Etiquette and approach to building new character sheets when there already is one

I notice some games have multiple character sheets for the same game.  Is there any etiquette to take into consideration prior to putting out a yet another sheet for an existing game that already has a character sheet?  

A single character sheet per system is strongly  preferred. The systems which have multiple sheets are the exception, not the rule. (It used to be that a translation of a sheet could get its own, but that allowance has been removed in favor of i18n.) If you're creating a sheet just to make something that looks different for the same system, I would honestly reconsider. If your goal is to fix problems in the existing sheet, I say go ahead and fix them (although if the original author is still maintaining it, you should probably also talk to them about it). If you just want to add more options, it should be feasible to add options to the sheet without causing problems for existing consumers of the sheet. If you make changes to an existing sheet and you end up renaming or removing attributes, you need to create a sheet worker script to migrate an existing character to the new set of attributes, so that an existing player isn't seriously disrupted by your changes.

I ran into this problem myself. I wanted to make a sheet for 2e D&D, but there already was one. I started out by trying to modify the existing sheet, but quickly found i had to replace nearly half of what was already there to make my version work. Because of this, and because my sheet was nearly 15x the size of the original, I requested it be integrated as a separate option. Phil agreed and here we are. As Brian said, if it's just to recolor, or add a few things, just look into modifying. If you need to do a total over haul but don't want all of the current players of that game to lose all of their work as your sheet and the old sheet are incompatible, then you may have a case for your own sheet. :) Hope this helps.

Yes sometimes people don't bother looking or asking first and it is annoying. For instance there is a "Simple" Pathfinder sheet, and the "complex huge monstrous" Pathfinder sheet that we maintain. Then someone went and added a 3rd one because ... they didn't actually know about the Simple one? They didn't want to instead update the Simple one? Because they didn't know about our 6 month project to simplify the big one? (not that it's super simple yet) i mean if asked we would have said "great that's what we're working on please help". We could have used help, since that was a massive project. Or we could have said "please take over the Simple sheet" 2 sheets is quite enough.  It has really made me appreciate the hell of "backward compatibility" that software makers have to slog through. A lot of stuff could be done more easily and better with the knowledge gained from earlier effort, but without maintaining backward compatibility you either break everyone's work with your new update, or you make a new sheet and fragment the user base and confuse people.  So now there are 3 Pathfinder sheets: a simple one, a complex one, and a 3rd one about which i have no idea, nor do I even know who made it. (hopefully no one above me in this thread, i wasn't trying to be passive aggressive ) How does a user pick one?  Of course you see this a lot in tech jobs, people jump in without looking and recreate the wheel.

Meh. I say make one and use it if it is what you prefer. That's the reason we have the option to make custom character sheets. Otherwise we end up being stifled because one sheet creator or another has a stick up their butt about making changes.

Or get stuck with a sheet not in the original language and after translation back to the original language does not look anything like it should.

chris b. said: It has really made me appreciate the hell of "backward compatibility" that software makers have to slog through. A lot of stuff could be done more easily and better with the knowledge gained from earlier effort, but without maintaining backward compatibility you either break everyone's work with your new update, or you make a new sheet and fragment the user base and confuse people. Welcome to our world. =D chris b. said: Of course you see this a lot in tech jobs, people jump in without looking and recreate the wheel. I think I found six different implementations of the same function in my company's codebase last week. And since my project didn't actually have access to any of those implementations, I had to implement a seventh version...

SFX said: I ran into this problem myself. I wanted to make a sheet for 2e D&D, but there already was one. I started out by trying to modify the existing sheet, but quickly found i had to replace nearly half of what was already there to make my version work. Because of this, and because my sheet was nearly 15x the size of the original, I requested it be integrated as a separate option. Phil agreed and here we are. As Brian said, if it's just to recolor, or add a few things, just look into modifying. If you need to do a total over haul but don't want all of the current players of that game to lose all of their work as your sheet and the old sheet are incompatible, then you may have a case for your own sheet. :) Hope this helps. I was told by Phil that only the most popular of games could have multiple versions of sheets.  That is why my DCC sheet is in Limbo :/

I honestly don't know Amanda. Maybe they are cracking down on stuff or maybe some other vague policy applies. Phil is good people though, if you can get a chance to ask him about your project, I'm sure he has an answer.

When I put up the new Blades in the Dark sheet, I could not be bothered to write conversion code for every attribute in the old sheet, so I submitted it as a new sheet. After some discussion with the authors of the previous sheet and Phil, the old one was simply deprecated. I don't think Roll20 would have allowed 2 sheets without a very good reason.

This shouldn't just be a discussed etiquette then.  It should be rules that are documented in the wiki by roll20 and shared with potential authors.  All of us who paid for the pro account paid for the ability to script, ability to create character sheets and the ability to contribute and we each come in with different expectations when we do that.  So as I look at what the marketing says prior purchase they have to have good reason to not allow it rather than the other way around. I want my delusions supported that what I build will be desired by others.  :)  Just like I'm coming here to play make believe with rules with others.  

John B said: Is there any etiquette to take into consideration prior to putting out a yet another sheet for an existing game that already has a character sheet?   It should be rules that are documented in the wiki by roll20 and shared with potential authors. Brian pretty much nailed it. We really try to keep the list down to 1 sheet per system, except in special cases. Those special cases being: it's a popular system or the system is complex enough that it warrants 2 different approaches to the same character sheet. If you want to work on a new sheet for a system that already has something, you can always ask me first (you can message me on Roll20 if you have character sheet specific questions) and we can talk about options. The preferable option is to modify the current sheet to fix/improve it to what is needed. Of course, though, that's not always a possibility. If the current sheet was written by someone who literally has never looked at HTML/CSS/JavaScript before (btw, this is awesome, I love when people are trying to learn how to code) and the sheet needs to be rewritten from the ground up we can do like what Jakob said. We will replace the old sheet with your new one. All games that currently are using the old sheet will continue to use the old sheet, but only the new sheet will be listed in our master list of sheets so all new games will use the new sheet. (bonus points if you can write a sheetworker that would allow people using the old sheet to switch to your new one) While it's not in the Wiki, it is in the GitHub ReadMe, with the rest of the "new character sheets" instructions. It's under the section "Don't Duplicate Work". Brian said: chris b. said: Of course you see this a lot in tech jobs, people jump in without looking and recreate the wheel. I think I found six different implementations of the same function in my company's codebase last week. And since my project didn't actually have access to any of those implementations, I had to implement a seventh version... Been there, done that. (at my old job, on top of also trying to support legacy systems. I still shudder when someone mentions Internet Explorer 6) This is definitely what we are trying to avoid. I love it when people, like the OP and others in this thread, ask questions before spending hours and hours of work on a sheet that already exists. Amanda the Amazon said: I was told by Phil that only the most popular of games could have multiple versions of sheets.  That is why my DCC sheet is in Limbo :/ I don't think I've flat out said "no" to any sheet. (other than some sheets that were entirely for someone's homebrew system. The only results when I searched for the system were from our own forums where they were asking for someone to make the sheet. Even then I accepted the PR so they could have the sheet in a central repo, I just didn't add it to the list) I'm always open to have a conversation, even if I do say "no". My response to any of these things is usually "convince me". If I wasn't clear enough when we talked about your DCC sheet, that's definitely my bad. I've looked at it, and the current sheet, and they both seem complex enough and different enough that it would warrant having 2 sheets. Especially since you have the sheet for the sister system, MCC, it would make sense to have a matching sheet in the DCC system.  I believe these answers cover all of the questions in this thread. If I missed something, or didn't answer a question hard enough, please let me know and I'll do my best to clear it up.