Using Tiddlywiki for role-playing character sheets

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#1

Hello!

Pre-Amble

You can skip this if you want. It’s mostly because others might recognise themselves in the situation.

I’m an aging role-playing nerd who has been using TiddlyWiki for campaign planning for a few years now.

Being a gang of (mostly) old farts, my role-playing group plays a lot of (often modified) old role-playing games — some of them even local to Sweden. We’ve come to prefer digitally fillable character sheets, but as you might imagine, the idea of such sheets existing for niche games from the eighties and nineties is laughable. So, being the resident techie and having a lot of time on my hands, I’ve added forms to a bunch of old PDF scans. Anyone who has worked with PDF forms knows that this is nearly illimitable torture. PDF is a horrible format to work with — forms arguably being one of the worst bits — so I’ve been considering alternatives for a good long while.

Then recently, it struck me: TiddlyWiki! It’s accessible, editable, stylable, self-contained… and free! It’s perfect (I hope!)

The Idea

I want to use TiddlyWiki to make fully styled (as in looking something like the paper originals), fillable character sheets for role-playing games. Preferably, build a template base onto which I (and maybe others) can just add a sheet design and the required fields and go play.

There are some really nice possibilities that come with using TiddlyWiki, such as having multiple layouts of the same form for different screen sizes (as well as one for print) accessible at the click of a button.

The Question

I’m fairly sure this is possible, but while I’ve messed about with TiddlyWiki enough to have some basic idea of where to start, I’m far from an old hand, so I figured I’d throw out a post asking for advice from those who have more experience. Maybe someone has done something similar already. Maybe someone is just intrigued. Maybe you’ll just humour me in an attempt to get me to shut up and go away! Who knows? It’s worth a try! :slightly_smiling_face:

#2

Just a quick note…this might be useful…Discord

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#3

Hi, from a possible even older Grognard, as I started playing D&D around 1977.

I’m going to make a Character Sheet of my own, for a self designed RPG.

Three good places to start are a D&D tiddlywiki, the Gurps RPG tiddlywiki that is being worked on right now, and lastly the

Roll20 system that supports a few other roleplaying games besides D&D. I use that one almost weekly, and the new 2024 D&D sheet is a marked improvement.

Now what I am designing myself will probably have some sections that can be kept small or expanded. The plain fact is that for example Spells will take up not much space on a Berserker, but lots of space on an Aeromancer.

Thus the first tip is to make sections collapsible, or even don’t show at all.

With Tiddlywiki this can be done by using Conditionals (among many other methods).

State tiddlers can keep track of what to show.

With the Tiddlytools by Eric Shulman (recommended even though i’m not using them yet) you can do several nifty things, that are quite useful for character sheets

What i’m also thinking about using those state tiddlers is allowing the players to decide what to place where. With the Tiddlytools you can keep bookmarks to let the wiki know what that player wants.

Also a tip if you haven’t already is to look at CSS stylesheets. They allow some additional options, like expanding tables that don’t fit the screen by scrolling them.

Hopefully this rant helps a bit?

Gurps sheet https://rahan-testing.tiddlyhost.com/

My own one: https://aesirius-rpg.tiddlyhost.com/

D&D one: https://dandwiki.tiddlyhost.com/

That one is a copy the original exist too, and last I heard is that he is working on a 2024 version. I used his colors, it is just that good.

There are more RPG tiddlywikis, for example a Eberron one.

Also the best help is this forum itself, the people here are very helpful, to say the least.

Best Regards, Terry Tigre =)

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#4

I’m the creator of the D&D wiki linked above. Yes, join us in Discord because this isn’t going to be just one issue. You will be facing problem after problem as you tackle each section of the character sheet. We have a tw-for-gaming channel in discord where we have a motley crew who are also working on various rpg wikis.

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#5

Question, as I click on the discord link above I get a message that there are no text channels?

I can go to servers I have visited before though.

#6

@TerryTigre

That’s a lot of information and a good starting point! Thank you!

Roll20 is really nice, but as I said — much of what we play are pretty old (or old editions) and/or niche games. We do play a bunch of World of Darkness stuff, but that’s generally the 90’s editions, which I don’t think have sheets on Roll20. The one game I can come up with that’s on there is Call of Cthulhu.

Also, we’ve come to appreciate having the actual file. Sweden has great internet, but that doesn’t mean it’s available 100% of the time and having the file locally is just less hassle.

Collapsible sections is a good idea — especially for stuff like magic!

CSS is definitely going to be central to my efforts, as it’s something I’m already familiar with (and allows for a lot of styling.) The downside of course, is that it’s not WYSIWYG, but that’s not really a barrier for me.

'77 was the year I was born, so you’ve been at it quite a lot longer than I have. Wasn’t D&D created right around then, even? Can’t have been out for many years at least.
I bought my first game (the Swedish Drakar och Demoner, 3rd edition) in '87 somewhere. Haven’t looked back since! :smiley:

#7

@dhjackal & @intrinsical

Thanks a bunch for the welcome and the channel link, but unless I’ve misunderstood how Discord works, I — and from the looks of it, TerryTigre — need an invitation, or we won’t be able to access the channel. (It basically looks like a completely empty channel without the rights given by an invitation.)

#8

Another attempt at a Discord invite link TiddlyWiki 5

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#9

@ahnion…I hate Discord but I am on there (just) and I knew about this channel so i thought just linking you and it up would be sufficient but keep trying…you are getting there…

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