Google Sheets Character Creation Workbook by Phil Hibbs

Introduction

This Google Sheets 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. The one exception is the Translate sheet, where language translations are stored. Oh, and if you want to add more weapons, the Weapons tab is where the stats go.

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.

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 cannot figure out which one to assign. 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 only characteristic values that are not figured in automatically are the +2 and -2 to SIZ and DEX for certain Praxian tribes. Enter these in the Perm Adds column. 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

The Translate tab contains all of the text cell contents in English, with columns for translated text in other languages. At present, only Spanish is done. Copy the contents of the Spanish column into the Translated Text column, 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.

As well as this, select the language in the Choices column underneath race, culture, occupation, and cult. This will adjust the length of the empty parentheses for skills with specializations so that they fit in the space available for the different length skill names.

If you switch over the contents of the Original text and Translated text columns, 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.

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.

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.

• The prompt for allowing the first macro to run sometimes gives a load error. Just try it again, it usually works the second time.
• Sometimes a macro will fail to run and you will be advised to re-save the project. Try a page reload, if that does not fix it, then go to Tools->Script Editor, click the Save button, and close the tab.
• 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.