Making your own rules cards - any experience

[TheSword]

Hey folks. I’m looking to start a face to face campaign using the WFRP 4e rules which to be honest have a lot of crunch. Multiple conditions, weapons have lots of additional special rules, there are lots of talents that all affect tests in multiple ways. Not to mention psychology effects, equipment, spells etc.

I was thinking of making some playing cards sized reference cards with the various rules on that could given out to players or put out on the table as an aide mémoire. I had a look online for templates and managed to find a company that will let you print a full deck of cards customizing front and back for every card individually for £15 which seems pretty amazing. The quality is 300 dpi which I’m very happy with and on linen finish poker style cards.

Does anyone have any experience with this? Either for their own home games or for professional products they have published. Are there any watch outs? These would be for my personal use/own group only which makes things simpler.

Interested in the community’s thoughts.

 

[TheSword]

I guess I’m just a bit extra

 

[aco175]

I have fiddled with the Magic card makers online back in 4e days trying to make spell and power cards for all the things like encounter and daily powers. I think it grew less and less fancy though. Last campaign I used Microsoft Publisher to make cards for magic items as handouts. I found a template with a heading box and description box that auto-formatted the text and had a place in the middle for a picture. I ended up using a plastic paper that seems to last longer. I guess you could have two templates and print one side as the back and then print the front.

 

[Li Shenron]

I've used StrangeEons to design "action cards" for spells, special abilities, feats etc., basically anything that isn't passive but requires a sort of action to be use, although I also made some cards which are action modifiers rather than actions themselves. My main purpose was to help players keep track of all the options they have during combat, color-coded by action type.

This is not the same as reference cards for rules in general which are a lot more varied, I can imagine some of them taking up to a whole page.

 

[TheSword]

Thanks for that. I have quite a lot of decisions to make about the style and materials. I’m going to do a trial run with something simple and relatively quick and see how they come out.

 

[TheSword]

The came back. Really happy with how they turned out for home use. Nice quality and I’m a bit amazed that you can customize the front and back of every card individually. Very flexible.

Going to make up weapons, conditions and spells next.

I used the linen finish but not sure if that affected the picture quality. The next set I’ll probably try the standard finish or the premium. Not sure which yet.

 

[Hand of Evil]

To give more space you may want to look into tarot card size. Zweihander did them and find them better than standard card sizes.