Each time I try to find something (website, software, …) to edit and automate character sheets, I go back to spreadsheets because nothing else seems good enough. Am I missing something?
Spreadsheet is visually flexible and understands math. Apart from editable pdfs created for the system, I don’t think there is something better. Even solutions “for this system but different flavor” will either require of you a lot of input for it to understand the concepts or will be dumb and won’t provide more value than a text document
For online-usage, nothing will ever beat spreadsheets. They exist to crunch numbers and compare values. They work with both text and numbers. And they’re flexible.
- Want to add +2 to perception for elves? Check if
race = "Elf"and if so, add +2. - Want to add a fixed list of weapons for the player to choose from? Stick the entire list on a secret sheet, then reference them in a drop-down menu.
If a bespoke tool ever came out, it would only do one system, badly. Spreadsheets do any system, and the skills you learn with them are transferrable to almost all other spreadsheet programmes.
There’s my indie RPG character spreadsheet (requires Libreoffice Calc). Fill in your name, and it’ll use numerological constants to find your race and stats, then tracks your XP every time you buy a skill.
People want to use something like a pdf because it looks like paper, but this instinct is wrong. PDFs are for printing. Their fill-in text boxes are ugly, and programming them is clunky.
Yeah that’s why I often end up making a spreadsheet. I’d love to use LibreOffice for them but often find google sheet more flexible. I’m not very happy about that but that’s how it is. I was curious to know if I missed something new that didn’t come up through my searches.
Something new with Calc? Not to my knowledge, though I’ve never found something I couldn’t do. What additional features do Google Docs have?
Some functions like QUERY, SORT, CHOOSECOLS that makes it easier. I tried to understand how merging several columns into one would work in Calc and gave up. There are workarounds but no legit way to do it outside scripting, but I’d like to keep my sheets script free. Also there are no in cell checkboxes in Calc, but I guess you could just use a boolean. Overall I’m often frustrated by Calc and shamefully go back to G.
I tried to understand how merging several columns into one would work
It’s this button.
Also there are no in cell checkboxes in Calc,
Checkboxes:
https://ask.libreoffice.org/uploads/short-url/biHcqD9rpmk0V92ShVFWZwDVIUD.ods
Sorry I meant getting the union of two ranges, concatenating two columns, putting the data of two different columns into one. Don’t worry about it though, I found you can do some stuff with INDEX, but then you can’t sort it, so I arranged my data in another way and color coded it… The whole process was quite annoying tbh but I got what I wanted. On your example with checkboxes they don’t behave as part of the cell, idk how they work but that’s weird compared to gdocs. I can use true/false instead. Also I didn’t want to turn this thread into a Calc stackoverflow one ^^ Thanks for the help all the same.
- Want to add +2 to perception for elves? Check if
which system are you specifically looking for? I dm for 5e and really like Fastcharater. I mainly use it for NPCs though, so i’ve never really tried editing them so that might be a hangup.
INS/MV 4th edition, there is an old software for it but it’s no good. I already made a spreadsheet for it anyway, I was wondering if I was missing something outside of rulesets specific tools.
I generally go
- Preferred VTT
- Other VTT I like VTTs as I often have visual aids (ex trackers and clocks) and it us a place to share visuals (drawings, scene art).
- Someone’s spreadsheet
- Own spreadsheet Beyond this I don’t expect any functionality beyond the most basic things
- PDF sheets on shared drive plus a dice roller
I generally go
- Preferred VTT
- Other VTT
I like VTTs as I often have visual aids (ex trackers and clocks) and it us a place to share visuals (drawings, scene art).
- Someone’s spreadsheet
- Own spreadsheet
Beyond this I don’t expect any functionality beyond the most basic things
- PDF sheets on shared drive plus a dice roller
- Discord bots
As others have noted, it depends on the system. VTTs are often thought of as being oriented around battlemaps and visual aids, but you can play theater or the mind with character sheets in a VTT. If the system support is rich like pf2e in Foundry, DnD5e/SWADE in Fantasy Grounds, or any VTT with strong support for a particular system… then you’ll have access to great sheets, combat trackers, and automation.
For niche systems, yeah… spreadsheets are the original tool for non-programmers to track stats and math. They’re great for building custom sheets. They don’t have the flexibility of a true programming language to create custom UI and really rich automation. But they are very very good, and can be better than a VTT with poor system support if you don’t care about visual aids.
I’m always biased against VTTs, maybe I’m wrong. They always seem to want to sell rulesets and adventures on top of subscriptions (eww) or the software. Not sure if you can play a game previously own without buying it again, or sometime they limit the ability to make a custom one without a subscription and so on. I’m usually fine with VOIP and some form of chat or forum anyway.
