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:
The character sheets don't support the rules & all the info is hidden in a book.
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!
I believe it! And the UI is so beautiful.
Better believe this was a LOT of work....
the world is less dark today.
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.
@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!