Making your own power cards

erf_beto said:

eloquentaction, can you give me an overview of what is the UCS? I couldn't follow this thread for quite some time, and from what I understand it is a project to make some sort of universal game file for powercards, so designers would only make the style files. End users would just choose the style they like and no need for typing, since it's all the same game and has been typed before.

Am I wrong?

You see, I'm working on a template but as much as I'd like to, I don't think, by design, it could benefit from that, because it's not "just" a power card template. It's highly customizable, so it rewards creativity: you could do powers, classes, conditions, magic itens, skills challenges, npcs, monsters, and even make game props and card backs.

There are actually 4 templates, depending on the size/orientation of the card you want. I thought I was preety much done, but seeing how much people like those fillable boxes, I'm trying to implement them in the template.

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erf -

The UCS is the Universal Card Set. Basically, its a common GAME file that everyone agrees on.

This doesn't sound like too big a deal until you start realizing that ANY card entered into the UCS will be visible with ANY other card template set that supports that card type.

Don't like the way I did my Initiative card? Make your own template. Not only can you mix and match cards this way, anyone that likes your template better can switch *without losing all their hard work*. In other words, they won't lose any cards.

Decided that making your own template is a pain in the butt? Either ask for help from the many card template designers out there or just move back to one of the other templates.

As Thindariel has suggested; we're not competing here at the UCS. There's no 'my card set is better than yours.' Many of the designers in the UCS are even sharing their resources out there so any set designer can use them easily. What does that mean for you? It means more designers will be able to make more templates that all work together.

At the UCS, we're also trying to make it as flexible as possible. Our GAME file right now supports 22 different types of cards. They are: At-Will, Encounter, Daily, Info, Ritual, Item, Magic Item, Artifact, Character, Initiative, Monster, Condition, Trap, Social, Class Info, Disease/Poison, and Optional1 through Optional6.

Not all templates will support all card types (like currently, we don't have any templates for Monster or Character card types) but the nice thing about the UCS is that you can use one template for a certain type of cards and another template for everything else.

As far as customizability; that's what the UCS is about. We want our template designers to come up with radical and cool new ideas. The only thing we don't want is 509 versions of the GAME file. Because then we'd be back to where we started - a whole bunch of really cool card sets that don't talk to each other.

I hope that makes sense and that you'll decide to come over to the dark si.... I mean the UCS project.

-- Hirahito

eloquentaction, I have been working hard on monsters in a template that might be compatable with your system, if you want to try ti install it into the UCS then download it and see what you can do and tell me what you think.

DennisB said:

please give feedback.

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(new cards with blanks)

Looks very nice! I would use them.

Thanks, and like I said it will take about 2 or 3 more days before it is up and running, We are still working out a few kinks, this time, unlike last time, I want to have only one version, last template we went threw about 5 versions til we got out all the bugs. but it will be worth it, unlike anders set, Mine has one major improvement. The character specifics text can be modified anytime by anyone.
Other Improvements:
1) The decks are magic item compatible
2) Feats will be included
3) rituals will be added
4) All cards can be modified for "house rules"
5) Unlike ander, I will be keeping on the updates with every dragon mags and core books release
6)Every possible style (Except monsters) can be created. (Powers - Equipment - Skills ect)

I will give a 24 hour notice on the first release. However, I will start with the race sines there is only a few of there powers so everyone can see the final layout and if anyone sees any glitches they can let me know. there will be no releases for 48 hours after that to fix any last minute glitches.

But it is shaping up to be a great looking and usable deck and I hope everyone enjoys the effort of (Grudgingly) remaking all the powers.
This is the style I wanted to do in the first place but could not find anyone to fix it til now.

1) The decks are magic item compatible
2) Feats will be included
3) rituals will be added
4) All cards can be modified for "house rules"
5) Unlike ander, I will be keeping on the updates with every dragon mags and core books release
6)Every possible style (Except monsters) can be created. (Powers - Equipment - Skills ect)

The Ander decks has all of those things already done. Stop trashing other people's work just to make yourself sound better.

Well Ander style (impreved) can be finded here. They are fully updated with new dragons and books. And with this modifing specific text? I translated all cards for my own language without problem...
The Dungeon Crawl - Power Cards

Well, feat on power cards aren't good idea. Why bother with these? Powers, items, rituals yes. Rest? Its the lost of time. Better thing to do is to write are feats/features/magic item properities/paragon features on blank paper shet. You have all what you need just before you. If you have 30+ cards what the point of making them anyway.

My advice. Make monsters/powers/magic items/rituals in that order. Maybe monster later. Other things are just time consuming and don't worth the efforti in my opinion.

I did not know he updated his deck, last time i saw them it was in PDF only, if it was update, then i am sorry.

Bayuer said:

Well Ander style (impreved) can be finded here. They are fully updated with new dragons and books. And with this modifing specific text? I translated all cards for my own language without problem...
The Dungeon Crawl - Power Cards

Well, feat on power cards aren't good idea. Why bother with these? Powers, items, rituals yes. Rest? Its the lost of time. Better thing to do is to write are feats/features/magic item properities/paragon features on blank paper shet. You have all what you need just before you. If you have 30+ cards what the point of making them anyway.

My advice. Make monsters/powers/magic items/rituals in that order. Maybe monster later. Other things are just time consuming and don't worth the efforti in my opinion.

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I disagree. Feats and Info cards are awesome at the game table.

What's the one thing you want at a game? Fast play with few to no interruptions.

When the Warrior says 'My Extend Breath feat allows my breath weapon to be thrown out into an area blast 5 range 10.' I can ask for the feat card, read the exact rules and not have to look them up.

Also, having the skills written down as if they were power cards is AWESOME. It's VERY nice to have a pile of skill cards and just look through them during game play to find out, Oh - I can only use Attempt Bluff once per encounter when attempting to hide, not 57 times in a row.

Sure, a DM and most players will memorize most of these feats and rules, but there have been times when I've forgotten specific effects or bonuses (or penalties) that have applied in certain circumstances and I've ignored them because I didn't want to bring game play to a screeching halt to go look them up. It's nice to have them on hand if I want them.

-- Hirahito

eloquentaction, thindaraiel: thanks for the update. I wasn't so far out, it seems.

But I still don't know if my template as of now can fit the UCS standards. The reason is this:

Thindaraiel said:

The templates provides 20 text fields for different uses. I'm working on designing a character or monster card on these fields. You can build a template for skill challenges using all these fields, they should be sufficient for this usage (and many many other usages).

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I'm using generic fields to split the "main" text of the card (8 actually: text1, text2, text3...). The other fields are "flavor", title, level, type, xp and image. I suppose most templates out there have only one field to describe the power and I might be able to convert those sets into mine (by leaving text2-8 blank), but not the other way around. You see, I really want to try and make it compatible with UCS, because I think it's such a wonderfull idea and will save a lot of (my) time to input data!

But is it?

I'm thinking about releasing the template as is and I'll probably make another one later, to comply with the UCS rules.

Just one thing: where can I download these UCS files?

erf_beto said:

eloquentaction, thindaraiel: thanks for the update. I wasn't so far out, it seems.

But I still don't know if my template as of now can fit the UCS standards. The reason is this:
I'm using generic fields to split the "main" text of the card (8 actually: text1, text2, text3...). The other fields are "flavor", title, level, type, xp and image. I suppose most templates out there have only one field to describe the power and I might be able to convert those sets into mine (by leaving text2-8 blank), but not the other way around. You see, I really want to try and make it compatible with UCS, because I think it's such a wonderfull idea and will save a lot of (my) time to input data!

But is it?

I'm thinking about releasing the template as is and I'll probably make another one later, to comply with the UCS rules.

Just one thing: where can I download these UCS files?

Click to expand...

Check my sig, the toosigma.com link is in there.

You can release the template files to us as a beta and we'd be more than happy on making suggestions on how to make it UCS compatible.

-- Hirahito