1) As monospaced text, or
2) As an embedded spreadsheet.
The first method is super easy and good for trivial tables that you don't expect to change much. The second method is more involved but is good for large or complex tables that can change over time.
Here's how to post both:
Monospaced Text Tables
With this method you type up your table in any text editing tool that supports a mono-spaced font, ensuring that the rows and columns line up as you want them to appear. Then copy and paste your table text into the post form and enclose it within PRE tags. E.g., if you were to post this (using square brackets rather than curly braces for the PRE tags):
The board would render it like this:{pre}
Level | Title
------+----------
1 | Fighter
2 | Veteran
3 | Myrmidon
4 | Hero
{/pre}
Level | Title ------+---------- 1 | Fighter 2 | Veteran 3 | Myrmidon 4 | HeroSuper easy!
Embedded Spreadsheets
If you want a more complex table with lots of data, internal calculations, or frequent updates (such as an ongoing summary of PCs statistics) then an embedded spreadsheet is the way to go.
The board assumes we'll be using Google Sheets; it's free, it runs in your browser, and it works today. (If you desperately need to use a different tool PM me and we'll work something out).
So the steps would be:
1. If you don't already have Google Sheets, add it to your browser.
2. Using Google Sheets in your browser, create whatever spreadsheet you need.
3. Still using Google Sheets in your browser, publish the part of your spreadsheet you want to embed in your post (see here). This will give you a URL.
4. Now comes the tricky part.
The URL which Google Sheets has generated will look like this:
h t t p s ://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key={IDENTIFIER1}&single=true&gid=0&range={IDENTIFIER2}:{IDENTIFIER3}&output=html
In order to embed the (now published) spreadsheet in a post you need to copy whatever text appears for IDENTIFIER1, IDENTIFIER2, and IDENTIFIER3 from the URL, and paste it into this board's GSHEET tag, like this (using square brackets rather than curly braces for the GSHEET tags):
{gsheet}0AsikuKGxbESzdFJOU0QyOUk4VTEwaV9pTGstM0xMRnc#B3:J38{/gsheet}
The board will render the above GSHEET tag like this:
Spreadsheets are generally easier to edit (than HTML-type table tags), more powerful (they do calculations inline), and also: your published Google Sheet is requested every time the containing post is rendered, so any updates to your Google Sheet will automatically appear in the embedded spreadsheet here, next time it is drawn.
