game mastery- item cards, crit. cards, etc.

s.j. bagley · Jun 9, 2007

are any of these worth picking up?
anyone have any experience with their item card sets or crit deck?

Kunimatyu · Jun 9, 2007

The crit deck is a lot of fun for players(don't let your average monster use it!) and comes highly recommended from my experience.

Sketchpad · Jun 9, 2007

I have some Item Cards and the Crit Deck .. IMHO, I think they're realy useful and provide some great play props. The item cards are nice, since there's a blank field on the back to detail the item, or to just give it a code to refer to (I do this in the case of a massive description). On top of that, there are nice descriptions of the item on the card, so you can give players a full idea of what the item appears to be.
The Crit Deck is just fun! I love pulling the deck out when we play D&D and adding the flare of the cards to a combat. Nothing like having a good idea of exactly what you did to that Orc Fighter in combat

Festivus · Jun 9, 2007

I have an assortment of item cards that I reserve for the better loot in my games. Mundane stuff like potions don't rate a card, but tis nice when you get a +2 Electrical Resistant Band Mail item. They seem pricey for what you get and the whole randomness factor is there... I don't dig on that much. I would love to see packs of swords, armor or other useful items than the random packs.

I love the crit deck, it adds a dimension of the unknown to a crit. I only let players and named NPCs pull from it however (per their recommendations I believe)

The Combat Pad is also a nice item but needs some improvements... perhaps the next pad will be a bit better and really put it on top of the must have list.

Other good stuff... the Steel Squire templates for area effect spells I have found very useful... but they are a bit pricey for bits of wire... you be the judge.

Erywin · Jun 9, 2007

I have been looking at picking up the Crit deck to add something interesting into the current campaign I run, dunno what the players would think tho.

Re: Steel Squire templates, I ended up just taking a wire coat hanger and a pair of pliers to make my own. In about 5 mins I had a 20' radius template that my group uses quite a bit for fireballs and Evard's.

Cheers,
E

Morrus · Jun 9, 2007

I got the Item Cards after finding out how useful Fantasy Money proved to be in my game (sorry to plug my own product). The Item Cards proved just as cool.

I can't stress it enough. Having props (cards) for money and items makes more of a difference than you'd believe. It's a quantum leap. No record keeping; just hand stuff over. If you're the DM playing the shopkeeper, the players hand you money, you hand them item cards. If the players want to give or lend money or items to each other, they just hand it over. Whoever has the card has the item. My players have repeatedly told me how much they love this innovation.

One of my players created his "Bard Cards" in MS Publisher. When he, as the bard, uses a bardic song, he just hands out a card to each of the other players detailing the bonuses in big type. Nobody forgets. I expanded that concept into "Buff cards". It just... worked.

I hope that WotC adopt it for 4E. It's natural, it works, it's easy, and it adds a new dimension.

Kunimatyu · Jun 9, 2007

Morrus said:
I hope that WotC adopt it for 4E. It's natural, it works, it's easy, and it adds a new dimension.

While I never want to see cards as a requirement for play, I would very much like to see cards for buff spells/class abilities, common items like cure potions, and perhaps even per-day class abilities (eg. you have Smite Evil 5/day - you have 5 Smite Evil cards and turn them facedown when they're used).

For anyone player Tome of Battle characters, cards are particularly useful - so useful, in fact, that WotC released a free PDF of printable cards. I wouldn't complain if they released a deck of maneuver cards, either.

Erywin · Jun 9, 2007

Morrus said:
One of my players created his "Bard Cards" in MS Publisher. When he, as the bard, uses a bardic song, he just hands out a card to each of the other players detailing the bonuses in big type. Nobody forgets. I expanded that concept into "Buff cards". It just... worked.

I have been thinking about doing this for my group for awhile now, what type of paper do you print the cards on? Just regular cardstock or? I really need to get off my lazy arse and get this together for our next gaming session.

Cheers,
E

Fedifensor · Jun 9, 2007

Morrus said:
One of my players created his "Bard Cards" in MS Publisher. When he, as the bard, uses a bardic song, he just hands out a card to each of the other players detailing the bonuses in big type. Nobody forgets. I expanded that concept into "Buff cards". It just... worked.

You know, the front page is plugging "Buff Cards"...

I'm a big fan of the Complete Spell Cards (which include cards for the bard songs) from The Other Game Company. They also make some other excellent tracking cards. In preparation for Origins, I'm printing the relevant cards out for my Living characters...it's going to make things a lot easier at the game table.

SavageRobby · Jun 10, 2007

I like the Critical Hit Deck. I'm going to use it in my C&C game.

I *LOVE* the Item cards, and am looking forward to the next set (Dragon's Trove, or whatever its called). The non-random ones are definitely better than the random ones. Morrus is right about their impact. I've found that giving players visuals props, especially representative ones, make a big impact on the game.

The only other Gamemastery product I have experience with are the tiles. I picked up the first few sets, and they're just meh. The art is nice, but they're flimsy, they aren't configurable (they go together in a certain way, and they don't mix and match) - and I haven't found them terribly useful.