Sneak Peak at a Work in Progress

It isn't a secret that I like to play HackMaster.  It's been blogged enough before that I don't want to go into old territory.

I consider myself friends with the game designers (D-Team) and while a  lot of gaming dorks would probably say the same thing, I could probably call them up and have them willingly answer the phone.  Except Dave Kenzer.....he's frequently sequestered in some foreign country working, but he has returned my call from China.  That was a first for me.

One of my 4th Edition PC Sheets

Anyway, I digress.  A while back Jolly Blackburn was working on a new character sheet.  He did an awesome job on the thing and I was blessed to be among on of the few he allowed to use it.  I'm the kind of guy who prefers to keep an electronic copy of the PC sheet that lets me print off a new copy for each game.  Keeping a handwritten sheet is Old School, but I prefer having things stored electronically so I have backups and can keep things with me.  More than once I've been able to get into a pickup game where all I needed was borrow some dice.  For a while I even had some "emergency dice" that I traveled with so all I really had to do was pop open the laptop or print a PC at the hotel before heading out to game.

The new HackMaster Player's Handbook is about to go to press.  We've been playing with the new rules as they come out and as more and more rules are made available, the wicked cool PC sheet that Jolly made is being less and less useful.  There is also a small issue with the exclusivity of that sheet.  Jolly did give me permission to use it in/with the home group and I did go through turning the whole thing into a fillable PDF form.  Since the D-Team might make some tweaks to it and release it as a product (most likely free), I couldn't give it out.

There is only one answer: make my own PC sheet.

I've got some basic ideas for changes.  The format will remain a folded up sheet of paper so the finished dimensions will be 5.5 inches by 8.5 inches.  The front side and back side will have the most referenced information, which is largely combat and skills.  The inside will be for equipment and secondary information.  The initial version will be primarily for fighters, but I'll make tweaks to the initial version for the other character classes.

My ability to use Adobe Illustrator is problematic, so I'm doing a lot more detail work in Photoshop.  It takes longer, but the end result is "prettier".

Here is the only piece of graphic I'm using from Jolly....kind of hard not to, which will be placed alongside my version of the combat summation chart.

Not to scale (or resolution)