Walkthroughs - PCGen Documentation

# Pages in Walkthrough

## Creating Your First Character

Creating a new character is easy using PCGen. The steps below will guide you through the process. As you walk your way through this guide you will note that it does not cover all buttons and fields you see on the various tabs. What we will cover here is what is necessary to create your first character. For the purposes of this walkthrough we will be using the Pathfinder RPG GameMode.

## Creating a new character

Choose the File>New menu item to create a new character, or File>Open button to load a previously created character. You may also use the “New” and “Open” toolbar buttons just below the menu bar. PCGen will open a new character tab and display the Summary character creation tab. This tab contains a number of basic fields such as Name , Alignment , Race , and Class . This tab also includes fields for your character’s Ability Scores .

## Index : Character Creation Walkthrough

General Note If at any time a frame in PCGen does not appear or is too small, you can resize it by dragging the divider bar to the left/right, or up/down, as applicable. This walkthrough will step you through the process of creating a character and printing a character sheet. It’s recommended that you view the Start Up section first. This process is divided into the following steps: Initial Startup Campaign Source Loading Toolbar Quick Icons Creating a new character Printing the finished character Additional detail is provided in the Players Section of this guide found under the Tabs and Buttons section.

## Initial Start Up

Standard Startup Whether you use pcgen.exe or pcgen.jar to start up PCGen, the first thing you will see is the splash screen with Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man logo and the words PCGen written above it. From there, PCGen will load and take you to the Source Material Screen where you can get started making your characters! Command Line Startup With the release of PCGen 5.17.11 PCGen added a new Command Line Interface .

## Loading Campaign Materials

The first thing the user will need to do once PCGen has been launched is to load a set of source material data sets. PCGen provides an extensive library of data sets from a broad range of RPG publishers. Loading these sets can be accoplished in one of two methods: Basic Mode provides a selection of the more commonly used data sets as preconfigured collections ready for loading. This mode also allows the user to add their own preconfigured set through the creation of a custom PCC file.

## Loading Campaign Materials: Advanced Mode

For a simpler method for loading sourcescheck out the Loading Campaign Materials: Basic Mode page. When PCGen starts up it displays the PCGen splash screen. After it automatically disappears, you will see the PCGen program window and will be on the Source Materials tab. [Tabs for the Source Material and Loaded Characters default to the bottom of the screen.] First you should choose your desired Game Mode. As of now PCGen supports the following Game Modes: 3.5e - Revised (v.3.5) System Reference Document (default selection).

## Loading Campaign Materials: Basic Mode

This page is broken into three sections: Basic Source Loading Loading Additional Sources Creating New Source Collections For the advanced method for loading sources check out the Loading Campaign Materials: Advanced Mode page. Basic Source Loading PCGen is configured to launch the “Load Sources” window when launched for the first time after a clean install. If the window does not pop-up upon launching of PCGen you can call it up by selecting the “Load Sources” item on the “Settings” menu.

## Print your new character

Use File>Print , or use the Print icon in the toolbar, to display the character preview window. Select the print template (Output Sheet) you wish to use for printing the active character. Preview the character on the selected character sheet. You can review each page of the character sheet by selecting the page to be reviewed from the Page drop-down. You can zoom in/out of the preview sheet by using either the Zoom drop-down or the magnifying glass buttons.

## Toolbar Quick Icons

The Toolbar is a quick and efficient way to do many simple tasks within PCGen without the need to click on any drop down menus. The Toolbar Quick Icons are located below the menu names near the top left of the main PCGen Window. The functions in order from left to right are as follows: Click on the New icon to create a new character To open a file from

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