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ChudoJogurt
2021-05-20, 08:41 AM
I'm thinking if running something inspired by Worth the Candle web original.
But for that I want to really surprise the players with the most weird, unusual complicated, and downright bizzare character sheet imaginable.
Something that implies complex system with multiple interdependencies, perks, bonuses and synergies.

Any suggestions?

Xervous
2021-05-20, 08:56 AM
A character sheet that looks like a piece of machinery with all its wheels and dials. Based on how various disks are rotated they pair different things together or expose conditional abilities / calculations.

For instance: I rotate my outermost central disk to match its purple wedge to the north west disk, boosting my strength. This unfortunately means I lose the perception bonus from having green matched on the north east disk. But I do expose the second line of my central disk stack granting me better flight. Sadly having all complimentary colors touching between the outermost central disk and the next smaller one means I’m losing 1 mana per turn.

Willie the Duck
2021-05-20, 09:11 AM
Invisible Suns has some rather obtuse stuff designed for visual uniqueness over functional purpose (as an example, the character sheets are deliberately not in any standard paper ratio like 8.5x11 or similar). Corpathium, and Weird Fantasy Roleplaying have weird graphical references that... must make sense after reading the rules but as it stand are just head scratchers. Of course you could just use Battletech mech sheets and tell the players to scratch of the terms 'Armor' and 'Heat' and replace them with 'Vled' and 'Khua' and then giggle maniacally. :smalltongue:

MoiMagnus
2021-05-20, 09:22 AM
Some random ideas:

(1) Hit points use a "snakes an ladders" kind of small board on the sheet (where if you end up at an exact value at the beginning of a snake/ladder, you lose/win some additional hit points).

(2) You have a multiple "action spaces" on your character sheet for the different standard actions. When you do an action, you have to put a token on the corresponding space, and you have to take this token from one of the drawback spaces, revealing a negative effect (lower AC, etc) that you suffer for the remaining of the round.

(3) Adjacent skills. Skills are organise in a circle / web / whatever, and when you make a skill check, you get the bonus from the skill itself but also half of the bonuses of all the adjacent skills.

Man_Over_Game
2021-05-20, 10:43 AM
Say you're playing a game where the closer you are to death, the more magic you have, right? Have an actual "Health Bar" with ticks on each side of the bar. You fill up the bar as you take damage, filling it from the left, with values to the left of your bar being your magic level, and values to the right being your health. You can also add more to the left and right of the default bar as part of your character's powers, essentially adding maximum health (that doesn't add to your magic) and more baseline magic (that doesn't add to your maximum health).

Segev
2021-05-20, 12:14 PM
I feel this topic deserves at least an honorable mention for Eoris: http://eorisessence.blogspot.com/2013/01/downloading-trial-10.html?m=1

Man_Over_Game
2021-05-20, 01:12 PM
I feel this topic deserves at least an honorable mention for Eoris: http://eorisessence.blogspot.com/2013/01/downloading-trial-10.html?m=1

Oh dear god wtf is that

Willie the Duck
2021-05-20, 01:39 PM
Oh dear god wtf is that
Looks like a game released in 2010 or so as a $100 two volume set including color art on every page and in-universe poetry scattered throughout the book. just skimming a review I see: "'Horizon of Soliloquy’, the edge of the universe."... "At this point the planet Eoris came into being, bathed in the strongest waves from the ring."... "The Sil are the first kind of life,"... "The second type of life is more common, the various forms of Xylen"... "The last type of being are the Kalei, or ‘last spirits’, crystalline angelic entities who have come from the White Ring to destroy the Great Spirit in the Black Howling." Yeah. Hmmm. Sounds like someone took Skyrealms of Jorune, Immortal: The Invisible War, and their Werewolf: the Apocalypse fanfic, and put them into a blender. I mean, good on someone for putting their ideas down on paper (boo on me if I make fun of anyone actually committing to an RPG project), but I know I'm not paying $100 for it. Given that the website hasn't been updated since 2014, it looks like not many others did as well.

Segev
2021-05-20, 02:21 PM
I have a friend who collects weird RPGs. When Eoris came out, several of histories, myself included, went in on buying it for him for his birthday. He finds it greatly amusing and has asserted he'd only run it as a joke, and even then only with pregens.

It is apparently very thoroughly though tout, but has so many things to track that it would be a nightmare to try to play or run.

ChudoJogurt
2021-05-20, 03:49 PM
I feel this topic deserves at least an honorable mention for Eoris: http://eorisessence.blogspot.com/2013/01/downloading-trial-10.html?m=1

Oh my god, this!
I've seen it once and I've never been able to find it. Thank youl

KaussH
2021-05-20, 04:10 PM
It is not off the shelf but.... in the white wolf magazine, they had an alternative malcavian world of darkness charicter sheet that was made by spreading the normal sheet, and sheets from a few other games, using the pieces to make one sheet (making sure you can still assign dots and the like correctly) and then copying it. It was the biggest usable mess of a charicter sheet I have seen.

Lacco
2021-05-20, 05:00 PM
It's... majestic...
...I mean the Eoris sheet...


Also, did some crazy drawing. Few ideas:


https://i.ibb.co/4gQQ2Nt/20210520-210346.jpg (https://ibb.co/6Jdd8sw)

The blocks "DIE" need to have a die placed on them and represent an attribute. You can reroll them only when you use the attributes together.

The "FIGHT" snail represents the die you can roll in combat - depending on how much fight there is left in you. It's connected with the splodgy "stone" - in the beginning, players should choose a rune. When you get to the interconnection, the rune can/must be activated.

The semi-rectangle with dots is the mana matrix. You can place elements you know from the table up right on it to cast spells - if you connect a side with one of the black dots (or other side), you get the listed effect (e.g. left side is "Fire" and the upper right is "Demon", so if you connect them with the elements you summon a fire demon (not necessarily friendly)).

The "Blood" bar on the left has been inspired by Man_Over_Game: it's damage that you get (part of it) and you fill it from bottom up. It also spills to the right - reaching first the dot that leads to two attributes (that you can use only when you are damaged enough) and then another runestone.

Now name is self-explanatory, but will have another use.

The upper left dotted spiral may represent experience, passing time, failed rolls or even each roll. Now what you do is you use the word associated + number of dots as your modifier and target for the roll. Once you get to the end of the spiral, the time is right, the stars are aligned and everything is doomed.



https://i.ibb.co/G2wvDn2/20210520-210422.jpg (https://ibb.co/Fwvb1mw)

Now the back side contains - on the lower side - the runes a player can draw on the runestones. Ideally before the game starts. The runes could be randomized per character sheet - some of them will go to the front, some to the back - every time drawn into a rune stone.

The ones on the front represent the innate powers of the character.

The ones on the back represent their troubling destiny, terrible fate or doom.

The upper part is better explained on the next spoiler.


Folding time!
https://i.ibb.co/0BDhr9x/20210520-210405.jpg (https://ibb.co/28ngdMT)

As you can see, you can fold the back page (triangle fold) onto the front one to get a bit shorter "blood bar". You are now "Forgotten" - and instead of Magic you have Madness that has Limit Die and Power Die. These determine your new attributes - Austerity, Klarity, Broken and Kaa.

Don't ask me what the last one does. You do not want to know.

The new attributes are calculated from your dice, so they change after every roll.

And you have a runestone here, representing the Terrible Fate!

Theoretically, you could create a charsheet that you can fold in multiple ways... but I'm too tired to think now.


Okay, enough of the crazyness. Sorry for the cosmic horror vibe, I'm not familiar with Worth the Candle, was just drawn here by the words "craziest" and "weirdest".

Now I know I should have asked before, but... are you looking also for something that is actually usable...?

Anonymouswizard
2021-05-21, 01:44 AM
Don't mind me, just trying to find a way to incorporate seating order into our mess of a character sheet without making it too obvious or two insure.

Ability descriptions are written starting halfway along the sheet, and to find out what your abilities do you have to lounge your sheet up with the player on your right's sheet, unless you have the ability that lets you use the player on your left.

Lacco
2021-05-21, 02:11 AM
Don't mind me, just trying to find a way to incorporate seating order into our mess of a character sheet without making it too obvious or two insure.

Ability descriptions are written starting halfway along the sheet, and to find out what your abilities do you have to lounge your sheet up with the player on your right's sheet, unless you have the ability that lets you use the player on your left.

Building on this: there are certain abilities you can use only when the sheets are combined (so you have 8 additional "feats" on your margins - top, bottom, left and right - but the result is possible only when you push two sheets together).

Example:
Left side of my sheet "When fighting two opponents at once..."

Right side of my neighbor's sheet "... gain advantage, but pay 1d4 HP".

Left side of my neighbor's sheet "In complete darknes..."

Right side of my other neighbor's sheet "...gain resistance to fire, but lose 1d4 XP per minute."

Cluedrew
2021-05-21, 05:48 AM
Well once you got some base mechanics down my idea: Mix and match! Every class (or whatever you call your top level pick one of character creation option) comes with its own character creation. Some things would stay the same, like the parts that interact with other sheets, but other parts change.

Say most people have a damage track that gives you magic bonuses as you take damage. But instead you can play a cyborg you get a different track, every time you fill it up cross off a body part, get some penalties, maybe still get the magic boost and clear the track. Way more health at the cost of starting to death spiral a bit.

I have this vague idea for this network of nodes, different nodes can get filled in under different situations related to the parts of the character sheet they are near. So the ones near the attributes are filled in to boost a roll with them, the ones near your health mark certain health thresholds. Certain special abilities only work while certain combinations of nodes are filled or unfilled. So you take damage, fill a dot, realizing you are getting pretty low, then have to figure out what is an intelligence roll you can make to boost, fill in that dot, and get access to regeneration.

On Eoris: Actually for the amount of information crammed onto the character sheet, its pretty good. The amount of information on the sheet is a bit concerning. Why do you have an "other skills" section? Those are just the ones everyone is going to have?

Eldan
2021-05-21, 09:55 AM
You want some really unusual ability names, too. Can I suggest taking some inspirations from the Unknown Armies sheet:

https://i.imgur.com/FExS4Hn.png

It's Pretty good for unusual skill axis names.

Berenger
2021-05-22, 08:04 AM
Left side of my neighbor's sheet "In complete darknes..."

Right side of my other neighbor's sheet "...gain resistance to fire, but lose 1d4 XP per minute."

This sounds like an ability of literally no earthly use?