My game isn't here: the universal sheet

A sheet that rolls in a minute for any game — from your PDF, from scratch or both — and grows from the sheet itself: pages, fields, rolls that read the sheet, free-form design and your PDF manual.

Use this when your game isn't on the list: a small one, your own, or one whose sheet only exists as a PDF. In a minute you have a sheet that rolls real dice, and you grow it from the sheet itself: pages, fields, rolls and free-form design. You don't need to open the system builder.

Getting started

Sheets → New sheet → Your game isn't here? (at the top of the systems list). Or, if you're the GM, when you create the campaign: under System, the first option is My game isn't listed: universal system.

  1. How does your sheet start? Pick a starting point:
  • Blank: an empty sheet.
  • Classic: die + attribute, Percentages (d100), Narrative (2d6) or Dice pool: generic templates with some example attributes you change on the sheet.
  • My PDF or image: upload your game's sheet and place the boxes on top. If the PDF is fillable, its boxes are detected automatically. You can also add regular pages behind.
  1. Game name (left empty, «My game»).
  2. How you roll, if you want to change the template's: add to the die, Roll under, Dice pools or Other. If none fits, My own way: type your die (3d6, d12, 2d10+1) and say whether the value is Added, Roll under or a Pool.
  3. Create and design the sheet (from the campaign: Create the campaign and design the sheet).

It is created as your own private system and you land on the sheet as your players will see it, and edit it right there: drag pieces from the palette, tap them to adjust them and, in each one, New field creates its data without going to another screen. Save saves everything. When it's ready, Create character (or, if you came from creating the campaign, Done: go to the campaign).

If you started from your PDF, you land in the Overlay editor: put each box over its slot (drag to move, corners to resize), type its name and press Apply to the sheet.

Overlay shortcuts:

  • Find boxes reads the page drawing and proposes a box on each line to write on, inside each frame and on each small square to tick. Click one to accept it or Accept all. If the PDF was already fillable, its fields come in on upload.
  • Several at once: Shift+click adds a box, dragging on empty space draws a selection frame and Ctrl+A selects the whole page. With several selected a bar appears to align, distribute with the same gap, match width or height and copy the format (font, size, alignment) of the last one you picked. While dragging, the box snaps to the edges and centers of the others (Alt to move freely).
  • Undo with Ctrl+Z (redo with Ctrl+Shift+Z), zoom with the buttons or Ctrl + wheel, and hold Space to drag the sheet around.
  • In Field you can pick one your system already has instead of creating another; if it's a calculation, its formula shows.

In the sheet's list view (the mobile one) boxes come in reading order: top to bottom and left to right.

It already comes with guided creation: whoever creates a character in your game follows its steps (name and attributes). To change how attributes are set, in the system builder, Creation tab, use Quick creation: Freely, By sharing points or By dice, and press Update from my fields. Fields you later apply to every sheet join those steps on their own.

Customize

In the sheet header, Customize. While it's on, the sheet shows what can be changed, and Done closes it. A sheet just created from your own system opens in this mode.

Manual adjustments

Every number has a ±. You type the Final value and the difference from the calculated one is stored: if the calculation changes tomorrow, your adjustment is still added. Back to computed removes it. Clicking outside the box saves; Esc cancels.

In the same box, This field's roll: its own die (Fate too) and how it uses the value (System, Add, Roll under). The die can read the sheet: level d 6, 1d(sides).

And On the combat bar: Roll with this and − + counter put it on the table's bar, with no setup.

Under Character traits you can edit a trait's name, text and effects for this character only, or Suppress (stops applying, not deleted) it.

Pages and fields of its own

At the end of the tabs, Page. Choose With fields, Notes or From my PDF or image. Everything you add here is This character only: the system doesn't change.

On a page of its own, New field: name and type (Number, Text, Resource, Checkbox, Track, Notes, Roll or Calculation). You can also put fields of its own inside the usual tabs: each one shows Add a field of its own to….

Roll is a button that rolls some Dice plus whatever you write, reading the sheet: 2d6 plus strength + 1. As you type the sum it suggests the sheet's fields. If the system has custom dice (named, with painted faces), they work here too: 2fantasy + 1d6.

Calculation is a number that comes from a formula (FLOOR((strength - 10) / 2)), with the same editor as in the builder: text, blocks or nodes, and the system's own functions.

Automations (at the top, in the Customize panel) are «when, if, then» rules only this character has: «when Life drops to 0, turn on Unconscious», a button that rolls and adds… The editor is the builder's (list, blocks, nodes and Test) and they run alongside the system's. Turn into template takes them to the system along with everything else.

Removing a field asks first, and its value isn't deleted: it stays in the list of values from fields that no longer exist, from where it can be moved to another field.

Designing a page

On a page of its own, Design page opens the builder's Design editor for that page alone. You can:

  • switch it to free placement and drag and resize to the decimal;
  • upload images and order layers;
  • add decoration and any widget.

Press Save design to apply it. System fields are never touched from here.

For every sheet

What you change in Customize belongs to that character only. If the system is yours (your campaign's, for instance), you can pass it to every sheet at once, without going sheet by sheet:

  • For every sheet, on a page of its own, moves it into the system.
  • Apply to every sheet, in the Customize panel, moves everything the character has of its own: pages, fields and its sheet.
  • Edit everyone's sheet, in the same panel or the sheet menu, opens the system's sheet right there, without leaving the character sheet: pieces, tabs and fields. Save for everyone applies it to every sheet (with Undo).

Keys don't change, so values stay where they were. The first two leave a notice with Undo.

For everything else (style, art, manual, character creation, levels, combat, publishing to the Workshop), from the sheet, the Expert mode.

When the template changes, each sheet warns with The system template changed: which fields arrived, which left and which numbers move. Got it accepts it, and it can be undone too.

The rules: your manual

The sheet's Rules button joins the system manual and the campaign rules. In Campaign rules, the GM can import a Markdown file or a PDF:

  • Text (searchable): it becomes text sections. Free.
  • Pages as they are (with art): each page is kept as an image, with its illustrations and tables, and it also works for scanned PDFs. Paid plans only, up to 150 pages.

Upload only what you have the right to share with whoever will read it.

At the table

The universal sheet plays like any other custom-system sheet. It:

  • rolls from any number (with its own roll if you gave it one);
  • leaves the roll card in the chat, with Damage target or Heal target;
  • puts its bars on the token;
  • lets macros read its fields;
  • supports conditions with a duration that advance on their own with the turns.

Compendium gathers the system's traits, equipment, bestiary and catalogs, with search. It only shows up if the system has something to show. Opened from a sheet you can customize, each trait has To my sheet to add it.

Known limits

  • You can't copy another author's system. "Apply to every sheet" only exists for the system's author, since copying someone else's system would be taking their work. You can customize your sheet as much as you want, but the system stays theirs.
  • On mobile, free placement stacks in reading order, top to bottom.
  • In a campaign, the table decides. If the GM doesn't allow free sheet editing, the player doesn't get Customize: the GM does it.

Common problems

  • "I don't see Customize." The sheet has to be saved and yours (or you have to be its campaign's GM), and if it's in a campaign, the GM has to allow free editing.
  • "My PDF has no text." It's scanned: import it as Pages as they are.
  • "The roll doesn't work." Check the note under the dice field: if it names a field that doesn't exist, it tells you which.

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