Formatting Lists on a Character Sheet

I didn't want to muck up the guides thread but I have a quick Custom Character Sheet Formatting question that I've not been able to resolve.

I want to create a list of Siblings on the character sheet under the Families heading. The thing is, there is no telling in advance how many siblings a character might have, so it needs to be extendable. I've tried using the Abilities function but that is not an input field, and I've tried using a spoiler to create a text input block, but that just wraps around.

What it needs is a multi-input field to enter each siblings Name, Gender and Age.

Any help gratefully received.

I think you want something like this. The abilities tag will make a blog of fold out names, each starting with a #
In the character sheet they are there are usually a quill in the corner that allows you to edit just that abilities box

[abilities="Family"]
#Name
Name: [_=]
Gender: [_=]
Age: [_=]

#Name2
Name: [_=]
Gender: [_=]
Age: [_=]
[/abilities]

I think he is wanting a variable number of the people. In other words, the ability to add a person without having to enter the edit option and copy and paste another person

Technically, Abilities is an input field - as runekyndig mentioned, you can use the quilt icon in the header to only edit stuff under Abilities, not the whole sheet. Although it's not very obvious, I personally often forget about it. :'D

I don't think there are many good ways to do it other than that. Maybe you can just go with a table of ten rows with editable cells and hope that no one has more than ten siblings? Kinda like paper sheets do?

What about the NPC list?

As Ironmonger42 says, I was really hoping for a variable number of input fields that would cope with however many siblings a character had.
e.g. Halflings typically have far more siblings than humans in my game.

The spioler box would have worked had there been a way of forcing the text onto a new lines for every sibling, but I couldn't see anyway of doing it so the text just wrapped around and looked rather messy.

Character Sheet

---

Name: Enter Character Name

Appearance

Skin: Skin Colour
Age: Age

Hair: Hair Colour
Height: Height

Eyes: Eye Colour
Build: Build

Family

Mother: Mothers Name

[ +- ] Siblings

Sibling name,gender & age Hugh (Brother 21), Pugh (Brother 20), Barney (Brother 19), Moli (Sister 17), Cuthbert (Brother 16), Daisy (Sister 16), Gertrud (Sister 15)

Father: Fathers Name

Partner: Partners Name

FlyingSucculent's idea of creating ten input fields and hoping none of my characters have more than ten siblings would work, but I was just hoping there was something a bit more elegant.

TheGenerator's NPC idea is interesting and I'll have to try it out tomorrow, but I'm not really seeing how the number of NPC's listed is variable in the example.

I had no idea that would work. That's ingenious.

Sadly, I've tried similar ideas without finding a solution. For example trying to have x amount of checkboxes where x is the character's level.
The issue is that you can't put 2 tags inside each other.
For example:So, the only way I've been able to allow for an unknown amount of a list is to supply more fields than I think will be needed. If you run out, it requires a char sheet edit.

@Adam I think you can use the fillable fields pretty much anywhere that isn't inside another tag. :)

You have put them all on one line. If you want them to be on multiple lines, put them on multiple lines:

[spoiler="Siblings"]Sibling name,gender & age
[_=Hugh (Brother 21)]
[_=Pugh (Brother 20)]
[_=Barney (Brother 19)]
[_=Moli (Sister 17)]
[_=Cuthbert (Brother 16)]
[_=Daisy (Sister 16)]
[_=Gertrud (Sister 15)]
[/spoiler]

You can also use a table to separate the name from that age and align things.
How often will people be needing to change the number? A once off edit to copy/paste a line does not seem so onerous.

You can also use the quill trick mentioned above and make just the list editable, then people can add more items with little effort.

Here's an example combing [ abilities] and [ table]:

[abilities="Siblings"]
[table=ht zebra compact]
Name | gender | age
[_=Hugh] | [_=Brother] | [_=21]
[_=Pugh] | [_=Brother] | [_=20]
[_=Barney] | [_=Brother] | [_=19]
[_=Moli] | [_=Sister] | [_=17]
[_=Cuthbert] | [_=Brother] | [_=16]
[_=Daisy] | [_=Sister] | [_=16]
[_=Gertrud] | [_=Sister] | [_=15]
[/table]
[/abilities]

Note that things display and work differently in post as they do in character sheets, so these examples may look wonky and be missing things like the 'quill' (feather icon).

That's actually a very good question.

This is the first instance I've come across so far as I've been building my Character Sheet. But thinking ahead I can imagine it could become an iongoing issue. I can think of numerous instances where on my current Tavern Keeper Character Sheet information is recorded in variable length lists.

For example.

Skills: A character can have any number of skills. some of which are career based. and others learned through roleplay.

Inventory: Character's amass 'Stuff' that is stored in 'Containers' on their Character Sheet. The number of items will vary from character to character and from container to container.

Reputation: Chgaracter's gain and lose 'Reputation' with NPCs and NPC Factions during play. The number of individuals and factions being dependant upon their social interactions.

On Tavern Keeper, this is just handled with editable tables the player being able to add rows and even columns as necessary to accommodate the data. So, perhaps I need to rethink what I try to include on the Character Sheet and just limit it to the fixed format stats.

I'm actually quite surprised that there isn't an easy answer to the problem. I was actually expecting someone to point out a formatting option I'd missed or some clever trick they hads used on their own sheet that I wasn't aware of. IOt seems odd that my game is the only one that has this need for lists, how do other sheets handle things like Skills, Talents and Inventory?

I think what I might do today is have a rummage around on the 'Public Repository of Custom Games Sheets' thread and see if anyone else had the same issue and how they tacled it. I did copy the 'Warhammer 1e' template as the starting point for my own sheets, but it wasn't complete and hadn't tackled the skills list or inventory.
++++
I had a look through the Custom Character Sheets in the 'Public Repository of Custom Games Sheets' and it looks as though everyone has the same problem, I can see lists of Skills, Abilities and the like with a pre-defined number of empty slots to accomodate the potential expansion of the lists. One sheet even has a Container marked 'Backpack' that has a list of potential items in it just marked Item 1, Item 2, Item 3 etc.

So, it looks as though if there is a solution nobody has found it yet.

People tend to use the abilities tag for those things.

Yes! But as far as I can see the Abilities Tag format doesn't produce a variable length list. So, basically it only works if you know exactly how many abilities every character is likely to have.



What would happen if this character suddenly acquired a Grimiore?

It's interesting that in this example, the Backpack has been given a text block to record what's in it. I tried that idea using a 'Spoiler' Tag but the problem I had was that the text wrapped and looked messy rather than forming a neat list.


Or this character suddenly learned how to swim?

You can see this problem manifesting itself repeatedly in the custom character sheets. Where the designer has had to create prepopulated lists (in this case for Icons, Inventory, Feats, Features & Talentsand Class Powers)

But there are also examples where like me the designer got as far as the first variable list and then abandoned their sheet because they couldn't work out how to code the next section.

I mean, it's variable length in the sense that a newline is a new line when you hit the edit quill.

Perhaps I need to take another look at that then, because that sounds like it ought to be a solution. So, if a player is filling in their character sheet and needs to add a new line to their character Ability List (or whatever) they can just click on this Quill symbol and it will add a new line?

If they click on the quill symbol, it opens that section up as a multiline edit box.

Thanks!

I think that actually works.

I was able to enter six siblings in a list, and it remembered them and displayed them neatly, which was just what I wanted.
What I might try and do now is get a bit clever and see if I can pretty it up a bit, but essentially thats all I need.