ERA for Rolemaster

The ERA character creation system for Rolemaster works. It is a strange system, a batch file that pops up a webpage where you can create your characters, but I give them credit for making this cross-compatible and even including a Linux launcher. I tested the Linux version, and it works.

With Windows dying on the vine, seeing more indie devs embrace Linux and character-creation tools that run natively on it is encouraging. Not a day goes by that Windows isn't trying to steal and hide my files from me, and it sucks. I hate this new world, and I can see Microsoft banning local file storage one day.

There will be a day when I walk away from Windows, and that day is coming.

You can't "go back" once your character sheet is finalized, and you get a template sheet that you can "level up" and allocate skill levels. This is how Rolemaster works: you do a lot of work in character generation, "setting up a sheet" where the costs of different choices will be predetermined, and when you level, you will be spending CP to fill out those choices as you gain them.

Unlike GURPS, where the cost for skills in different categories is the same for everyone, in Rolemaster, your class and culture determine the costs you pay for different skills. You can go outside your build, but it will just cost you more points, so your fighter can learn magic. In that sense, Rolemaster is very similar to GURPS, but character creation sets up the cost for every skill in the game based on choices made. GURPS assumes every character is a blank sheet of paper, and a medieval fighter can go on to be an astrophysicist - you just have to spend the points. 

In Rolemaster, the cost for those science skills will be prohibitively high, and that fighter will struggle since that is not "who they started as in life," but they can do it, just not as easily as someone trained from a young age to do that task. The "class system" in Rolemaster defines what is easier for you in terms of future progress, but it does not completely control it.

GURPS is more in line with modern educational thinking, where anyone can retrain for anything at any age, whereas Rolemaster emphasizes the importance of early childhood education. In my opinion, your early schooling will determine much of your life, and it only gets harder the later you go in life when you try to retrain and do something new. Rolemaster understands the basic human condition and uses class and background to model a character's "early years" quite effectively.

This is why we can't shortchange education, nor allow it to be used as a trust fund for the greedy among us to raid and live off of. If you are not creating doctors and engineers at an early age, decades down the line, everyone will suffer, including those who stole from the system for short-term gains. You steal from education today, and there goes that doctor you will need 20 years from now.

Philosophically, I am more in line with Rolemaster's view of education, the traditional method of younger minds learn easier, and setting up those neurological pathways where a young mind can be trained to think in ways that make their career and later progress in their life in the areas their minds have been well-experienced in.

Rolemaster models early education as the character's "class choices," and those are the areas you are deciding: "I want to be great at these things later." The "Role" in Rolemaster is not for role-playing; it is more for the characters' "Role" in the world and life. The "Role" you set yourself up in for the story, and the "Role" you will take in a life on the stage built by your choices.

The ERA software does a good job building your character sheet and then letting you level up your character. You can create printable sheets with this software, and that helps a lot. Rolemaster is a d100 game with many skills, but it's simple to play; creating characters is a major hurdle.

The ERA software also serves as a "training tool" for character design, walking you through the steps and explaining what happens next. It helped me get a handle on the character creation method much more easily than reading the books.

Click on a spell list, and it tells you the known spells in that list. The HTML files it creates are nice for a basic reference sheet, but the "view character sheet" function feels more complete and useful during play. I like the spell lists in the character sheet view for my casters. Like GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, Rolemaster's spell lists start off in the "magical tricks" realm, and they gradually move into the more fearsome magics. GURPS does this through prerequisites, while Rolemaster does leveled spell lists.

They have modules for RMU, RM Classic, RM FRP, and Spacemaster Privateers. Some of the games are better supported with the books than others, and each book is a separate purchase.

This is a must-have for Rolemaster players, and it walks you through character creation slowly and lets you understand each step along the way. There is even a helpful system that explains what is happening on each screen. A strong recommend for Rolemaster players, and it gives you that confidence in character creation to start imagining characters in the game, and in your worlds.

How To Create Palladium Character Sheets with LibreOffice

https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download-libreoffice/

All right, let's create some Palladium character sheets by hand, for free. While this tutorial is for Palladium Games, specifically Ninjas and Superspies, nothing is stopping you from doing this for D&D 5E, Pathfinder 2, GURPS, or any other game you can imagine. All we need are some free tools, like LibreOffice; grab it from the link above, or if you are on Linux, you probably already have it installed.

Why LibreOffice? Why Linux?

Because we are not supporting the AI ecosystem and are staying away from paid character hosting sites, software packages, and learning to be self-sufficient without spending money or having Microsoft feed our documents into AI models. My characters are my IP and thus mine. Also, I am not feeding into this RAM crisis. I choose not to use AI.

Also, my hand-crafted character sheets come out far better than these pretentious ones you get in the OSR and other games with dungeon maps and far too much clip art tossed all over them. They are simple, to the point, save paper and toner, and I can create custom sections to my liking if a game needs special information.

Download LibreOffice and install it. Then, go to Format->Page Style...

Set your margins to a half-inch, and give yourself a half-inch gutter. This way, we can three-hole punch our character sheets to store them in a binder with dividers. You may not want to know it now, but if you plan to run many characters or track one as they level, you will thank me later.

If you run an adventure, three-hole punch that too, and put the old character sheet in with it when you print a new one. This way, you will have a record of the adventure and the characters who went on it, and how they were at the time. Since you have hard drive space and these are small files, save a new file every time you level, just to watch the progression.

Next, go to Format->Columns and set this to two, and leave all the default values, including autowidth. This will use our paper better. Three columns are sometimes too hard to manage, and I end up with a lot of overflow onto the following line.

Part of me wonders if people need a tutorial like this, but another part of me knows that many just don't know. This is how we used to hack together character sheets in the 1990s, using word processors and dot-matrix printers, doing our own layouts and working magic with the features of the programs we had.

If you want an actual throwback, 1990s experience, doing your character sheets this way (or by hand) is the way to go. This is how we did them, and they always came out so clean, with plenty of room for notes and other scribbles. Did a value change? Cross it out, pencil in the new number, fix it later, and print a new sheet when you level up.

Remember to shred and recycle! But, seriously, doing my character sheets this way wastes a lot less paper than printing out a 16-page monstrosity with Hero Lab. One double-sided sheet can hold a lot of information when done this way. Of course, one sheet done by hand is the most waste-reducing way to make a character sheet, since you can use it until the holes wear through the paper. These sheets can do the same, as long as you pencil in new SDC and other changing values. I could do empty tables for "fill in by hand" parts, like for gear and open skill slots, and that is probably a smart improvement I can make to enhance reusability.

But it is my choice to make them! In many sheets and programs, you get no choice. This way, I get exactly what I want, and I can engineer re-use into the sheets if I feel I am wasting paper. I could go the whole way and make the entire sheet rigged for re-use, with a fill-in-the-blank box for everything.

For Ninjas and Superspies, I laid my first page out like above. The stats have tab stops, so I can create "columns" for the value and then the modifier. If a character has more than one martial art, copy and paste the Primary Form section for a new one. I made one since that is enough for now.

Skills and secondary skills will expand! Leave a lot of room at the bottom of a column for these expanding lists. In general, open lists will appear at the bottom of your page. Also, use the Insert -> More Breaks -> Insert Column Break command to stick a section at the top of a column, as I did for the weapon proficiencies. This way, they won't keep backing up into the skill lists.

Palladium has a lot of weapon modifiers that can add up for different weapons, so I split out the "to strike" modifiers for different weapon categories and include any bonuses from PP.

My second sheet has gear and, on the right, a list of the characteristics of different attacks. I have equipment back here, cyber implants, and a section for the training programs I selected during character generation, including the colleges the character attended and the time spent there. Cover is not on the official character sheet, but it improves as you level, so it needs its own section. Background is another fun section that covers family and other personal details. Remember to total your equipment weight!

If you need to set tab stops, you can do that by putting the cursor at the first spot in the document, choosing Format->Paragraph, and choosing the Tabs tab. Type in 0.5, press New, and then add them like that. I did mine every half inch.

If you want to get fancy, you can insert tables, too, and be very organized! I do everything with tab stops, but to each their own. If you like tables, go for it, and your sheets will begin to look very fancy. For games like Pathfinder 2, this may be a lifesaver feature. I will need to adjust column widths, and that is just a matter of dragging them over. Doing it this way gives me higher reusability, as previously discussed.

I like these hand-made character sheets a lot. They are more work, but this is a small trade-off for a sheet that grows as you fill it in, and you can create custom sections for whatever you want on the character. I can also copy & paste out of my PDFs into these, saving me a little work typing. If I need an entire spell description, I can create a sheet for it and paste that right onto the character's grimoire. If a character has an animal companion, I can make a place for their stats on the sheet.

If I want an adventure log, I can create a spot on the next sheet and list the adventure, the location, people involved, a summary of what happened, the XP gained, and other information.

Also, given the way you create characters in Palladium Games, you are copying and pasting a list of skills and modifiers into the sheet, making a few choices, and moving on to the next training package. For my character, I just added all the skills first with their modifiers, sorted the list, and removed the lowest-modified duplicates. Select a bunch of rows of text, and use Tools->Sort to sort that list so you can keep your skill and ability lists alphabetized for easier reference during play.

Would I love a Palladium software package and character designer? Yes, I would, and I know about the spreadsheet designers and have those for fantasy. But even those can't be as fine-tuned as this style of sheet, which is very personalized, and I can optimize the numbers I need and put them all in easy-to-read sections. The availability and quality of the character sheets I can find for the game do not limit the amount of fun I can have with it.

And my DIY sheets, while taking a little longer to set up, are fully customizable and quick to use during play. Are they fancy? No. Are they retro, and look like something we would do back in the 1990s with a 486 and a dot-matrix tractor-feed printer? Oh, yes! We did this for Spacemaster (with WordPerfect), and those sheets worked very well. All the same skills were used, including columns, bolded titles, and tab stops.

Now I don't need character creation software; I can do this myself on Linux. I am not feeding into the AI nightmare, and as a gamer, I can make the conscious choice not to feed into the AI bubble madness. I have the freedom to make that choice as a consumer.

Also, this throwback, 1990s-style word-processor sheet makes me happy.

Palladium Characters: Amazingly Good

I created a character for my throwback 1980s Palladium Ninjas and Superspies game last night, and there it is. That incredible feeling came right back to me. This is a character I want to play. Wow, what a fantastic experience, and this is a character with depth, real meat, and substance. When I am done, the character feels substantive, authentic, and seriously cool.

You must be able to follow instructions! Most modern players do not have the patience for this process and will never be able to figure it out, but that 'speed bump' is not gatekeeping; it is a skill test to see if you are worthy of putting in the time and attention the game demands. If you can't get past character creation, other games are going to be better for you.

This was true of games like Advanced Squad Leader in the 1980s; the rules were a certain way, creating a natural barrier, so more casual players would play other games, while players who appreciated the level of detail the game delivers would stay. This creates a filtering system so people who want to put in the time will stay, and those better suited for casual games will go elsewhere.

And this is not bad design; it is a feature. Those people on gaming YouTube saying "it is common wisdom this is a bad design" have no idea what they are talking about. They just want to sound smart and push everyone into casual games so they can get on the monetization gravy train. This is also why the First and Second Editions of AD&D (OSRIC or For Gold & Glory) are better for me than BX or BECMI.

I will take devoted, attentive, and patient players over the casual crowd any day. It is the difference between home cooking and fast food. While fast food is great every once in a while, it never satisfies me, nor is it worth going out of my way to eat. Meals made with care and time are always better, and the people who share that love are the ones I can relate to and speak to about food. The same goes for gaming; simple, casual, easy games feel pointless to me.

That is not to say the system could be more organized. Keep listing the skills and their modifiers that your training packages provide. In the end, sort both the primary and secondary lists, go skill by skill in the book, and write down your base percentage (plus the education bonus for primaries) and the per-level bonus. Some skills also have a negative modifier when chosen as a secondary, so secondary skills are better for no-percentage physical skills.

I create my characters in a LibreOffice document in double-column format, with fixed tabs, and type all the values by hand. Who needs a silly character sheet? Real players use LibreOffice and Linux for their character sheets. If you know how to create columns and tab stops every half inch, you have everything you need. You will never be taken advantage of by a paid online character storage site or Windows and its AI reading your documents ever again.

I even prefer this method to many "crafted" character sheets that are too fancy or take up too much space. At least here I can set a half-inch gutter margin and three-hole punch the character sheet for binder storage. LibreOffice character sheets are the way to go these days, and you will get a greater sense of DIY attachment and accomplishment once you create a sheet that is better for you than what others can provide.

Once you create one character, strip it down and use it as a blank template for others. There is your blank character sheet, and you can do a better job of organizing things yourself. Make sure to use LibreOffice's "sort" feature (Tools->Sort) when you select a list of skills so you can alphabetize them quickly.

This works very well for me, and I can fit an entire character on a single double-sided page. Also, note that I listed the skills as a base percentage plus X%/level, so if the character levels up past level one, I will not need to go back to the book and find all these "per level" modifiers again.

This also works for any Palladium game, and you can even export to PDF or text to import into a VTT. It sounds primitive and like a lot of work, and while it is more work, I feel an in-line two-column character sheet that I design is superior to most anything I could find online. For one, I have infinite space, plenty of room, and I can create custom sections for things that I want the campaign to focus on.

You will get double skills in character creation, and only the highest level applies. Also note that the character's education bonus (if they have one) is added to all primary skills, and not the secondaries! Some skills will modify other skills, so take note of that.

And do those physical skills early, so they modify your stats and SDC.

Also note, this is an old-school game. If your character is missing a skill, you can either wait until the OCC says you get a new one or you can figure out a way to get it in-game. Let's say I want my agent to get a "combat motorcycle driving skill" and they don't have it, or I forgot to give it to them.

Your first option is to swap an unused skill for that one, but be careful with physical skills, since they modify stats! Another option is to wait for the OCC to grant you a skill pick.

The third option is to figure out how long it would take to get that skill through a training course, if they can take it, who they would take it from, and how much in-game time it would take to attend classes. Three months for a secondary and six months for a primary sounds right, and you are trading time for advancement. If the skill is more in-depth, this time may be 2 to 4 years in fields like medicine, and it will take place over a more extended period.

You are trading time away from adventuring and adding time to the character's age in exchange for that advancement, so it works out. If you wanted to start with this skill, add the time to the character's age and give it to them. You are trading lifespan for a skill that is more than fair.

Also, I added a few sections to this character sheet that the "official" one lacks. I created a background section for the character's background and family, including the university they attended and when they graduated. I made a training programs section to list the packages I took during character creation. I added a date of birth. I made a section for their cover that can also expand if contacts or other special notes are needed. I listed all their martial arts moves and abilities. I made a section that lists the strike modifiers for different weapons and attacks.

The combination of the time it took to create the character, craft the sheet, and go through the selections and picks made me excited to play. I don't get this feeling with other games, and games that are much simpler than this. This character means something, and I get that "excited to play" feeling that I do not with other games.

Fantasy characters done this way are likely just as good, and clearly a step above anything 5E gives me.

Tales of the Valiant: Roll Your Own

One of the best parts about Tales of the Valiant is they went for a more straightforward character design process, with fewer things to write down in each step. I designed the same character in Level Up Advanced 5E and came out with twice the special powers, notes, and different abilities on my sheet than a comparable ToV sheet.

Level Up Advanced 5E is a game that truly embodies the 'more is more' philosophy. A level one character can easily have 12-15 special ability notes, compared to ToV's six. This abundance of abilities adds a profound depth to the game and makes character creation more time-consuming, which is a testament to the game's complexity.

When I am in the mood for it, it is excellent.

When I am not, it is not great.

Character sheets in Level Up must be done by hand since no program does them. It first took me 90 minutes to make a character, and I have gotten this down to 30 lately. Getting everything set up and recorded is still a long time, but the details are worth the effort.

ToV has Hero Lab, which makes the basic rules well, but the system can't be expanded for custom entries, so if you want to create a custom lineage or heritage, you are out of luck. However, I am hopeful that the ToV version of Hero Lab will improve and add the spells from Deep Magic and the Monster Vault creatures and the ability to add custom entries for items, spells, heritages, and lineages. I eagerly anticipate the inclusion of the Midgard and Southlands heritages and lineages!

The other Kobold Press 5E books should be available for ToV, but they are not. Since ToV is 5E compatible, we should have the option to use any 5E books we have for Hero Lab in this system, primarily since Midgard and Southlands are supported on the desktop version and are nowhere to be found in the online part.

I like Hero Lab for ToV; it is so limited that it is hard to recommend without seeing more new things to buy and support for custom entries. Even the "notes" section for characters is not present in this writing, despite this text box being in other games. Since the game is 5E compatible, the online version needs a custom content manager and a way to add our favorite things.

So, at this point, roll your character sheets and do them by hand. This way, you can pull in as much 3rd party content and subclasses as possible. Using online character creators is convenient, but it is anti-competitive. It can lock out almost every 3rd party who makes books for the game, and it especially hurts small independent publishers.

If a game is so complicated that you need computers, consider playing another game. This is especially true if that character creation system is locked behind a paywall and "everyone can't come inside." My answer is to do them by hand and play games where it is not too much of a hassle.

Level Up pushes the boundaries of my tolerance for complexity, but then again, that is the game. It is the Aftermath! of 5E and details everything.

Tales of the Valiant is streamlined and simplified, and it feels more like a B/X version of 5E. The game is more accessible for new players, which D&D can't claim (especially with 10 years of backward compatibility being critical parts of many character builds).

ToV is also a one-book implementation of 5E (for characters). It is a fresh start. While you can pull in your favorite 3rd part books, you don't need to, but the door is open.

That...I like.

Tales of the Valiant Character Sheets

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/438831/Tales-of-the-Valiant-RPG-Character-Sheet

Kobold Press put up some nice form-fillable PDF character sheets on DriveThruRPG. I am tempted to spin up a party of four and take them through a level 1-5 adventure to see how this goes. This is a straightforward sheet, well-organized, and easy to read.

And they are free!