System Agnostic Sheet - Interest Check

Hey guys, so, I had this idea... I know that you can set a sheet to None and essentially have a system agnostic sheet, but, what about those who want a little more, utility? I came up with the idea to create a system agnostic sheet that has a series of repeating section that allows to plug in all the mechanics and notes of virtually any dice rolling system, in a concise, but aesthetic manner. It would have simple button functionality and could even be used for dice-less systems by simply utilizing the notes fields. If this sounds like something that you or anyone you know would be interested in, I can start work on it, but, if the general consensus is that such is not needed or wanted, I'll shelve it for now.

Many of us can't do HTML or any other code for crud and frankly it's very hard to beg others to make one for you. I would be running a Tunnels and Trolls game right now if I could use your idea to make a character sheet. I bet I'm not alone and it's a grand idea!

One vote is more than enough for me. It should take about two weeks, but I'll go ahead and start working on it. :D

So.... that was significantly easier than I thought, unless I'm missing something big... <a href="https://app.roll20.net/join/2463213/4Hk7NQ" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/join/2463213/4Hk7NQ</a> That has a bunch of all access sheets for anyone to play with. The top sheet has some example work in for how to use it. Let me know what you guys think and if all is good, I can submit this tonight and it would be available Tuesday!

Might be useful to come up with a simple roll template that can be applied.

I honestly don't know how to make those. If anyone would like to contribute one (or twelve, whatever works :) ) I'd be happy to co-author and maybe finally learn how to make rolltemplates. I'm not home right now, but if anyone is interested, let me know!

Ok, I'm back and hanging out in the table. I noticed some good ideas put forward, but my javascript is very limited. Anyone willing to help out feel free to drop by :D

Vince! or Chris! I need halp! I don't know how to do that really cool thing you guys do that automatically fills the row number on repeating fields!

SFX said: Vince! or Chris! I need halp! I don't know how to do that really cool thing you guys do that automatically fills the row number on repeating fields! I stole it from the CSS Wizardry thread a long time ago.&nbsp; ;-) Brian has added the info to the wiki:&nbsp; Counting Items there is a live demo link with the instructions. We did use "-1" on the counter-reset so that the repeating rows matched up starting with row "0"

Hmm, I must be doing something wrong. I get it to show up, but even with the -1 in there, every line says 1. no matter how many I make.

Figured it out. Awesome, at this point, the only left on my checklist is a rolltemplate, which I'm studying up on, but not having a lot of luck with.

So, I'm pretty proud of what I've got here. It's not perfect by any means. But I think it has the potential to alleviate some of the game-stall going on. I'm going to go ahead and submit this, but, @Steve / @Phil, please message me when you can. I want to ask that, if this sheet is acceptable as an agnostic systems sheet, it be made the default (as opposed to just None) so people don't have to go digging for it or just lose hope because their sheet isn't listed.

Sounds like a great idea.

Probably going to use this to learn how to do sheets for the starfinder sheet I'm about to start working on.

SFX, Would you be willing to share the code for this? It'd make a good starting point for me to start learning html/css.

Certainly: Systems Agnostic: <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1pute8e4tbc5jww/AAD2Q46" rel="nofollow">https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1pute8e4tbc5jww/AAD2Q46</a>... That goes to my dropbox. In fact: AD&D 2E (Updated Weekly): <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/sh/h75ryx1vszk3gii/AAC87xZ" rel="nofollow">https://www.dropbox.com/sh/h75ryx1vszk3gii/AAC87xZ</a>... and Hero Kids (only used if maintenance is necessary): <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/sh/r50nk97bv0w4zmg/AADNm-H" rel="nofollow">https://www.dropbox.com/sh/r50nk97bv0w4zmg/AADNm-H</a>... Those are all the sheets I've done so far, and I have a bit of other stuff too in the works. @Drespar. Wing-It said I needed to break up the Pull Request, so I removed the sheet from this one. That said, the link is there, and: "Roll20 (hereafter referred to as "you") has my authority and permission to utilize, change, amend, and assume responsibility in any way you deem necessary with the Sheet Material designated Systems Agnostic on this page, which can be found at the following link &gt; Link &lt;. Seth Farra (hereafter referred to as "I") will no longer have any control over this material and both freely and without any form of coercion, give you this product to do with as you see fit. There is no license or restriction on this product. There is to be no monetary exchange for this product. I give this product with the confidence that it will be used to support the community of roll20.net as seen fit by you. These statements do not apply to the other sheets linked on this page, however, they are open source material and may be used freely by anyone at any time." I can sign that with a digital signature if need be :) but in the meantine -Seth Jacob Farra / SFX/87778 Please, use it, abuse it, do what you will with it, but put something out there for everyone. Even if you discard the whole thing and come up with your own, that would still be a move in the right direction.

Drespar said: Hi everyone! We probably cannot use a community submitted coding effort as our default. As a default, we would want to personally have the ability to edit our overall design plans. That said, the idea of a default system-agnostic sheet- beyond just using attributes- is an interesting idea. What about putting it at the top of the character sheet selection list, instead of burying it somewhere in the long list of different systems?

Drespar said: SFX, While we do appreciate the gesture, "all sheets submitted to the sheet repository" are under a Creative Commons License :) Keep up the good work on your sheets! Hasn't been submitted :) Feel free to take it. EDIT: I noticed that you could technically rename the titles on the dice roller section to reflect the appropriate pull, remove the placeholder die icon, and add a name field to each die roll to help with remembering what they are for.

Drespar said: Brian, The current way our sheets are organized is alphabetically by system name, and then by sheet name. I cannot say for sure where a truly system agnostic sheet might end up. But with the inherent wording it could be in the beggining of any section or sub-section. Drespar, This isn't quite true actually, The sheets by Roll20 are at the top, then alphabetical by system. Should be fairly easy to add another classification of "agnostic" or "Universal" sheets that would appear in the drop-down list first.

While it would certainly be an interesting idea to have a system agnostic sheet I have to serve as a bit of a Devil's Advocate and say that I don't think its a good idea for a number of reasons: Sheets are defined at a character level not the campaign level, This makes it difficult if not impossible for anything outside of the sheet to efficiently interact with it. &nbsp;Generic APIs would need to search the sheets for the attributes they need rather than looking them up specifically, and unless the GM creates every character by copying other characters the sheet would need to be completely redefined every time a new character is made. User experience is not going to be good. &nbsp;You will have labels that can be edited, no useful hover text for when it is needed, every character needs to be handled individually, fields that are not reasonable for the expected contents, etc. Getting this to work reasonably well would take Roll20 Dev time to get one particular sheet to work with their system(Once one exists it becomes increasingly hard to justify adding more system agnostic sheets, and few of these changes would be generally useful to other sheets), when they could instead improve the Attributes system to be more usable as an alternative to a character sheet.

I hear ya. Just my thoughts though: I agree with this, but. There is a backlog of sheet requests a half mile long and it's growing with every new game being released. That being said, a lot of people jump on Roll20, don't see their sheet, ask, wait, give up, go away. This isn't meant to be a permanent cure-all, just a gap-closer measure. Realistically, for every ten people who have that one custom game they want a sheet for, there's a community sheet writer thirty feet under with their current contributions. I would posit that having a rough go is better than not being able to have one at all. There are simply too many game systems out there and not enough people willing to learn how to write them for this one website (and let's face it, no printable sheets, limited import/export functions for only certain high dollar sheets... this stuff has been in the suggestions forums for how many years now?) where they won't work anywhere else and a large part of the grunt work is being done by people who pay for the privilege to do so. (caveat: I know you can work on them without paying and submit to github, but without having the pro access you'll have one doozy of a time trying to get any meaningful work done in a measurable amount of time i.e. one week to see if that extra pixel pushed your box out of alignment...) There would be no need for multiple agnostic sheets; that's kind of the point of having one. It works with everything to some degree or another. I do agree that the Attributes and Abilities tab could use some significant improvements and then this wouldn't even be necessary since it would function much better, but, at that point, you have a system agnostic sheet. :) To clarify, I'm not bashing you guys and gals at Roll20 nor am I calling out any part of how you do things, but you gotta admit, if you want to grow into "the" VTT of choice, you need to close the gap between 5e/PF and, well, everything else. That's not an overnight thing by any means, but this could help shore up that huge gap and buy you guys some time to work your magic . :)

I think this is a nice stop-gap between no sheet and waiting for CPP or Natha to finish the entire world's requests for new sheets.&nbsp; ;-)

I would agree at least conceptually with the idea of having a generic sheet, Its just that introducing them to the system is likely to cause significant issues as there is almost certainly bound to be more than one of them with all of them inherently incompatible with one another. (For example, lets say I don't like your particular generic sheet so I decide to make my own "Better" generic sheet fixing the things I don't like about yours, only for someone else to do the same) &nbsp;At some point the system will just get so many of these things that the Devs will either need to ban the things altogether or have to start curating the sheets taking up more of their time. At the very least before we unleash the concept of generic sheets we need to have a serious discussion about setting standards for how we are naming attributes so there is at least some degree of inter-compatibility, However first we should probably get the Devs to clarify what rules if any would apply to generic sheets as the Guidelines for submitting sheets are clearly not written with such sheets in mind.

Ahh, and there's the ticket. This is part of why I decided to not submit the sheet after all. If on the other hand, Roll20 makes their own, and that's that. Well, then that's that. And while mine is a far cry from perfect, I feel it addresses all major components, at least, i n theory, even if perhaps in not the best manner. I wouldn't even want the sheet to be made a standard-issue in its current state, but I feel it could be used as a good sounding board. And yeah, 200 generic sheets.... At that point, if that many people are vested in rebuilding the wheel, get them working on making every possible sheet out there instead. We, as a community could have every possible game supported in no time if even 1 person who currently doesn't even know how to write html/css were to pick it up each week. And, just being honest, that's how we have as many as we do already (not the per week part). I still have no idea how to read html/css/javascript but something about the sequences clicks in my head and it's kind of like being able to figure out what street you're on in another country even though you can't read the language or signs. Now that being said, Helen P. brought up a good point earlier while I was working on the sheet. We essentially already have the, "I can do that better" sheet problem, in part, because people simply aren't aware of other sheets of similar nature, and in part because, well, sometimes, it's true. I appreciate the hard work that Dylan, Aqua Alex, Elena and everyone else who have contributed to the sheet that stands aside mine, I really do. I just feel like, given the nature of the game, mine is a valid alternative that allows the game to progress in an entirely new way conceptually. There are at least two Pathfinder sheets, at least three 5e sheets, and from there I honestly lose track anymore. What I was getting at is, where, even now, do we draw the line? Will someone come along and make campaign setting specific versions of the 5e sheet? Maybe versions that only support core, or only support select additional material? I mean, yes, Roll20 is free to draw the line wherever they see fit, and I believe they have guidelines on this already, but, from my understanding, a sheet has to be vastly different in scope and/or function to be approved along side an existing sheet. I have no idea how the other multiples stack up along that wall, but, with mine (2e) next to the other sheet (2e Simple) it's like comparing a pineapple to a jack-fruit. One is bigger yes, they look quite a bit different, and yup, they even taste quite different (and mine takes an almost painful amount amount of work to be useful, but I did that on purpose). TL:DR version. Roll20 needs to make/set a generic sheet and nobody else should, as it opens the door for too much "but, my game has!" leading to a stagnation of sheet development as the perfect cure-all is pursued. I agree with you though, even with current sheets out there. There needs to be more of a standard. Just switching from one 5e sheet to the next is like getting on a different train in a different continent that has its own set of physics for some reason. I see endless posts about how switching from one sheet to the next caused X issue or this didn't translate, or now my X is not working, or this one thing I bought only works with this version, but if I switch to that version it breaks. Even my sheet is no different. Some stuff translates, most stuff doesn't. But, I was never aware of any need to make the sheets inter-operable or I would have taken that into consideration. Ideally, it would be nice to just have a converter of some sort that takes every attribute off of a given filled out sheet and kind of lays them out in a side-bar, compendium style and allows you to drag and drop them, thus renaming them, to whatever is appropriate on the new sheet you are using (assuming anything is, like games that don't use any form of HP). I know to make each sheet work with such a thing would take a considerable amount of work, but hey, I already do fixer-upper work on 7-8 other sheets that I don't even know the systems for, how hard can it be to go through and pull everything labeled name=attr_ and plug it into a (guessing javascript here, might be an API thing, not really sure) sequence. Anyways, it's 4am and I'm rambling :P and I'm way off topic. Good night y'all.

Drespar said: all sheets submitted to the sheet repository are under a Creative Commons License :) s/Creative Commons/MIT/

I love the idea of a system agnostic sheet, but I'm a bit puzzled by this approach. Is there anything on the Dice tab that you cant already do with the Attributes and Abilities tab? The Notes tab seems to duplicate the already existing Bio and Handouts (GMs can give people handouts to use for notekeeping already).

The idea is to use the dice pool for commonly used rolls that can be quickly updated. These can even be linked to attributes like say, one named level, and then you could say, do a fireball by putting [[5+({floor(@{repeating_attributes_$0_score}/2),&nbsp; 5}kh1)]] d 6 As for the notes, the inherent problem with the Bio and Info tab is it's a big run on section. No separation. As far as handouts, your GM has to create and assign them, and for some games that are information laden, you could be talking about a folder of handouts 200-300 long. Or, you could just make as many entries in your own personal sheet as you need them. Something that never made it that version of the sheet was the ability to collapse each each individual line of a repeating section so you only have to look at the ones you need at any given time. All that being said, the Attributes and Abilities tab basically serves all of these purposes, it's just horribly formatted for anything other than 2-3 digit numbers or making convoluted macros with no clear direction on how to do so. The thing about a system agnostic sheet is, this is basically all it would be comprised of. You can't justify the use of pre-correlated buttons since every system is different. There's no need for things like compendiums, unless Rol20 is going to let people make their own, at which point, this gets really interesting... But that's a whole other story. There's no need for anything with any particular designation because it may or may not be used by X game. Heck, bearing in mind Nobilis, the whole first page is invalid except maybe to track attributes, but even then, the notes section would probably still be the only thing used. But thinking about a game like that, how does one wrap their head around needing a folder of 12-20 handouts per character to be able to play? This is just a prototype I built in the course of 8-9 hours to see what could be done. I was going to release it, but decided not to so Roll20 can make their own. Theirs will undoubtedly be much different and probably a lot more functional since they pay people to write html and I still don't know what &lt;div stands for lol.

Regarding the notes as the exist right now: i created a note on the sample sheet and saw how much space it took up. If the goal was to allow players to have 200-300 notes, or even just 10 or 20, that is really impractical. You can only see 1 or 2 notes on the page at once, you'd need to scroll so much it would be a pain. For that purpose, the handout system is still best. That said, maybe some CSS with tabs and expanding fields might make that a lot more manageable. I dont know much CSS, i dont know how much you can do there. On to the important stuff: I see what you're doing with dice pool and abilities sections etc., but it provides none of the advantages that a character sheet provides (organisation, simplicity - honestly, imagine a complete character of stats and skills, etc., it will be a nightmare actually finding ratings), while losing the few advantages the Abilities and Attributes tab has (ability to reorder and organise stuff, very simple understanding of what each ability and attribute is for). I really like the idea of a system agnostic sheet (and that's why I'm jumping into the thread), but I think it needs to offer something beyond what the Abiliies tab already does.&nbsp; Like, say, identify common patterns used by games, and set up tabs to present them in an organised manner, with a configuration panel to choose which tabs are visible and which are hidden/unused.&nbsp;Have sheet workers and roll templates to manage common game needs. &nbsp;Things like that. Will roll20 make their own? This seems like its something the community could take the lead on. While they wont take it as the default, it may inspire them.

Well, just pointing out a few things... The notes are expanable/shrinkable... Also, ideally, (and I just figured out how to do this) you could collapse each individual line of a repeating section with simple labels to quickly hide and recall what's needed. Still way better than your gm having to create boatloads of handouts that have to be assigned. That's the thing, regarding your second paragraph. It's not a "character sheet" per se, it's an ability to quickly organize and create all the necessary components of one. Keep in mind, it's a VTT (Virtual Table Top) and I still play plenty of D&D games with a blank sheet of paper and just write in what I need. This is essentially no different than that. Sure, it's not fancy, but it's functional. Also, the whole sheet is comprised of repeating sections, which, by default, can be reorganized and reordered at will. Identifying common patterns used by games is exactly what a system agnostic sheet shouldn't do. The idea is to be an agnostic sheet, not a, "well, 82/100 games use this methodology so, we'll build it around that idea." Granted, a step closer than where we currently are, but you've still created a sheet that alienates those other 18 games. It should be the bare-bones to make literally any game work, and nothing else. But again, these are just my opinions. I'd love to see a sheet out there that can be used as an umbrella so we can at least buy our community some time to develop all of those individual, particularly different sheets while not losing a large portion of the community asking for them.

As I've been reading this thread and thinking about it, perhaps chunk it up into a few sections. something like: Demographics (which could include a Name field, maybe a race, age, gender, field with a repeating section for other information), Traits (which would be a repeating section where the player/GM would create fields for things like Strength, Dex, etc), Skills (similar to Traits, but called skills for organization purposes), Equipment (again, similiar to Traits/Skills). &nbsp;A configuration section could be added to show/hide different sections, and possibly even certain fields (like Race, Money, Age, Gender, etc). I see the Traits/Skills/Equipment sections being similar to what you have now, a couple of fields where the person can type in the Attribute and the roll formula (kind of combining your&nbsp;Attributes and Macro sections now).

That could work. I actually kept expanding the code based on feedback from this thread, and I've got a pretty cool thing going so far. That link up there still just contains the old one, but, well, if I'm not going to be submitting it, I don't see the need to do all of Roll20's work for them :P But I still posit doing all of this to the Attributes and Abilities tab, thereby improving its functionality vastly and heavily simplifying what I've got.

What is really needed is a rudimentary framework sheet that allows modules to be added. Then, if a sheet designer wanted to adjust one part of the CS, all they'd need to fiddle with is that one module -- instead of creating the whole sheet from scratch. For example:&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; name, gender, class, race, skin, hair, eyes, height, weight, back story, physical description;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;equipment, gear weight/encumbrance, gear cost, characteristics/ability scores, skills, spells, etc. are used in many games, so put them in the basic section. The latter ones (on the 2nd line) would have also have columns for bonuses/penalties, dice roller icon, category fields, and notes. Note that for flexibility, there would be a few columns for categories/groups, which could be customized just by typing them in. The ability to sort by them would be handy, too. For example, all the equipment might be entered in any order, and then automatically sorted into groups of "armor", "weapon", and other "gear". Allow the D&D 5E and 3.5E and AD&D Compendiums to be chosen for drag & drop; or just as easily,&nbsp;the ones for the Pathfinder PF, Basic Fantasy, etc. Then add modules that are specific to the game. &nbsp;So, say&nbsp;a D&D 2E module were chosen. &nbsp;If "armor" category were entered next to an equipment item, the bonus/penalty for the item would automatically adjust the Armor Class in the 2E section. The reverse could occur, too. &nbsp;If D&D 5E were chosen, Proficiency could be automatically added to a "Total" column next to skills with a category of "proficient" filled in. &nbsp;This might be done by having the module fill the Proficiency number into another column, and having the framework "Total" field simply add up any numbers in that row.