I should start by saying that I’m new to Burning Wheel. Really, really new - I’m still trying to get a game going. The system looks fantastic, though, and I’m really excited to try it out.
One of my passions in any RPG is character creation and character sheets. I’ve made custom sheets for plenty of other systems before. I may do a Burning Wheel character sheet someday, when I’ve got more experience with what it takes to actually play the game. However, one thing I definitely noticed is that character burning is pretty involved. I know about the Online Character Burner, but it sounds like that will never be finished for Gold, and I never saw any sort of timetable for the Official version. So I decided to make my own tool in spreadsheet form.
This spreadsheet autocalculates just about everything it can. It’s not like the Online Character Burner - you need a copy of the book as a companion to read the lifepaths and lists - but I automated whatever I could. I’ve tested this in OpenOffice Calc and Excel, so any mainstream spreadsheet editor should work. Any cell not specifically designated for data entry is protected, but there’s no password, so you can tweak things as much as you want. This isn’t supposed to be a character sheet - it’s just for making the number-crunching of character burning easier.
I like the straight-forward layout. Only relevant info is displayed, the drop-down selections are convenient, and the auto-filled traits are a nice touch.
I do see a few issues though. First, this spreadsheet handles black shade well; but not grey or white. PTGS is calculated differently for grey and white (see BWG Core Book p546 “Grey Mortal Wound” and/or MoBu p370 “White Mortal Wound”). Grey Hesitation is 8 - Will Exponent and White is 7 - Will Exponent.
Second, there are a few formatting typos. On the “Skills” Tab the Exp is being calculated incorrectly for one LP Skill (B28 ) and all General Skills (B31-B35). They should be referencing the stats on the “Stats” tab, but are referencing lower cells.
The second issue will be easy to fix, but the first might take a bit longer. The sections “Heroic and Supernatural” (BWG p544), “Grey and White Math” (MoBu p367), and “Attribute Burner” (MoBu p369) should be very useful.
Great, thanks for the help! Both problems were actually fairly easy to fix. I’m not going to worry about white shades at all, though. This is designed for conventional character burning, and white shades won’t come out from that.
The link in my original post has been updated for the fixed spreadsheet. It should be fully functional now.