Character Sheets, Maybe

[Replicant Mechanic]

I have something I would like to share with anyone interested but I am a little cautious since I am new here and do not want to post anything that violates the rules. As such, before I put up links to anything I would like a site admin or someone in the know to tell me if it is okay.

The what and why of what I have done:

More than a couple of decades ago I was in High School when some friends and I started playing the original Palladium Books Robotech Rpg. Back when it first came out there were no character sheets so we had to just make do by writing our characters on notebook paper. An eternity later (a few months I think) Palladium released a few character sheets in the back of the RDF manual (if my memory is correct). There were a few different mecha pictured on the sheets but certainly not enough by my way of thinking. So, along with my friend Jason, who had access to a professional grade copy machine, I set out to go through all my Macross and anime books and create sheets for all the various mecha. For those of you not as old as I, this was a time before the internet put everything at a mouse click away. In fact no one I knew even owned a computer. Except my friend Tom. And not just a computer but a printer too! Being a complete genius (no lie, he works for NASA these days) Tom sat down and made what he titled "The Robotech Rpg Vehicle Sheet" These things were great! The character sheets all had a few lines dedicated to your mecha stats but they were never comprehensive. Tom's sheets solved this by basically being a character sheet for your mecha. They were handy to have for your character but were they really shown brightest was for NPC's. As a gamemaster I filled out one for every mecha known with combat stats for average pilots. (Yeah there was a spot for all your pilots combat stats too.) This way whenever the players faced of against any enemy all I had to do was pull the sheet for the enemy mecha and I had everything I needed without consulting rule books or notes. If it was a major villain I could always do a sheet just for that villain too.

Now skip forward to present day. My friends and I have been playing a pathfinder campaign and are wrapping up an adventure path and need something else to move on to. As happens, I have been purchasing all the new edition Robotech Rpg books and have been dying to play it. One problem. None of my old character sheets or vehicle sheets will work any more. I love the changes to the game but they made all my old sheets obsolete. There is a new character sheet with the game and I am certainly not going to say anything negative about someone else's creative work but it just doesn't work for me.

Well, the only thing I could do was design a new (old) one. In my life, my range of skills and study have included open ocean navigation, telecommunications and chemistry. Notice I said nothing about graphics design. Knowing my limitations I didn't set out to reinvent the wheel. I sat down with copies of both the old and new sheets and tried to take the best of both. I could not do one that was less than two pages without making the print very small so two pages it is. You can do them as a two sided sheet or as two separate sheets, whichever you prefer. The front page is very heavily influenced by the original character sheet (which I still really like). It has the same layout and I used Bodoni MT for the font which was as close as I could get to the font on the example I had. (which as fate would have it was a Macross II sheet) The end result is that if you lay the new sheet down next to the old one they look the same at first glance. The back page is a lot more heavily influenced by the newer character sheet. The front page has the player stats, general info and a load of space for skills. The new edition has skill heavy characters so I wanted to make sure none of the skill categories was short of space. The back side has places for combat stats, saving throws, weapons and equipment carried and various other things.

The front page has the same space for a picture that the original sheets did. I first created what I will call a blank that has no picture but is just the character sheet itself. From there I began adding pictures of all the various mecha to give players diverse choices. This is one of the things that gives me pause about posting these things. I largely used art from the RPG itself but thanks to the internet I pulled images from other sources too. I did both line art drawings for those who want to ink in custom paint jobs as well as some pre-colored ones as well. So here is my question. Can I post these or would it be violating board rules?

Oh yeah, one last thing. Anyone looking at my character sheet will quickly notice that I did not include the customary space for mecha stats. This was intentional. They were always somewhat lackluster on the old sheets so I just took a copy of the Vehicle sheet I mentioned earlier and revised it for the new addition. The old ones were one size fits all but with these I customized them a bit for the individual mecha types. I could post these too but except for the blank they largely use the same pictures as the character sheets.

Just one more thing. I did Zentraedi character sheets too. Same thing various pictures drawn for internet sources.

If it helps, I don't think that any picture I used was original art work. Its all either stuff I have seen in palladium books or right out of things like macross memory perfect.

If it is okay I will be happy to post links to any and all of them for anyone who wants to take a look at them and possibly use them in their own games.

[Pouncer]

I like the idea, the new sheets are okay but customized sheets would be really handy. I don't know if I'll have enough time to work on another project right now but if you send me the links I may get inspired enough to make some time.

-POUNCER

[Replicant Mechanic]

I made a ton of them. I will post links as soon as I can. This weekend looks a little busy so it may be Monday before I can post them.

[MilkManX]

Awesome. I would love to check em out.