My heartbreaker's drafted, how do I make its character sheet?

Making
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Hey folks. I have just finished a fully-playable draft of my heartbreaker! It’s quite exciting (for me). My next priority is shoving it in front of people. To me, that also means drafting a character sheet, which I have yet to do.

Anyone make their own sheets and have advice on software/design inclinations in general? Thanks very much.

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Congrats! I haven’t published anything, but I’ve run playtests for several iterations of my own heartbreaker. Assuming that you’re about to start playtesting, I’d recommend creating a minimum viable character sheet in whatever software you’re already familiar with. (Or hand-draw it if you have access to a copy machine). After your first couple of playtests, you’ll likely change your rules, your character sheet, or both—at least, that was my experience.

To answer your actual question, though: if I were to make a character sheet for a playtest today I’d use Google Sheets or Affinity Designer

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I used Scribus to make Backpack!. I also built an “inventory sheet” for it.

Scribus is like Affinity Publisher or Adobe InDesign, but free and open-source. From what I gather, it’s not as user-friendly, but in my very limited experience, it’s not that bad. I found some good tutorials on YouTube (in french, though) that helped me with the basics. I decided to use it to get better at the skill of “layout”; then, once I’m a bit more comfortable, I’ll decide if buying something else is worth it or not. (Same goes for paint.net and Inkscape for images.)

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Thanks for all the advice on general approach/apps to use. I have fumbled around with Scribus for other things (simple flyers & posters, mostly), so I guess it’s back to the FOSS mines with me!

If anyone has resources on doing layout in English/Spanish I’d be thrilled to take a gander. My limited “published” (to itch) works have been laid out by collaborators, so I have little to no knowledge of doing it myself.

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I like a more hand made look, since I mostly work in fantasy. I use a $5 drawing app (artflow) on a Chromebook.

I’ll sketch out first on paper, then do a vague grid on the drawing app, then just have at it.

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Any software that will produce PDFs works well for character sheets. Design your sheet, export as PDF and you’ve got it ready for release.

The design of the sheet is the tricky part.

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On that note, I tend to like character sheets that…

  1. Match the theme of the game with minor ornamentation - not excessive.
  2. Present the most-referenced elements (HP/attributes) boldly
  3. Leave plenty of space for features, gear, spells, etc. Whatever you’re thinking is good, add more.
  4. Have a little spot to doodle your PC.
  5. Fit on 1 piece of paper, front and back.
  6. Not excessively colorful or with tons of black, I want to be able to print it cheaply.

That’s about all I can think of.

There are exceptions to all of these rules, of course. Mothership is a big one, as it’s “cluttered” with the character creation rules, but that goes hand-in-hand with the genre. You’ll be rolling PCs often.

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Okay, if no one else is going to say it: Excel.

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