Google Sheets Character Creation Workbook by Phil Hibbs

Instructions also available in French, aussi en français.

## Getting Access

The latest version is always linked in the first post of the BRP Central thread. I only ever post document links to that thread, so that I can be sure that there are no out-of-date links to old versions lying around. Please do not post direct links to the sheets, only link to this page or the thread.

*Please also do not "request access".* You need to make a copy in your own Google Drive account in order to fill in the sheet - I cannot give you permission to edit the master blank copy that everyone else will use as a starting point!

## Introduction

The workbook can be used to create characters using any of the basic cultures, occupations, and cults in the rule book, as well as any of the playable races in the Glorantha Bestiary.

The workbook is divided into three main sheets that are intended for the user:

* **CharGen** sheet - this is where character creation is done, filling in dice rolls, rune choices, culture, occupation, cult, and skill choices.
* **CharSheet** is the presentation sheet - laid out as a traditional character sheet, details from **CharGen** are filled in automatically using formulas.
* **History** is for character family background, with drop-down selections for summaries of every possible outcome of the yearly history charts.
* The remainder of the sheets are lookups and working space that the formulae and macros use to store the technicalities that most users will not need to worry about. If you want to add more weapons, the **Weapons** tab is where the stats go. I have hidden most of the tabs, but you can un-hide them if you want to look at the gory details.

Much of the functionality is implemented as traditional spreadsheet formulas, such as derived attributes like damage bonus, strike ranks, and category modifiers, as well as rune bonuses to characteristics.

The general principle of the colour scheme is that cells with a pale green background are designed for values to be entered by the user, whilst pale blue cells are initially populated by a formula, but you can override this with a different value if you wish. Cells that are not green or cyan should not be overwritten, or should be done with caution.

If you want to convert this spreadsheet into Excel or LibreOffice, you can do so with maybe only a few formulas to fix, and fill in characteristics and skills manually.

Or, you can use it in Google Sheets by way of macros linked to buttons. Along the top row of **CharGen** are a number of buttons, most of which fill in or amend details based on the race, culture, occupation, and cults chosen in the first column. For this you will need your own Google Drive account.

When you make a copy of the sheet and first run a macro, it will prompt you for permission for it to run.

## Typical character creation workflow

1. Pick a race.
2. Pick Culture, Occupation, and Cult - these choices can be made later, as long as they are made before you click the respective buttons.
3. Click the "...▼" button in the **Assign** column. This fills in the correct number of dice and fixed additions for the chosen race. The dice for the default choice of "None" start out as 3D6 for all characteristics. In addition, if you chose an elf race, it will swap out the Beast rune for Plant. If you chose Baboon or Centaur, it will also swap out the hit location chart and hit location calculation table for correct versions for those races. You should do this even if you are rolling dice yourself, as it is used to figure species maximum.
4. Click the button with the D6 image in the **Random** column. This generates random numbers below that are then translated into dice results in the **Value** column, in a range of 1-6 for most dice, but occasionally other dice for some races such as 1-4 for the CON die roll for Agimori. If you prefer to roll dice yourself, enter the results in the **Base Roll** column.
5. Rolls can be re-assigned from one characteristic to another by selecting a characteristic in the **Assign** column, e.g. if you have a roll on a STR die that you want to assign to INT, then click on the drop-down and change STR to INT. This will result in too many dice for INT and not enough for STR, and this will be highlighted in red in the **#** column to the right. Fix this by assigning one of the INT dice back to STR.
6. The button on the **Value** column will sort the dice rolls so that they are grouped together again and in numerical order.
7. If you are using the "re-roll ones" rule, then for any roll that results in a 1 in the **Value** column, click on the value in the **Random** column and click the D6 button again. That will generate a new random value for that die. Sum totals are displayed in the **Result** column, and are replicated further across after the Runes.
8. Assign numbers to your Runes, if you have chosen a culture, then any bonus for that will automatically appear in the **Culture** column. The **Choice** column allows you to select 60, 40, and 20 for elemental runes, and 75 for power runes. The values that you put in the **Adds** column are summed up in the column heading so that you can keep track of the 50 allocated points. There are no constraints applied to any of the values in any of these columns, so feel free to put whatever values you want as agreed with the GM.
9. Once your runes have been assigned, you will see the bonus for the two highest elemental runes applied in the **Rune Bonus** column. If there is a tie for the highest rune, then the sheet acts as if the first one is the higher. Add an extra 0.1 to the rune that you want to be the highest to break the tie. If three runes are tied for highest, then add 0.2 and 0.1.
10. If you choose to apply the bonus for a rune to your CHA characteristic instead of the rune's normal characteristic, simply delete the rune name from next to the characteristic in the **Rune** column (**W**, not **M**). This will cause the bonus to automatically move to CHA. Deleting more than one rune name will not assign both bonuses, the second one will simply be lost!
11. The +2 and -2 to SIZ and DEX for certain Praxian tribes are also automatically applied, but any atypical characteristic bonuses can go in the **Perm Adds** column, such as Humakt or Yelmalio gifts. The **Temp Adds** column can be used in order to calculate the effects of characteristic boosting magic, although there are tick boxes to automatically calculate the rather complicated effects of the spirit spells such as Coordination and Strength. Changes to derived attributes are displayed on the **CharSheet** in a smaller font along side the normal, un-boosted values.
12. The next stage involves filling in the skills gained from race, culture, occupation, and cult. These are done by clicking the respective "...▼" buttons in the **Skill Detail**, **Culture**, **Occupation**, and **Cult** columns further along on the sheet. **Skill Detail** fills in race skills, such as Insight. The others are self-explanatory.
13. When clicking these buttons, wait for the macro to complete before clicking the next one. At the end of each, there may be a pop-up message box explaining certain choices or amendments that you might want to make, such as assigning specifically which Lore skill you get from certain occupations, or picking weapon skills if there is a choice. For example, your culture will have filled in cultural weapons, but your occupation might have just added a couple of numbers to the first few weapon skill slots. Move these numbers to the correct weapon, or manually add a new weapon name and move the number there. Delete and type the numbers, rather than cutting and pasting, as the formulas will be wrong otherwise.
14. The +20 and +15 bonuses to cult skills have their own column (**Cult+**), and the **Choice** column is for assigning your four +25 and five +10 personal skill bonuses.
15. Enter your passions in the **Passion Detail** column, and pick or type in values in the **Choice** and **Bonus** columns, including any bonuses from family background.
16. Switch over to the **CharSheet** tab, scroll down to the weapons section and pick the weapons that you want to display on the sheet. The **CharGen** sheet can track up to 10 melee weapons and five ranged weapons, and the **CharSheet** can display whichever of these you consider to be relevant to everyday play.

You're done!

## Translating

Just select the desired language and click the **Translate!** button. You can switch to the **CharSheet** tab and watch the translation in progress, things will break and show "N/A", then be fixed. Sometimes you get an error saying the sheet needs to be re-loaded, but it seems to work ok.

You can translate back again, so a Spanish player can create their character using their own language, and an English speaking GM can make a copy and translate it back again and have an English version.

## Diversions from the rules

There are a few choices that I have made that may not be entirely in line with the rules, depending on interpretation.

### Ambiguous weapon skills

Where a culture or occupation gets a skill such as "Javelin", it is not clear whether this is as a melee weapon or thrown. The system gives both, as "1H Javelin" in the melee section, and "Thrown Javelin" in the ranged section. Same for "Battle Axe", both "1H Battle Axe" and "2H Battle Axe" are given. If you disagree, just delete the bonus number in the appropriate column after it has been filled in. Not all occupations follow this rule, some give "1H or 2H Short Spear", for example, in these cases just pick one, you can always add the other manually if the GM agrees.

### Lore Skills

All lore skills are grouped together and presented as a set of specialisms, so you won't see "Animal Lore" and "Plant Lore", rather "Lore (Animal)" and "Lore (Plant)". This allows for greater flexibility, where races such as mostali get "Glorantha Lore", "Metal Lore", etc, but there is no space on the character sheet to list all of the lores. Just add whatever lores you want to appear in the **Skill Detail** column, there is space for 7 of them.

### Perception Skills

Likewise, Scan and Search are implemented as specializations, so trolls get Scan (Darksense) and Search (Darksense), others get (Visual). Elfsense is implemented as a specialization of a skill called "Special", i.e. Special (Elfsense). This will make it easier if any other special senses are introduced, e.g. Riversense, Lifesense, or Intruder, if you want to play a Blue Elf, Krarshtkid, or Giant Honeybee.

### Insight

Picking a race and clicking on the **Skill Detail** button will fill in the race in the first Insight slot. The first slot will be given a base of 20 and the other one will have a base of 5. I believe this is in line with what should happen, but if the specialization ends up in the wrong place (for example by filling in something else and then clicking the button) then the base chances will be the wrong way around. Just ensure that your race lore is the first one listed.

### Race names

I have chosen to go with the Gloranthan names for races, so you will see "Agimori" for men-and-a-half, "Uzko" for dark trolls, etc. I have not added a separate female Uzko set for the higher SIZ roll, if you add 2 in the **Perm Adds** column then this will mostly work except it will not figure in to species maximum. You could just override the "+" value in Column E.

### Agimori, Baboon, and Morokanth skills

If you pick Agimori, Baboon, or Morokanth in the Culture pick list, you will be given the basic Praxian skill set including Spirit Combat and Survival. This just makes sense to me, feel free to not pick that culture if you disagree. Most non-humans don't have a culture pick, as the base chances are associated with the race instead.

## Alternative Rules

A few variations to the RQG rules are accommodated. The Rules tab allows these rules to be applied, this is reversible and is performed by swapping in alternative sections into various sheets.

Clicking on the Law Rune implements the rule. The macro that applies the changes will run and the check boxes will be changed at the end of the process.

## Jonstown Compendium content

The Rules tab now has a button to enable selected content from the Jonstown Compendium. Unlike the other rules changes, this is irreversible - you cannot remove the content once it's been added.

Once it has been enabled, the additional races, cultures, occupations, and cults will be added to the drop-down selection lists.

All the JC content is prefixed with an acronym, e.g. "DP" is DuckPak, "COH" is Children of Hykim, etc.

Once again, this is not an attempt to make the supplements obsolete. You still need to check through the character creation section of the book in question, as there may be choices to make. For instance, where some cultures list a number of possible rune bonuses, the sheet will give you all of them and it's up to you to delete the ones that are not appropriate.

## Known Problems

* Sometimes the images, such as the runes on CharSheet and the arrows on the CharGen, will appear to move around. This is a visual glitch in Google Sheets, and can be fixed by re-loading the web page. If the arrows persistently get in the way, then just delete them as they are purely instructional.
* If a non-Troll joins Kyger Litor, and already has a Speak Own other than Darktongue, they will not get the skill bonus. Add it manually as a Speak () language.
* If a Troll joins Argan Argar, they will get Speak (Darktongue) as a secondary language even though their main language is Darktongue. Just move the bonus to the main language and remove the secondary.
* Some translations are missing, particularly the Jonstown Compendium content.
* Fetch POW is not tracked, and so is not taken into account in any of the places that it should be. According to The Well corrections, it should be incorporated into all kinds of places, so if you want that, just put the fetch POW in the "Temp Adds" column and use the small numbers.