What follows is my personal opinion but I find the official character sheet for Genesys absolutely ugly from a design perspective.

Appearances matter especially if you are trying to convert players to the game.

Have you come across an alternative format, especially for a medfan game ?

Ideally, I am looking for something :

- That puts the picture of the PC front and centre to break the “wall of number” feeling I get from looking at the current sheet.

- That hides the skills you have not developed so as to free up space to print some background info on the first page.

The Gencon character sheet looked way better

Isn't the Gencon sheet just the exact same format but with the skills list shunted off to the left to fit a character illustration?

Pretty much. Has someone come up with a form fillable character sheet that follows the Gencon format ? It would be an improvement

All I can find is links to the official character sheet.

I just use a form-fillable version of the sheet in the book, and we print out Character portrait cover sheets. This way you can show people a picture of your character without showing them all your character details.

Thread:

Google drive direct: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1XFNjFPRKHSbFFrT87qHn1wKLyMdMo2X6

I'd hate to have to print that. That's a lot of ink. The regular character sheet is much friendlier in that aspect.

Disappointed. I came in here expecting someone had made an ugly sheet and there isn't one.

17 minutes ago, Endersai said:

Disappointed. I came in here expecting someone had made an ugly sheet and there isn't one.

Me, I am hopping that someone artistically oriented will go beyond simply replicating the book's character sheet and come up with his/her own take on it.

The official character sheet, while handy, really look like an excel spreadsheet. It reminds me of work.

I just want a black and white printer friendly character sheet. Why can’t FFG do one of those?

6 hours ago, ObiWanBilbo said:

I just want a black and white printer friendly character sheet. Why can’t FFG do one of those?

Wouldn't just printing in grey scale solve your problem ?

Ideally, it would be great if someone far more artistically and technically oriented could come up with a form filable character sheet.

I would suggest:

• Spreading the characteristic across the page so to free space to put a full picture of the character
• Putting the skills close to the relevant characteristics because 99% of the time they go together and its handy to have one next to the other
• Only making the skills you have invested points appear so to free up space and de-clutter the sheet (debatable)
• Giving some sort of visual representation of the dice pool

I hastily arranged something that would look like this to give an idea:

PS: Done under 3 min in ppt because that is all I had handy.

21 minutes ago, Tabulazero said:

PS: Done under 3 min in ppt because that is all I had handy.

I'd like to see your full sheet when completed. Seems like a neat idea.

Ditto, I think you're the design whiz here. Work that Power Point!

9 hours ago, Tabulazero said:

Wouldn't just printing in grey scale solve your problem ?

Well it helps certainly, but the sheets are then dark and low contrast. It still uses ink to get the background printed, even if lightly so. Many companies make beautiful sheets in black line—I don’t get why it’s not provided as an option. Not a deal breaker obviously, but still.

For myself I prefer to leave all skills available since most skills can be used untrained and that visual reminder prompts players I find, that said I understand your meaning. Though not as pretty or cut down as the style you describe I tend to make my own for my games. I have yet to update this from Age of Rebellion to Genesys but below is my Stargate Character Sheet.pdf .

18 hours ago, Morphology said:

Ditto, I think you're the design whiz here. Work that Power Point!

I wish I had the skillset to pull out a character sheet do that but I do not. That said, I can indeed extrapolate a little bit as to how an alternate character sheet may look like. I also take into account the comment of eldath. While having a clean character sheet is nice, it is true that there are a number of rolls you keep doing regardless of whether they are career skills or you expended XP. You might as well add them to the sheet. I went a little bit further an associated to each "core" skills (a.k.a. the kind of stuff you roll in combat) an icon so it is easier to find them on the sheet.

Finally, what I really want to do is bring all the backround info, strength, flaws, ... etc on the first page so that it always sit in front of the player. You have to interpret a role as a player. You may as well be given upfront all the information you need. Genesis is about stories after all.

So basically, this is how an alternate character sheet could look like:

This is by no mean a finished product. It's just a very rough draft created in ppt. That said, I would really appreciate if someone more artistically oriented and technically savy than me takes over from here. The ideal product would be some kind of HTML code whereby you could change the character background to suit the universe in which you, play, were you could choose to display which skills and which ideally automatically calculate the pool and display it. You would just need to press print and voila.

I think having the motivations listed in such cramped space isn't the best design; you want room to elaborate on them in some detail, like the official sheet provides.

15 minutes ago, Tom Cruise said:

I think having the motivations listed in such cramped space isn't the best design; you want room to elaborate on them in some detail, like the official sheet provides.

Yes. I agree with you. If you need to make some space then the motivation could go or you could just have the key words listed in an arc above the head of the character as a remainder with a full explanation on the next page.

5 hours ago, Tabulazero said:

5 hours ago, Tom Cruise said:

I think having the motivations listed in such cramped space isn't the best design; you want room to elaborate on them in some detail, like the official sheet provides.

It seems that with a little graphical re-balancing, this could be the right layout for a double sided 4x6 character sheet. if the players need a list of skills for reminders, maybe include it on the the back along with space for elaboration on Strengths, Fears, etc.

Tabulazero, for what it's worth -- i love your sheet.

Though I will say, my group isn't at all character portrait oriented -- we have pinterest art, etc. but don't care about printing it out on the page.

This might be a great start at one of those "3-fold" sheets that are popular with Fate Accelerated Edition. Me, I'm holding out for a css theme that can be populated with Markdown and hosted online.

Does anyone know where I an get the Gencon fantasy character sheets?

I can try, but I don't know how to create a fillabe pdf cheet, just a basic jpg or png file.

EDIT: Added what I've created. I guess it will work.

The skills need a small explanation: the small diamond outside is there to show the career skills.

And the 6 alien symbols inside, my insight, represent the green dice inside the yellow dice. So, just paints the interior according to the type of dice that will play. Check the stat right above and fill the equal number of diamonds. If you have graduation on that skill, fill the hexagon.

Easy way to know what you need to roll. There is a picture to show what I mean.

11 hours ago, Bellyon said:

I can try, but I don't know how to create a fillabe pdf cheet, just a basic jpg or png file.

EDIT: Added what I've created. I guess it will work.

The skills need a small explanation: the small diamond outside is there to show the career skills.

And the 6 alien symbols inside, my insight, represent the green dice inside the yellow dice. So, just paints the interior according to the type of dice that will play. Check the stat right above and fill the equal number of diamonds. If you have graduation on that skill, fill the hexagon.

Easy way to know what you need to roll. There is a picture to show what I mean.

This is awesome, thank you! It is really similar to what I am designing myself, but with html/css to make use of GM Binder and the ability to make it form fillable in a way. Do you have a .pdf version of this you could post? Or could you describe what graphics you used?

That's a really smart idea with the symbols for filling in. I love it

2 hours ago, BlamedCat said:

That's a really smart idea with the symbols for filling in. I love it

So do I! It's probably only me, but I'm not quite sure about the Lidless Eye design.

For what it's worth, I'm using abstracted cubes instead.