills are amateur at best (I have no experience actually coding a user-interface or building stand-alone applications), so I haven't actually
made such software, just described how I would like it to work. I make no claim that this is the "One True" system, but this document is intended rather as a "white paper" to provide ideas for thought and discussion. I decided to share it publicly, in the hope that these ideas can improve existing or developing software. I apologize if the terminology is inconsistent: it evolved as I was writing. I've tried to edit it for consistency, and may continue to do so, as I get feedback or more ideas.
If you are interested, I invite you to read my
ideas for a Flexible Form Framework for interactive, auto-calculating RPG Character Sheets.
Feel free to offer feedback here. If you are a software developer, you may also use any of these ideas freely, under the condition that you give me credit and either get my permission or use them for non-commercial (non-profit) purposes.
This document is written & maintained as a nested list of notes, using
NoteBook software, by
Circus Ponies, and exported as a web page directly from the program.
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