Design and organization suggestions?

[Mathias]

The Secret of Zir'An system I'm entering is based around skill packages. A character gets a few skill points from their origin (birthplace/nationality) package, then purchases skill packages with their character creation points to improve their skills. A character could potentially choose 0-10 (or more) skill packages, although I think 2-4 is the expected range.

The problem is how to organize the number of selections each skill package offers.

1) The time spent can be fixed or variable, so I need a selector for the variable times.

2) Most skill packages offer points to distribute among your three aptitudes, so probably three incrementers for those.

3) Most skill packages offer language points (1-3 points is common), so the user can select up to that many languages to improve. The list of languages available varies from pakage to package, so I can't just add available selections to the languages list.

4) All skill packages offer a list of skills to choose from. The number of selections available generally ranges from 5-15, but I don't want to restrict this. Like languages, each package offers a unique list of available skills to spend your points on.

My first thought was to place the skill package selection on the basics tab, and then put the various selectors on their own tabs. Two skill packages could be placed on a single tab (two columns). Is it possible to create overflow tabs? That way, the program counts the number of skill packages taken, divides by 2, and places that many skill package tabs on the character. If it would work to scroll the whole skill packages tab, the packages might be stacked on top of each other, perhaps fitting all the packages onto a single tall 2-column tab.

One thing that makes display a little simpler is that once the character creation process is finished and the character is locked for advancement, the display of all the skill package's options can be reduced to a report, since everything a skill package offers is bought with experience at that point. So, I intend to hide whatever tabs were used for selecting the various skill packages' options.

I'd appreciate any input into how to handle this.