I doubt the design is gonna stay like this, but here's my initial draft of a first page for Project KARYA's d100-based TTRPG's character sheet (breakdown of what's what below); made in MS Paint.
TTRPG's (tentative) Name: Centimos
Along the top of the paper, we have spots for writing in one's...
...Character Name. Standard procedure, after all you need to make sure you can keep track of which character you're playing for the campaign.
...Character Species and Culture. I really really really really can't understate how problematic and just misinformed the concept of "race" is, both inside and outside of TTRPGs. Along with the fact that the various sophonts that exist on Karya evolved unaffected up until the Restructuring, rather than being formed by some divine divinity in a short amount of time, I decided to just switch to referring to one's genetic background as it is: one's species. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Hybridization does occur, as the Embodiment of Karyic Organisms and Evolution knew that consenting adults were going to form relationships one way or another and wanted to make sure they could potentially have their own families with little complications. There'll be various mechanics in place to properly distribute ability traits and what not based on your genetic lineages, all to make balanced characters. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Additionally, since the concept of "subrace" is being ditched as well, it's being replaced by one's culture instead. Since one's upbringing is gonna determine a lot of the extra abilities and skills one may know to an equal or greater degree than the circumstances of one's birth, I decided that a species may have two or more cultural/ethnic groups present. You may thus determine which of your character's parents' cultural background will influence your character more than the others. You may also argue that your character was raised in a more predominant cultural group despite who your character's parents were, and thus have a completely unique upbringing than others like you in different cultural settings.
...Character Background. You'll need to explain the origins of your character's
...Character Alignment. As talked about in a previous post, Project Karya's alignment system differs from the likes of D&D and Pathfinder, as we try to eschew the traditional, more subjective concepts of "good vs evil". It is based on the two axes of "selfless vs selfish" and "chaotic vs ordered", with degrees of neutrality as well; thus exists a total of nine alignments in Centimos: -----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ordered selfless - the iconic do-gooder, you implicitly trust a system to help other people out - be it the government's laws, a set of commandments provided by a trusted group, or a dogma you've come to develop over many years of reflection and reasoning.
Ordered neutral - you know that you are at the whim of higher forces that set rules and regulations on your life. As such, you must determine whether to help others or only yourself as the machinations of order marches ever onward.
Ordered selfish - you follow the rules because you know it's the best way to get what you want out of life. Sometimes this means working as the team leader, other times this means overtly following the rules to reap the benefits while leaving everyone else in the dust.
Neutral selfless - you've come to realize that while rules, laws, and other regulations often are in place with good intentions, sometimes you need to work outside of these as much as working within them in order to help others. They're more guidelines than hard limits.
True Neutral - everything is subject to your own interpretation; be it to follow the rules or to follow your heart, be it to help others or to help yourself, you have found a relative balance in how things should go.
Neutral selfish - laws and organizational rules are just as convenient as just going with your gut instinct when it comes to getting your way. People might regard you as a "mysterious", "shady", or "alluring" individual with how you mercurially switch between the two states.
Chaotic selfless - in a world where innocent people need help, one needs to just follow their heart to know where they can make the most impact.
Chaotic neutral - there's no rhyme or reason to the universe, and one must remain quick to react if one must make it in life.
Chaotic selfish - inhibitions be damned, no intoxicants necessary. You take and do what you want in order to enjoy life's variations, with little to no regard of how it may impact other people. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I would argue that to determine how your character falls into the Karyic alignment chart, I'd determine it based on a scale of 0-100% of how often (a) the character acts according to a complex personal/organizational code, the law of the land, and/or any degree of sorted logic, versus acting largely on impulses and spur-of-the-moment reasoning that is based on emotional responses; and (b) how often they do the things they do for their own wants and needs versus how often it occurs for the benefit of others regardless of how oneself benefits. 33.34-66.66% of one way or the other for either axes will result in a neutral position on that axis; if the character acts more than 66.67% (two-thirds) of the time one way or the other on an axis, then you can reason they are more solidly ordered/chaotic and selfish/selfless. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- And remember: you can be selfish and yet still be considered a "good" person, or consider your actions selfless while still being an "evil" person.
...and Character Class(es) and Level(s). Note that there is a total of four spots, as it's my intention to allow multiclassing - and, by extension, the unlocking of "prestige classes". As such, I want to ensure that a reasonable amount of spaces are allowed to account for diverse characters.
Along the left hand side of the paper, we have slots intended to represent a character's various abilities. Each slot contains...
...the ability's name. From top to bottom, the ability names are: Power; Agility; Fortitude; Will; Knowledge; Logic; Social; and Charm.
...an underlined, empty space in which one may write the ability's score. Each ability score for characters has a hard cap of 100, with some exceptions.
...a set of parentheses in which one may write the ability's roll modifier. For every two point increase or decrease in the ability score, the roll modifier respectively increases or decreases by one; the roll modifier is zero when the ability score is thirty - considered the "baseline" score of an average human.
...a decimated fraction with which one may track the progress in increasing one's ability score. During long rests, you can spend a varied amount of time attempting to train your character. At the end of the rest, you can put five points towards up to two ability score's progress counters. After accumulating ten points, the progress counter resets to zero out of ten, and the ability score increases by one point.
Taking up most of the center of the page is the list of skills available to use to influence roleplaying events. From left to right, the seven columns are...
...the ability score used by the skill. This determines which ability roll modifier to add to your skill roll.
...the skill's name. You or your GM then may request that you attempt the respective skill check during certain moments of roleplay to see what the outcome(s) is/are.
...and five columns of blank circles, labeled "Beginner", "Learned", "Proficient", "Expert", and "Master". Depending on class, background, culture, or various other reasons, you may be considered one of these categories for the skill in question, and add a particular bonus depending on which you are.
