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MGT Only: Character Dossier Concept

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DickNervous

SOC-12
Baron
I've never been happy with the standard character sheets that Mongoose has provided with the game. It's not that there is anything wrong with them, they definitely work well, but I've always thought they could be better. Over the past 2 years of running my campaign I have toyed with and designed at least a dozen different character sheets and one issue I have always come across is trying to fit everything that a player needs to have readily available on a single piece of paper in a clear, concise manner. Sure, you can make it double-sided but then they need to flip the page all the time. After a while I had found a sheet that was printed from an Excel spreadsheet that my players liked and was pretty good and that is what we have been using.

Now I am planning on running a game at Travellercon and wanted to do something novel and cool for the pre-generated characters that I will be giving the players and came up with the idea of a dossier, the kind that an intelligence agency might keep on a person. And I can print it on 11x17 cardstock and then fold it into booklet/folder. So after a few weeks of playing with layouts and designs, some playtesting with my group, and finally figuing out how to make MS Word print 4 8x11.5 pages in the right order to be an 11x17 booklet, I present to you the MgT 2E Character Dossier!

It is partially filled out with one of the characters for the game I will run and still needs a few tweaks, but I figured it was time to get some feedback from the community. So please feel free to comment and critique it and let me know what you think!!

Thanks!
 

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DickNervous said:
I've never been happy with the standard character sheets that Mongoose has provided with the game. It's not that there is anything wrong with them, they definitely work well, but I've always thought they could be better. Over the past 2 years of running my campaign I have toyed with and designed at least a dozen different character sheets and one issue I have always come across is trying to fit everything that a player needs to have readily available on a single piece of paper in a clear, concise manner. Sure, you can make it double-sided but then they need to flip the page all the time. After a while I had found a sheet that was printed from an Excel spreadsheet that my players liked and was pretty good and that is what we have been using.

Now I am planning on running a game at Travellercon and wanted to do something novel and cool for the pre-generated characters that I will be giving the players and came up with the idea of a dossier, the kind that an intelligence agency might keep on a person. And I can print it on 11x17 cardstock and then fold it into booklet/folder. So after a few weeks of playing with layouts and designs, some playtesting with my group, and finally figuing out how to make MS Word print 4 8x11.5 pages in the right order to be an 11x17 booklet, I present to you the MgT 2E Character Dossier!

It is partially filled out with one of the characters for the game I will run and still needs a few tweaks, but I figured it was time to get some feedback from the community. So please feel free to comment and critique it and let me know what you think!!

Thanks!
Click to expand...

I think it looks great!

Two points though:

On page 3, Term 3 Rank should be Force Commander, not Force Captain.

On page two, the sunburst in the lower left looks Magenta (at least on my screen). If it is possible with your graphics software, Maroon is more of a Dark Blood-Red.
 
whulorigan said:
I think it looks great!

Two points though:

On page 3, Term 3 Rank should be Force Commander, not Force Captain.

On page two, the sunburst in the lower left looks Magenta (at least on my screen). If it is possible with your graphics software, Maroon is more of a Dark Blood-Red.
Click to expand...

Thank you!

I actually used one of the fonts that came on my T5 cd for the sunburst, there are some cool fonts in that folder! (it is T5 Underlying Fonts folder on the CD) and then just changed the color. So it is just a matter of getting the right shade. :)

And I will fix that rank, thanks for pointing it out!
 
I have been tweaking and playing around with the character sheet and now have something that looks like this. I posted it on two Traveller groups on Facebook and received overwhelmingly positive feedback and a few suggestions, that have made me look into how to create "interactive" or "layered" PDF documents that will allow the final user to choose which items appear on the document. This got me thinking (a dangerous thing indeed!) about all types of stuff and I thought I would ask here for some suggestions and ideas.


  • On/Off: Sunburst Watermark
  • On/Off: Lines in Notes Sections (for use when printing)
  • On/Off: Images (ship on front and Traveller logo on page 2)
  • Choose: Type of Dossier: (none), Intelligence or Personnel
  • Choose: Source agency: (none), Imperial Intelligence, SolSec, INI (Imperial Navy Intelligence), Zhodani Intelligence, Planetary Law Enforcement
  • Choose: Stamp on front: Confidential, Top Secret, Restricted, Private, (None)
  • Choose: Service logo on page 2: (none), Imperial Navy, Imperial Army, Imperial Marines, IISS, grey sunburst (generic), Skull & Crossbones (Rogue), career logos from T5?
  • On/Off: Source agency in footer

Does anyone have any other suggestions or ideas?

I was also thinking of moving the Summary to the last page where the extra "Notes" section is and putting space on the front page for a character portrait and possibly just listing the UPP along with the Name, Rank, Age, Race, and Gender info. I think this would make it look more like a "folder."

I am also going to make a generic "journal" page that is in the same format as everything else that you can print out as needed to "add" to the dossier as you continue along with the character if you want.

And it goes without saying that this will eventually be a PDF form that you can fill out. :)
 
Sure, you can make it double-sided but then they need to flip the page all the time.
Click to expand...

so what you do is print it on two sheets, then put them side-by-side in a notebook or folder. do the same thing the next page over, with less-used data. can fit a lot onto four pages delimited by frequent/infrequent use.
 
flykiller said:
so what you do is print it on two sheets, then put them side-by-side in a notebook or folder. do the same thing the next page over, with less-used data. can fit a lot onto four pages delimited by frequent/infrequent use.
Click to expand...

That's the goal. The front and back pages have the least frequently used information (Career history, finances, Allies/Contacts/Enemies/Rivals, summary) with the middle two having the stuff you need all the time (UPP, Skils, inventory, weapons, armor, etc).

The way it is designed you can print on 4 8.5x11 pages (Single or double sided) OR print double sided on tabloid (11x17) and use the "Bookfold" setting that your printer should have to make a 4 page booklet when you fold it in half.
 
Character papers

Hello
Sometimes I do gamemastering on conventions and I prepared papers with a different concept. We offen have tables, that are too small. If the papers are too large there is not enough room for deckplans, handouts, scrisps and soda... So this papers are 21cmx29cm but you fold them to 8'x5.5'...

http://www.punch-martians.com/AlexWoods-Female.pdf
MCutter
 
MCutter said:
Hello
Sometimes I do gamemastering on conventions and I prepared papers with a different concept. We offen have tables, that are too small. If the papers are too large there is not enough room for deckplans, handouts, scrisps and soda... So this papers are 21cmx29cm but you fold them to 8'x5.5'...

http://www.punch-martians.com/AlexWoods-Female.pdf
MCutter
Click to expand...

Same thing with this. You print it on tabloid (11x17) and fold it in half to make a 4 page booklet.
 
That's a great concept for a tournament game. I once gave players copies of their Imperial Detention Facility records, after they had partly recovered their memories on a ship of those sentenced to transportation to a wilderness planet. Small portraits and mocked-up machine readable codes added to the appearance of the sheets.
 
l_c_jackson said:
That's a great concept for a tournament game. I once gave players copies of their Imperial Detention Facility records, after they had partly recovered their memories on a ship of those sentenced to transportation to a wilderness planet. Small portraits and mocked-up machine readable codes added to the appearance of the sheets.
Click to expand...

That's how this idea started, for the character sheets for Travellercon-USA, but my group also loves them for out campaign so I am in the process of making them into Interactive PDF forms that will allow you to show/hide some things like the watermark, Confidential Stamp, etc. Hopefully will have it ready on a week or two and then I will post it on Drivethrurpg in the TAS as a pay-what-you-want title.
 
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