Gamemastery Item Cards

[Glyfair]

I just got the Dragon's Trove set. Nice selection of magic items with lots of potions and scrolls.

 

[Wik]

This is actally a big topic. I bought the starter deck and the 10 pack of boosters. I already had the EN publishing "fantasy money". I've since developed my own version of the money cards using clipart of various coins and used laser business cards to print out mundane items and "expendables"- potions, scrolls, alchemist fire, etc.

The Paizo cards are for major and unidentified items. (And I print out the description to put in the sleeve with the picture card once its been identified).

My players love it. I got them big pencil cases for their "money" and 3-ring binder pages for the cards (both business cards at 10 per page and the larger collectible/Paizo size at 9 per).
Now we use cash transactions at the table, they have one or more pages of items right in front of them to see what all they have to use, and if they forget/lose the card, then they learn to be more careful!!

They have all told me that they feel more connected to the game and the props make it all feel a little more real. One guys has an envelope with the cash he is saving to buy an inn when he retires his scout!

Add all this to the stack of Poker chips I use for action points and I've found play has actually gotten smoother. I'll be using these things as long as I play face-to-face.

Cheers!
Noffham

Hunh. That sounds like a lot of fun

In Iron Heroes, we used poker chips for tokens in the game, and we found it worked fairly well. I think using props as often as possible *would* make the gameplay smoother. I've been thinking about making "spellbooks" for all caster players, for much the same reason.

In fact, our cleric pretty much does this already.

 

[noffham]

Hunh. That sounds like a lot of fun

In Iron Heroes, we used poker chips for tokens in the game, and we found it worked fairly well. I think using props as often as possible *would* make the gameplay smoother. I've been thinking about making "spellbooks" for all caster players, for much the same reason.

In fact, our cleric pretty much does this already.

I use the Complete Spell Cards pdf from The Other Game Company. 9 spells to a page in the card holders. Works great. They even have a set for all the spells in a bunch of EN publishing products. Now if only someone would type up the Spell Compendium spells into the blank cards. (I know, I know, that's not OGC). :-(

 

[Glyfair]

I use the Complete Spell Cards pdf from The Other Game Company. 9 spells to a page in the card holders. Works great. They even have a set for all the spells in a bunch of EN publishing products. Now if only someone would type up the Spell Compendium spells into the blank cards. (I know, I know, that's not OGC). :-(

My biggest issue is all these companies put the products out in Adobe Acrobat, which requires the full version to edit. I'd like to see these sort of things released in a format that allows most word processing programs to edit (or at least the most popular ones). Almost everyone has access to the one of the popular word processing programs (or something that can use that format), but the full version of Adobe is anotehr matter.

 

[jmucchiello]

My biggest issue is all these companies put the products out in Adobe Acrobat, which requires the full version to edit. I'd like to see these sort of things released in a format that allows most word processing programs to edit (or at least the most popular ones). Almost everyone has access to the one of the popular word processing programs (or something that can use that format), but the full version of Adobe is anotehr matter.

The problem is THE most popular word processor, Microsoft Word, embeds specific printer information in the document format. So when you move the file from computer A with the HP deskjet to computer B with the Epson stylus color, the document elements may move about on the page or repaginate differently and cause all other kinds of grief. Additionally, some printer drivers can do 2-up/4-up in the driver, some can do front/back printing in the driver, and others cannot. So printing is not straightforward depending on what you want to do.

Also, MSWord 2007 does not save files in a format MSWord 2003 can load (I think, I may have the specific version numbers wrong because heck I still use Word 97 at home). And no, Open Office is not compatible enough with MS Word.

Complicated Word docs can easily crash Open Office. No version of Open Office has ever successfully opened the 77 page Word97 document that I published Joe's Book of Enchantment from. Every rev of Open Office I try loading that file and everytime it just bombs. I used a lot of Word97 mojo to make that PDF look exactly how I wanted and it just destroys Open Office.

 

[Hawkes]

The first time I was exposed to these, I also thought it would be prohibitive to expand my collection to the point where I'd have enough cards for every PC and magic item that comes up, so I designed a customizable card builder that lets you design and print just the ones you want. I've hired several artists to create hundreds of items for the system, which is a one-time purchase - after which all the expansion packs are free. So while card stock from your printer probably won't be as polished as a set of playing card-quality items, they're more disposable, far less expensive, they print 16 to a page, and the new artwork I've commissioned looks great. Check them out here: magical items from Treasure Trove Software.