I know it was BI who put them out, but does FFG have any plans for the little spiffy Character Folios for RT like DH had (briefly!). Those things are a **** collector's item. I don't dare actually write in mine.

Really? Have those become collectors items now? Lucky me then, I own two! One I've written in and another that's still completely blank.

I liked the idea of character folios (although the cost would be discouraging for poeple mor sane than I). However the paper in BI's characterfolios were utter crap to write on. The laminanted paper simply wouldn't accept pencils, and using permanent ink has a tendecy to cause problems when you need to change something written.

I tried however to use a sort of erasable ink pen (it hade a special eraser for use with that kind of ink). But this didn't work well either, since while you could erase something you've just written a few seconds ago without much headache, erasing text with ink that had the time to dry proved more of an effort (meaning you had to rub the special eraser vigourosly to remove the text). This of course had a tendency to erase the printed ink of the folio pages as well!

Aside from that, the folio contained several typos, but I can usually overlook that.

I really liked the idea of a snassy deluxe character sheet though, with lots of pages to write down traits, skills, talents, equipment, notes, background information etc. etc. That had enough space to write down everything relevant even for PC's over 15.000 xp. (I never ran out of space to write stuff down in BI's version)

So this is an idea I'd like to see being revived with the following conditions:

1.Make **** sure that no typo's are left in the final product (it's supposed to be a DELUXE character sheet after all, and since it's only 20 or so pages long it's the least one can expect from it)

2. The exterior could very well be printed in laminated paper, but the interior pages should really be printed on some really thick, high quality, unlaminated paper that you can write with graphite pencils on. An the thicker the paper, the more times you can use an eraser on it without rubbing a hole through the page. Another thing that would help in this regard is to make sure that boxes expected to hold values that will be changed a lot (like wounds or thrones or ammo) are designed to be very spacey, so you can write small leters and numbers and erase them and without having to write in the exact same spot over and over again.

Other things I'd like to see (but that aren't necessarily conditions) are:

Well planned character sheet design. For instance, the folio could have the back of the cover sticking out a bit from the rest of the pages, and in this location you could have all the characteristics written, meaning that whichever page you might be reading you'll always be able to see your PC's characteristics.

Also make sure that it is designed for really long lived PC's in mind (well over 15.000 xp) with lot's of space to write down accumulated skills, talents, traits, bionics, implants, gear, contacts and associates, notes etc. I don't want to feel the need to write with very small characters in order for everything to fit.

Next, I'd like to se some improvements on how the skill-lists are designed. Preferably with a lot of room to write down, not only which skills you have or degrees of skill mastery, but also areas where you can write down the names of talents that might provide modifiers to particular skills. I noticed that this was needed after playing with a PC reaching his 14.000+ xp. A standard combat became very difficult because you had to keep a multitude of talents and skillmodifiers in mind only to know what value to roll against, and half the time you forgot about something. So being able to write down relevant talents next to skills on the skill list would be very helpful.

Let's hope that someone at FFG will take this to heart. Deluxe character folios are really nice to have if done properly.

Any chance when we'll get PDFs of the Origin Path chart? I can make a copy, but a PDF would be much nicer and more handy for me.

I think the developers said they would and that was a benefit of having an account like we do. Just give them time and aides will be present. I know they already have character sheets, ship sheets, and otehr charts on line now as pdf.

Varnias Tybalt said:

I found the DH ones to be quite good, actually, and all my players used them. I still, however, have a drawer containing a half-dozen WFRP ones, as those were unusable due to the paper.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Really?

What kind of pen/pencil did you use?

Because I tried different models (from the standard graphite pencils to erasable ink) but no method was working in a satisfactory manner.

Varnias Tybalt said:

Biros and normal graphite (HB) pencils. The pencil is a little faint (mainly due to the grey background), but not unreadable, and comes off easily enough. At least, compared to the WFRP ones, they're a significant improvement.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Hmm, perhaps the pencils I tried had a different hardness than HB? Because they just seemed to leave scratched grooves in the paper while the graphite just tended to slide off.

This could actually be the reason why, because I like to draw in my spare time and I keep all sorts of pencils with different hardness around.

Still, what you said about the greay background might be an issue. Perhaps it could be changed to a more yellowish "parchment" like colour? That way even pencil strokes should be clearly visible.

Varnias Tybalt said:

That would be helpful, certainly, so long as the colour is stll fairly pale.

I agree the design and proofreading could have been better. I did like the entire concept though. I also thought $10 was awefully steep for a frikkin' glorified character sheet.

I just printed out the new RT pdf character sheet and I'm impressed. The design is way better than the old Dark Heresy sheets. It's the little things, like bubbles under the stats for how often you've taken an Advance...denoting the associated Stat with the Skill...

I'm not saying it's the be-all-end-all of character sheet design, but it is very nice, very functional and very GM-friendly (in that players won't have to look up as much stuff anymore). If they print Folios with the same attention to detail and redesign, I'll be quite happy...if they can keep it around or under $5/each.

Eh to make up for prduction values (and the fact that no the market knwos we will pay higher) will seldom sell for less than 10. However what they might do is make a folio more to the traditional sense and have multiple character sheets.

Id just like printer friendly versions of the current character sheet.

Well... Mine are but my printer is fairly efficient. You could open it in adobe and do tweaks and make it black and white. Infact you can strip the rear layers so you have pure text and boxes...

Terminus_Est said:

Id rather FFG just take care of it for me... I was baffled that they made a "web version" and a "nice version" of the same sheet instead of a "nice version" and "printer friendly" version.

I'm fine with the free PDF versions to be honest.

They take a lot of ink in color or greyscale and I don't like to make a habit out of printing RPG stuff at work.

I would never, EVER print out anything at work...on the color laser printer...especially when the guy who's desk it's attached to is out for the day.

The shame! The heresy....