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Hello there! (Nope, can’t do that. Thanks, Atra >_>)

Greetings all,

It’s your friendly neighborhood Magistrate to the Voice here with something to share. I’ve been doing this for just over 2 years now, and it’s still kind of hard to believe. A lesson in patience, really - I waited about 5 years to land here if I remember right, applying any time applications were opened. I love my job, and love helping people as best I can (thank you Iddy for putting up with me again after being my Consul). During the last 2 years, I’ve processed a lot of sheets. I don’t have access to the stats page, but based on saved emails (yes, I save them for easy reference), several hundred would be a reasonably safe bet (a chunk are just lore/language updates, but there have still been a lot). I’ve also had a hand in commenting on many other sheets as well, even if I wasn’t the one that ended up pushing the buttons. Throughout all that work, some things have stuck out to me as recurring issues.

Now, like I mentioned, I love my job. Remands are part of that, and I handle them appropriately, but I don’t always like them, you know? My goal with this post is to try to help you all have a smoother experience with getting your sheet approved - whether you’ve run into these issues or not. And even the most seasoned of CS submitters can still miss something, so keeping an eye out is always key.

Submitting a CS

Before we start, one thing I’d like to point out here is that the Character Creation Guide on the wiki is the law of the land for us. If you refer to that and follow what it says, it should be a pretty easy process for you.

Personal Details

Starting from the top of the CS creator, we’ve got the height and weight. I don’t really know much about what numbers make sense in relation to each other, but I do know that the field causes issues at times. An approved sheet will note both metric and imperial units, but the creator’s field is for metric only. Please make sure that’s taken into account so you don’t accidentally say your character is over 20 ft tall. And don’t forget your decimal points either!

Next up, physical description. We Voice Staff look for six(6) pieces of information when reviewing this section: skin tone, eye color, hair color, default hairstyle, build/body type, and distinguishing marks. That last one in particular is something that trips people up. Putting it plainly - having distinguishing marks is optional, but it needs to be stated one way or the other on your CS. Don’t have any? A simple sentence could save you from a remand. [Pronoun of choice here] has no distinguishing marks. [Pronoun of choice here] skin is free of scars and blemishes. That kind of thing. Super easy, right? If you’ve got a bald character, mention that too, otherwise it’s going to be assumed that you missed the hair color and style details and will get remanded. Another thing, this is supposed to be a static (unchanging) representation of your character, like looking at a picture, so keep that in mind. This is not where you include details of clothing/armor or weapons - that’s handled by the possessions system and loadouts. However, minor things are allowed, such as jewelry/piercings or cultural things (like those wraps you’d see on a Twi’leks’ lekku) not covered by those systems or something that’s needed by your character that they just wouldn’t be without (think a Kel Dor’s breath mask, which they need to survive).

Specialize

This is where you’ve got your martial arts and lightsaber forms, as well as lore and language slots, including the bonus knowledge slots gained through society progression. It’s the lore that I want to touch on here. These don’t override your skills. As an example that came up, someone took “field surgery” as a lore topic. As it was explained to me, it’s more the theory of/knowledge behind it. If your medicine skill is at 0, the lore topic won’t be a way to get around that. Overall, this is a field we mainly review to make sure people aren’t doing something they shouldn’t be or the topics make sense.

What I love about them personally is they can be pretty much as broad or specific as you want. I’ve frequently made mention in fiction entries of my characters having contacts they reach out to, so I went with “Knowledge of and Contacts Within the Criminal Underworld” (you want to use that one yourself, be my guest). Some people go for rituals/alchemy, or cooking, or even sewing (Common and Uncommon Sewing Techniques of the Galaxy is one I’m proud of helping a member come up with). You can be serious or silly with them, so enjoy it!

Aspects

Just a couple quick hits here. Aspects need to be 150 words or less, full stop. If they’re over, they get remanded. Watch those word counts. Additionally, aspect titles should be treated in the same manner you would a book title. The specifics of that are mentioned on the wiki and there’s even a handy website that can convert it for you. Sometimes if I’m doing it for myself, I just capitalize the first letter in every word so I don’t need to pull up sites or remember it. Whatever method works for you, do that. For the aspects themselves, personality and general aspects don’t necessarily need an explicit balance/drawback, so long as there’s not an explicit benefit to them. Generally, combat aspects always need explicit balance, and the bigger the benefit you’re giving your character with them, the bigger the balance we’ll be looking for.

Looking Things Up

There are many helpful tools at your disposal when making a CS. The wiki pages for lightsaber forms and martial arts forms are helpful, as are the ones for skills and Force powers, not to mention the Feats spreadsheet that Idris put together after the big update we did (it does not include newer stuff that’s been added since then, however). But did you know there’s one place that has most of that gathered together? That’s right, the Character Sheet Reference Database can be invaluable for precisely that reason. And because everything pulls from there, it’s up to date as soon as something new is added to the system. Species, aspects, disciplines, skills, Force powers, and feats are all there for you to browse. You can even search for something too if you know what you’re looking for and want to go straight to it. I pull the page up frequently myself and love that it’s available. Unfortunately, not everyone knows about it, and finding it is kinda buried (Idris says we’re working on that, as well as updating it). I try to point people there whenever I can. Hopefully now you all can benefit from knowing that it’s there to use.

Changing or Swapping Characters

Wanted to shuffle characters around to set them to a certain rank, or getting tired of one and wanting to start another? Go for it. Something to keep in mind is that you may want to do a name change first (admin menu>Request Name Change for your main, or Admin menu>Additional Character Slots and NPCs, go to the slot you want, click Manage, and select Character Details). Otherwise either we remand it or you get an approved sheet with the mismatched names and then need to change the name and copy/activate the sheet. Changing the name first just saves you a little time.

Did you know there’s an easy way to shuffle characters instead of manually recreating the sheet? Go to the slot you want to move, click Manage>Character Sheets, and copy the number assigned to it (Character Sheet #X). Then go to the slot where you want to put it, Manage>Character Sheets, and click Import, then paste that number into the field. Most of your stuff will be there. If that character and any associated custom aspects haven’t been used in that slot before, you’ll need to re-enter the custom aspect.

Other Notes

Keep in mind that not everything will trigger a review. Any changes to a text field (height, weight, physical description, lore/language slots) as well as custom aspects will mean your sheet winds up in the queue and will be reviewed by staff. Changing your discipline, skills, feats, dropdown fields, or stock or previously approved custom aspects? Your sheet gets activated right away.

If you want to propose a new species to add to the system, find some interested members and put a proposal together (take a look at the Species Approval Guidelines wiki page for specifics), send it in. Got an idea for a feat? Have at it. I don't know all of them off the top of my head, but I believe Anubis (Zxyl) suggested the addition of Matter Bender II, a comment Atty (Ruka) made resulted in Just a Flesh Wound II, and Kadrol Hauen's comment sounded like a good natural progression, so I brought the idea to Idris and Enhanced Sight II was added. My point here is that there is precedent (we added like 8 new species in this year alone), so don't be afraid to do this kind of thing. Maybe it'll get added, maybe it won't. But you don't lose anything by making the attempt.

I know it's never fun to get a remand, but it is part of the process. That said, if we remand a sheet, it's not a suggestion. We're telling you there's something wrong, missing, unclear, etc. That means you have to address it. If you don't, we're just going to remand it again. As much as I don't like remands, I hate remanding a sheet multiple times, especially when it's clear the issue has not been addressed.

Lastly, and this is possibly a big one: Prior approval does not guarantee future approval.

I understand that this can potentially be frustrating, but sometimes things get missed or people have different views, policy changes, whatever. It’s never personal and not done out of any kind of malice. At the end of the day, we’re all human and nobody is perfect. On my end, I’m very by-the-book, and I frequently refer to the notes I took when Idris and Atty initially trained us early on, updating or adding to them as needed when discussions come up or new things get added/changes occur, and also to the wiki and CS database. I apply my best judgment to things, as we all do. Discussions about things (especially aspects) can and do happen, and sometimes one of us will be convinced by what the other is saying and switch our stance on something.

Having a Problem?

If you ever have a problem with your CS (or if you need help with something in general), by all means feel free to reach out to us and we’ll help however we can. It’s what we’re here for, and I promise we’re not scary, honest. If it’s related to skills/powers/feats, I highly recommend using the staff mailer ([Log in to view e-mail addresses]) so you can get an official ruling on it and so that we’re all on the same page and can reference it if the same thing, or something similar, comes up again. Personally, my door (and DMs) is always open and I’m happy to help out to the best of my ability. If I don’t know something, I’ll ask. But the staff mailer is generally the best way to get an official stance on things, rather than me giving my best guess as to what’s what.

However, there are a lot of times when a sheet gets flagged as invalid and a simple fix is to go to your CS admin page, create a copy of your sheet, and activate it. For example, did you reach a certain rank in a society and you’re missing a granted feat that you unlocked? Doing that will fix the issue! Sometimes it’ll get flagged if a feat changes, and that should do the trick then as well. I believe there was a time when someone come to me with that problem and then when making a copy and editing the sheet, the feat was gone and an available slot was in its place, so give things a review as well in case you need to select it again (I believe this was due to a new tier being added to the feat).

Anyway, this has turned out to be a much larger post than I had originally intended, but I’ve covered all that I wanted to say, so thank you for your time. I hope this helps you all as you continue playing and creating the characters you want.

~ Reiden