Making your own power cards

tintagel · May 7, 2008

meandog said:
tintagel

No, I just tried again and no. When I click on a file a new exporler window opens up and says click here to down load....I click on it and nothing happens.

One question, when you change the color and look of the cards, do you use a design program, then save it as a image, then put the image in the MSE folder and refence it?
Just trying to learn the process.

Thank again!

Dang, I am not sure what's going on with those. I will re-upload them to the site as ZIP files - that should solve the problem.

I use Photoshop to design the look of the card, then just put the images into a new theme folder and copy my style file into that folder. My Photoshop file is on the site. Have at!

Working Files page

meandog · May 7, 2008

randolph

In your second pic you have 2 blue tokens, What and how are used?
Thanks

meandog · May 7, 2008

tintagel said:
Dang, I am not sure what's going on with those. I will re-upload them to the site as ZIP files - that should solve the problem.

I use Photoshop to design the look of the card, then just put the images into a new theme folder and copy my style file into that folder. My Photoshop file is on the site. Have at!

Ok cool, I will try messing around with the photoshop files, I won't be able to do as good of job as all you guys on the site

Before the zip files worked well and I had no problems with them

randolph · May 7, 2008

meandog said:
In your second pic you have 2 blue tokens, What and how are used?

They're action tokens from a dungeoncrawl boardgame called "Descent: Journeys in the Dark," I'm using them as counters to mark how many uses of Healing Word the Cleric has left, since it and Lay on Hands are powers that deviate from the "1-per-X" paradigm.

I also use various tokens and markers from Descent for Defender Marks, ongoing Poison/Fire damage, Stun, Daze, Curse, Quarry, etc... The gridded map you can see in the upper left corner of one of the pictures is Descent's modular game board.

Solmancer · May 7, 2008

I had a question for those of you printing these out:

What kind of paper are you using, and/or are you doing it from home on a fancy printer? Or should I be skimming past thread pages for that information?

@tintagel: The more I look it over, the more I keep having this thought come to mind: I like the light text on dark background, really I do. I won't claim expertise on printing exertion, though (see above question... :>) One thing that really keeps going through my mind is the possibility of a kind of "watermark" in the cardname section describing the timing of the power (something you probably could do in Photoshop?) What I mean is a faint "At-Will" behind the "Eldritch Blast", as an example. If I had Photoshop, and experience with it more importantly, I'd do it myself to see if it clashed with the Power Name, but it's a thought that keeps intruding whenever I look at your attachment. <3

@randolph: I like the included art, but that seems a prime candidate for being more of a background instead of a seeming limiter on text space, as your printed out versions seem to behave. For instance, and this is just my editor side speaking here, I would leave a definitive space between the "Effect" sections and the "how-to-use" portions of each. In other words, Cause Fear's text would intrude into the artwork due to the line break. On the other hand, the art could be "stretched" to be a background of sorts for the entire card. That's what comes to mind when I look over your printouts: don't let the artwork limit the size or you'll really be in a bind.

I'd also personally make the bottom part of the card exclusively for the Class information ("Cleric Attack" etc.) and move the power source to just below the Encounter text, centering it in bold in the card text box.

... I really wish I could draw pretty pictures to explain what I mean, rather than resort to text. :<

Khaalis · May 7, 2008

tintagel said:
Hey, could I get some quick feedback on these? I'm trying to make a background for the Fey based Warlock... Thoughts? Too dark maybe? Go with a light background and dark text as normal? Thanks for your consideration!

Hey Tintagel. While I love the artistry of your cards, I overall find them a bit too artistic. Why do I say this? Well most people will be printing these cards and your cards seem to be very ink intensive and actually require a pretty high end printer to get good print quality. This is why I have been favoring creating the cards that are more simplistic. That and the fact that I personally am not a big fan of the 'action icons'.

As for the fey set specifically, I do think the background is too dark. On most printers this will be far too overpowering. Alos, light print on dark background is great for monitors, but not so great in print. I would go with what you have but lighten it to a more "watermark" type shade and use dark print.

Khaalis · May 7, 2008

randolph said:
As promised, here are the pictures of the physical cards in use (click to enlarge).

What are the Chits you are using in the second picture and where did you get them? What are you using them for?

Edit: NM - teach me to post questions without reading the rest of the thread first...

Khaalis · May 7, 2008

Solmancer said:
I had a question for those of you printing these out:
What kind of paper are you using, and/or are you doing it from home on a fancy printer? Or should I be skimming past thread pages for that information?

I use standard 110lb cardstock you can buy at any office supply store (Staples, Office Depot, etc.) and likely even in the "supplies" section of a store like Wal*Mart. Its really quite inexpensive. On the sheets I make, I get 8 cards per page. I print on an HP Photosmart D7460 with good results. Every now and then I'll bring the cardstock in and print them at work on the color laser but thats not really a viable option for large print runs.

The cards on .pdf I have put up on Tintagel's site are specifically thinking about printing. I don't use the artwork, trying to keep to a more simple text-based card. Also, the more complex the coloring, the less quality you will have with printing on most printers, especially inkjets.

Kirnon_Bhale · May 7, 2008

Regarding Key Words: WotC seems to really be big on Key words atm Things like "Reliable" and more especially "Channel Divinity" are examples of this. I have noticed a theme running through design that places the "Channel Divinity" at higher importance then say "Turn Undead" which is really the effect.

In my early days of card design (before the really good ones came out and I gave up because I would never make any as good as those on this thread) I took to using the Key Words tab in MSE to cover things like "Channel Divinity" and "Reliable". I was wondering if this was considered as an option when creating your cards - My reasoning being that I think we are going to see a lot of key words being thrown about and some could benefit from this approach.

meandog · May 7, 2008

randolph said:
As promised, here are the pictures of the physical cards in use (click to enlarge).

I've also finished the DDXP pregen power card set for MSE, with card art; it's attached:
DDXP_pregens.zip - MSE Power cards for the DDXP pregen characters, in my template
D&D-mse20080503.zip - Complete MSE D&D game file, includes Quindia, Trolls, and my templates, and fonts for Quindia's template.]

I like the art work on the cards. One question where are the art work files saved. I can not find them in your zip file?

Also I was looking at a few of the fighter and ranger cards, I think you need to but in the attack portion melee or ranged not Str or Dex. You are missing the other part of your bonus.
I am making the changes to on my copies.

Thank you