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      The Pig-Faced Orc
      Dash  ·  
      Apr 26, 2021

      Old School BTB Character Generator

      in AD&D

      Hello OSRers...

      I wanted to quickly share a project that I've been working on that was directly inspired by a blog post I read here at The Blue Bard (although I haven't posted much here, I love the blog and have read several of the articles multiple times).

      It's an 1E AD&D character generator that is absolutely BTB and very in-depth. You can find more information here: https://www.thepigfacedorc.com


      If you're interested, please go ahead and sign-up, follow on social media, give the artist a follow, anything else you can do to help support the project. It's free for everyone.

      Here is a sample of the artwork, an homage to the original 1E AD&D races on p18 of the players handbook, drawn by Jenny Hellström (Instagram: jenhelldraws).


      The post that inspired it was, "Combat Part I: We Don't Need Segments...Unless They're Awesome". Specifically the two points made therein: Let me tell you the reasons these rules WILL slow the game to a crawl:

      1. The character sheets don't support the rules & all the info is hidden in a book.

      2. The DM is unfamiliar with the rules


      So, I set out to remedy that problem, at least in myself. That was almost a year ago, and since then I've certainly learned a LOT of edge case rules, and come a long way to creating a full automated, 100% BTB 1E Character Sheet generator with all the edge cases & 1E weirdness. It's not quite finished, but it strikes me that I might do all this work and nobody will ever know about it! So I thought I'd start promoting it a bit early.









      More screenshots & info at https://www.thepigfacedorc.com

      Cheers!

      11 comments
      Anthony
      Apr 26, 2021

      My god. This is a thing of beauty. I will share it with my players AT ONCE.

      The Pig-Faced Orc
      Dash  ·  
      Apr 26, 2021

      Thanks man, that means a lot, especially coming from the OG. Your blog and by-the-book role-playing philosophy really did inspire me, and I went a bit crazy with this. Gary Gygax certainly did not think like a computer programmer, his rules are very "unstructured". But I like them. Certainly way better than the more modern incarnations. It isn't finished yet, hopefully you will share it with your players again then. :) It's a waaaaay bigger job than I had thought. I thought I'd "whip it up over a few weekends for my players". That was a year and 20,000 lines of code ago.

      Steve Powers
      Dash  ·  
      Apr 26, 2021

      @The Pig-Faced Orc Followed on all platforms

      The Pig-Faced Orc
      Dash  ·  
      Apr 26, 2021

      @Steve Powers Thanks man, really appreciate that support!!

      Anthony
      Apr 26, 2021

      @The Pig-Faced Orc I really can't wait for updates on this project. I don't use platforms like Twitter or fb, but I did subscribe. If I can help further, do let me know!

      The Pig-Faced Orc
      Dash  ·  
      Apr 26, 2021

      What you've done already is great! Suggestions as to what exactly makes a character sheet the most useful and convenient I guess is helpful. But of course I already downloaded yours and studied it, so I dunno...

      Anthony
      Apr 26, 2021

      @The Pig-Faced Orc Well, I'd offer to shout about it in an effort to gain attention, but I'm afraid the Blue Bard is a backwater and my voice doesn't carry much beyond this space. I'd back it if it was a kickstarter. Carry on and I'm so glad my excel sheet served as some kind of starting point. Of note, customizable weapons w/ customizable damage and to-hit-AC-type adjusters would be very cool, as would some of the more non-standard dice (d3, d5, d7 off the top). But presumably you have plenty on your plate already. Respect.

      The Pig-Faced Orc
      Dash  ·  
      Apr 26, 2021

      It was your blog that was the starting point for sure. The character sheet I just looked at afterwards. I stupidly thought I'd whip it up in a few weeks however. That was a big mistake! :D Not a backwater, it's great. Let's be honest though, everything 1E is a little bit of a "backwater" these days. Although there seems to be a retro resurgence, so fingers crossed.

      Definitely building it with stuff like customizable weapons in-mind. The code probably doesn't mean a whole heap, but if the peak attached shows anything, it's that adding another "row" to that heap is not a huge deal. But you're right, I've bitten off a huge chunk (working for free! ... sorry ... for the love of the game. ;) ) I just want to get this finished and released and then I'll think about house rules etc. But defo on the cards, especially if it's used by the community.