Character sheets in general (and SoJ specifically)

Folks, I've been running a Skyrealms of Jorune game for some time here on Gamer's Plane. Playing it here on GP and having to reference a bunch of different characters' details, I've been thinking about designing a printable character sheet for the game that I would publish for free online.

I'd like to get your feedback on my ideas as I'm working on it, so I can narrow down my design work and hopefully not produce as many drafts as I would otherwise. Of course, I'm hoping to hear from my players and others who've played Jorune, but I'm posting it in the general Game Discussions forum because I want wider feedback on character sheet design in general.

There's a couple of reasons for my wanting to do this:
a) the current Skyrealms of Jorune edition - third - is still in print, but it predates the portable document format (.pdf) and there are currently no character sheets for this edition available for download online. There ARE character sheets for second edition available, but since that's deprecated by third edition and also not in print, it's confusing rather than helpful.

b) Even if one were to use the official character sheets, all the published character sheets for Skyrealms of Jorune 3rd edition (both in the base game and in the later published expansions) organize the character sheet around character generation, rather than for ease of reference during play. While this is good during character creation, that sort of character sheet leads to a lot of confusion in game sessions, as players (and GMs!) scramble to find the relevant information.

OK, so I'll start with general questions.

For a skill-based system (think Call of Cthulhu, Burning Wheel, Fate, GURPS), do you as a player like to have one big list of skills on the character sheet, or do you prefer to have them in distinct groups by skill types (combat skills, spell skills, interaction skills, etc)? Have you used both of those approaches on different character sheets?

For a sheet with a lot of skills I'd prefer an alphabetized list of all the skills in one place. During game play I'm not really concerned that an Athletics check is Strength based, especially if I already have the modifiers/skill level written in next to 'Athletics' on the sheet.

If the game treats specializations as different, or groups them, then I think grouping is better, or at least organizing by groups.

I'm curious to see how it goes, as I'd love to add SoJ char sheets to GP.

Yeah, that's what I was leaning toward, myself. It is a big list for Jorune.

I prefer an alphabetized list generally, but for SoJ I think I'd rather have them sorted. At least into Weapons, General, Moon, and Dyshas.

This is simply for ease of comparison, so I don't have to hop around the list to figure out which weapon or Dysha is best.

While there is some complexity with the advantage system, the basic mechanic for using any skill in the game is the same: roll a d20, try to get equal or under your rank. So they're not treated differently by the system, leaving me free to design by how people expect to look up the information. So it's less a question of "Do I group these skills together by how they're used?" and more a question of "Do I group these skills together because players expect to see them separate?" Hopefully that makes sense.
Awesome! I am so grateful for the responsiveness and support you exhibit for us users of your site every day.

Comparison, huh? I hadn't thought of that. That's interesting. Do you do a lot of skill comparison during tabletop gameplay, or is it more during character advancement/generation?

Our play style may be very different, so I'm glad you brought that up. For instance, in the Force and Destiny game I'm playing here on GP, I don't do any comparison in normal play. But when we've been getting XP to spend, I am doing a large amount of analysis/reference, but most of that is going through the rulebook (I still haven't finished figuring out our last XP spend, and it's slowing down my posts). Maybe that's not a great example, because with the many charts and multiple categories of things that can be improved, the character advancement for FaD is way more complicated than in Jorune.

All that said, I think I'm going to do two versions of the sheet: one with just an alphabetic list of all skills, and another with sections similar to what you've described: Combat, General, Dyshas. I'm on the fence as to whether the Moon skills are used often enough to rate a section separate from the general list.

It's primarily used in character generation and advancement, but I do sometimes compare my skill in play too. Mostly when I have a choice of skills that can fit and I want to maximize my chances for success.

It's a good point, given that in Jorune you are likely to have ranks in two or three dozen skills. Thank you.

I prefer categorized as well, simply because that's generally how I like things arranged.

Though at the table with printed sheets it might be different, in PbP finding something on a character sheet is easy enough with a Ctrl+F (so no real need for alphabetization, though just for neatness I would like the skills alphabetized within their categories).