4th & Dragon : Dungeons and Dragons...and stuff

For those of you that haven’t been paying attention, Cam and I have developed Power Cards, Character Cards, and Item Cards that allow a player to completely represent their character with a deck of cards.  In addition, the Character and Power cards have options for the DM that allow for the representation of monsters and their powers.  All three are done (barring any bugs that people find) and ready for download.

So now I’m trying to figure out if there is anything else that needs to be done to complete this project.  There has already been a request for Trap/Hazard cards and I think that a set of Ritual cards would also be useful.  Does anyone have any other requests for cards?  Any suggestions for how a Trap/Hazard or Ritual card might be laid out?

I would like a printable page (maybe even individual cards) for the various status effects. I know that Jim made some, but I’d like them to be card sized instead of the bigger size he had.

I finally downloaded the MSE to take a look. These are great! I’m not a fan of the labels above the icons (e.g. Attack, Defense, etc), but I can’t see how to edit those out. I see all of the card and icon images. Where do these labels come from?

Edit: Scratch that...I think I found it...RTFM is always good advice

Edit Edit: Holy crap I wish I would have looked at these sooner. That MSE thing is pretty powerful and flexible. I was able to tweak the fonts to my taste and actually decided to keep the labels. Great work guys!

So for me, the use of cards is to decouple yourself from the book during play as much as possible, and for easy reference.  Under that assumption, feats & feature descriptions cards would be nice.  Skills DC charts too, as I find a lot of players don’t even know how to use their skills and it would make it an easy reference for DMs.  Also, a coin and other wealth card would be cool as well as status card in the same fashion as the rest.

edit: what about something for carrying capacity, maybe on a coin/other wealth card?

I would like a printable page (maybe even individual cards) for the various status effects. I know that Jim made some, but I’d like them to be card sized instead of the bigger size he had.

That’s doable.

feats ... cards would be nice

Most feats simply modify some of your powers and so it’s probably better to simply customize your cards to your feat selection, but for those that don’t, or which provide only conditional bonuses, I can see the use here.

feature descriptions cards would be nice

I assume you’re referring to class features which don’t function like powers since those that do are already in the sets.  I’ll look at this and see what else can be done here.

Skills DC charts too, as I find a lot of players don’t even know how to use their skills and it would make it an easy reference for DMs.

That sounds more like a DM screen kind of thing to me.

coin and other wealth card would be cool

Can’t you just use a item card which only has a title like “Coins and Other Wealth”?

status card in the same fashion as the rest

I’m not sure what you’re looking for here.  What information do you envision being on this card?  The character cards already have space to track healing surges and death saves.  If you put them in a card sleeve you can also use dry erase markers to track hit points on them too.

what about something for carrying capacity

I’ve never tracked carrying capacity that closely before so I’m not sure what you’d need.  Would a field on the item cards where you could put the weight be sufficient?

I created some condition cards using your recharge power cards as a base for the text...my logic being that conditions are usually either saved against or go away after your/the enemy’s turn. Feel free to take these and make them better.

I attached the mse file to this post, but also put it and a pdf on mediafire:
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=6573f2343075b833ab1eab3e9fa335ca159dc72f282065e0

Black Plauge - 19 August 2008 07:52 AM

So now I’m trying to figure out if there is anything else that needs to be done to complete this project.  There has already been a request for Trap/Hazard cards and I think that a set of Ritual cards would also be useful.  Does anyone have any other requests for cards?  Any suggestions for how a Trap/Hazard or Ritual card might be laid out?

First of all, THANK YOU SO MUCH for these!! These are incredibly awesome, and I do think that replacing the character sheet with a deck of cards can be very useful, only downside I can see so far is that the actual character card has to be reprinted just about every time the modifiers change (perhaps a character card where the actual numbers could be left blank with white spaces for rewriting?)

As a roleplayer, I’d like to request a second character card for things like age, height, weight, hair color, etc… It would also be nice to see passive perception and insight, maybe a small text box for personality and other appearance notes. Perhaps an alternate version with demographics and passive scores on the first card, and room to put all the skills on the second with checkboxes for training? That really seems to be all that’s “missing” to go completely sheetless, at least from my humble perspective.

Again, thank you for these, they will be a very useful tool for me for years to come.

First of all, THANK YOU SO MUCH for these!! These are incredibly awesome, and I do think that replacing the character sheet with a deck of cards can be very useful, only downside I can see so far is that the actual character card has to be reprinted just about every time the modifiers change (perhaps a character card where the actual numbers could be left blank with white spaces for rewriting?)

I believe what a lot of people have done Jerry is to laminate them and write on them with a wet erase marker.  That way you can even put little notes on them for during a specific encounter (like if you get some bonus because your fighting in your hometown or some other random thing the DM might throw at you) and then just erase it clean for the next one.

Chad Reynolds - 07 September 2008 04:29 PM

First of all, THANK YOU SO MUCH for these!! These are incredibly awesome, and I do think that replacing the character sheet with a deck of cards can be very useful, only downside I can see so far is that the actual character card has to be reprinted just about every time the modifiers change (perhaps a character card where the actual numbers could be left blank with white spaces for rewriting?)

I believe what a lot of people have done Jerry is to laminate them and write on them with a wet erase marker.  That way you can even put little notes on them for during a specific encounter (like if you get some bonus because your fighting in your hometown or some other random thing the DM might throw at you) and then just erase it clean for the next one.

I personally do this, but put the cards in clear plastic card sleeves instead of laminating.

Thanks for the comments guys.  Please note that I’m not ignoring them and will take the all under advisement.  At the moment I’m waiting on Cameron to do some artwork for the card background for the ritual and miscellaneous cards.  Once those are done I’ll probably work on the trap/hazard card.

Thanks BP, these cards are certainly one of the more useful tools I have to help me with D&D

And Talae your idea of putting them in sleeves is even better than mine.  That way you can switch them out for different characters and such.
Hurray for improving on others ideas!

Sorry BP.  Been a bit of a bust.  As I posted at ORP, what the hell kind of teacher needs a substitute for the first 5 days of the school year?  I’ve been teaching this guy’s health (health! of all the effing things I could be subbing for, it had to be health!) class since school started—to freshmen who don’t even know what their teacher looks like.

I promise I’ll have a whack at it shortly.

No worries.  Gives me time to work on other things without looking like I’m neglecting things here.

No thoughts on the condition cards I threw together? I was honestly expecting someone to say that they were horrible, but I figured what I did was a start for the more talented to finish.

I like the sets.  I have a question about how you made the Evon set.  Did you have a way to easily copy the cards you wanted to a separate file?  It appears to be a cleric but then has the items cards and such as well.  It would be really nice to be able to make custom sets like that for printing for my characters and such.

I have looked at the options for exporting but there is no importing option.  If there is not a way to do this is there a way we could get (and I realize it would be a huge file) a single set with all the cards in it for all the classes so that multiclass powers and such can be in one file without having to retype or copy and paste everything.  I realize it would not be easy to do the items in with it but if it was possible to do them too that would really put it over the top.

Cards can be copied from one set to another relatively easily.  To do so you first need to open both sets.  In the latest version of MSE (0.3.7) this is as easy as starting the program, opening one set, and then selecting Open in the file menu to open the second.  In the previous version (0.3.6), you first have to select “New Window\” from the Window menu, or start a second instance of the program.

Once you have the source and destination files open, select the card(s) you want to copy in the source file from the card list on the right.  Then either right-click on them and select “Copy” from the pop-up menu that appears, or select “Copy” from the “Edit” menu in the menu bar up top.  Switch to the destination file and make sure the cursor focus is in the card list (by clicking on a card there).  Then select “Paste” from the “Edit” menu or right click and choose “Paste” from the pop-up menu that appears.

The biggest problem I’ve found with copy and paste is the cursor focus.  If it’s not on the card list, then the “Copy” and “Paste” commands from the edit menu focus on card elements, often leaving them disabled unless text is highlighted.  Using the right-clicking methods all the time helps me avoid this problem.