Because we can never have too many GURPS character sheets!
This is version three of a very simplified character sheet I designed for a game I’m GMing for a buddy and his two daughters (9 and 11). It purposely has everything the player needs to know, though not necessarily what the GM needs to know (though see version 2, below, for more on that). I’ll have a post down the road for the pre-gens and adventure that go with these character sheets, but suffice to say this is about the simplest I could personally tune GURPS and still call it GURPS.
You can get the form-fillable PDFs here:
Black and White | Downloads: 2,424 | Size: 428.6 KB
Color Panels | Downloads: 2,543 | Size: 438.6 KB
The game will be GURPS 4th Edition, but with a few tweaks thrown in inspired by a homebrew game I’m tinkering with and to simplify as needed. So, a few things to keep in mind if using this sheet:
Active Defenses have all been folded into a single Defend score (with a -1/turn cumulative penalty), as noted on the sheet. This is simply the highest of the character’s Dodge, Parry, and Block.
Attributes work as always, but since a new player has no context for what a numerical score “means,” they have been paired with adjectives (a la Fudge and Fate). Note that this doesn’t actually change how attribute scores work, only how that information is presented to the player. Also, the same levels can function for skills, if you want to just go nuts.
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- 10 Poor (mostly because “Mediocre” takes up too much room)
- 10-11 Fair
- 12-13 Good
- 14-15 Great
- 16-17 Super
- 18+ Epic
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Character Portraits have a space on the sheet, but there is no provision (that I’m aware of) for a form-fillable PDF to allow a user to add their own picture. So, either leave it blank, or fill in the PDF and save it as a JPG, then use Paint, GIMP, Photoshop etc. to add your own image to it.
If that seems a bit too simple for your tastes, the version 2 sheet might be a better fit. It is still simplified and intended for streamlined games, but displays more information for those players that want it.
Version 2.0 | Downloads: 2,230 | Size: 106.8 KB
I hope you enjoy these! I’m more adept at utilitarian endeavors than creative, but I’d love to hear any suggestions for improvement. There can always be a version 4!
Special thanks and credit to the website Game Icons for the wonderful icons! Check them out, insanely useful for things like character sheets, paper minis, rules handouts, etc.
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I love these simple character sheets.
I don’t know a ton about PDF creation, but I do have a commercial copy of Adobe Acrobat for work. I thought I would be able to easily open up the PDFs in the full version of Acrobat to add a character portrait, but it keeps blocking me. Are the files locked in some way? I can, as you suggest above, save as an image and then add a picture, but it’s annoying to be unable to edit the final version again. Any thoughts?
Thanks!
Hi Andrew!
There is no embedded field there (as you noted). Adding an image is a few steps, but nothing too difficult (some specifics may be different depending on versions – mine’s pretty old).
1) Open the image you want to use in Acrobat and save it as a PDF. (i.e., “MyImage.pdf”)
2) Open the character sheet in Acrobat, choose “Comments,” in the “Annotations” box pull down the menu of “Add Stamp (J),” choose “Custom Stamp” and finally “Create custom stamp.”
3) Use the “Browse” button in the window that pops up to navigate to “MyImage.pdf” and select it. In the “Create Custom Stamp” window that opens, enter a Category and Name and press “Ok.”
4) That ‘stamp’ is now ready to use. Click the “Add Stamp (J)” button again, this time select “MyImage.pdf” from whatever category you added it to and press the “Complete” button.
5) The image is now ‘stuck’ to your mouse. Move it where you want it and left-click to place on the sheet. Once it’s down, you can select the image and drag the corners to resize if needed.
Hopefully that helps some!
This sounds perfect. Thank you! I’ll test it out later this evening.
And I realized that I should have signed my name “Dalin” to match my handle on the GURPS forums.