Character Sheet Population

[Saturnity]

I am well aware this idea may be unfeasible or take a LOT of work but I'll just throw it out there.


I was thinking that the information about characters from the Character gallery has no real function aside from, well, displaying information, so I started wondering if there was some way to better utilize it.


My idea:


Almost every roleplay has a character sheet... it's kind of a universal thing, so what if there was a function in roleplay threads that allowed you to auto-populate a character sheet with information from a character in the character gallery? This would make it so you could have a single source for character information without having to re-type or copy-paste it over and over again. If you use a character for multiple roleplays, it would be even more useful, since you could simply pull all of that information with a single button, instead of going back and forth. Conversely, the form in the character gallery could automatically update to show when a character sheet has been created and what roleplay it was made for.


It would probably be complicated, but I think having an ease of access to character information in the gallery would be amazing. Even if the only fields that would be populated were just name, gender, age, and appearance (pictures too?).


Another potential idea is to be able to create a character in a roleplay thread, and export that information to the character gallery. If you make a character you really like and want to store, this would be a neat option.


Like I said, making something like this is probably difficult. I don't know, since I have no knowledge of coding, but it would be interesting and make better use of the Character Gallery.

 

[Ozmic]

I believe this has been discussed before - the issue ran into most of the time was how vastly different character sheets or skeletons are between author to author.


Pretty much what would have to be done is to have a set character skeleton for EVERY roleplay, something I know creators have balked at in earlier discussions of this.


Also, not knowing the ins-and-outs of Xenforo, I'm unsure if the import/export function could even be something we could implement with the current character gallery.


Now - I'm not saying this isn't a good idea (it's an awesome suggestion!), just giving my two cents on the reasoning why it might not be for everyone. I, personally, would love to see something like this - there just seem to be far too many variables that could get in the way.

 

[Chordling]

Maybe I am not understanding this correctly, but if you have a character preexisting in the gallery, wouldn't it just be easier to just copy the showcase link and just paste it into the roleplay? I know some people would rather see the full form right in front of them without hassle, but it would seem a lot easier that way.


However, I do like the idea about exporting newly created characters from a roleplay to the gallery. That would be a very interesting feature indeed.


It just seems unnecessary to me to have an export feature from the gallery to the roleplay, when you simply can provide a link; that is if I am understanding your idea correctly.