SiderisAnon
First Post
Creating Homemade Item Cards
I use item cards for all of the magic items in my game. Initially, when someone uses "Detect Magic", they get a card that says "Unknown Magic Item" that has some blank lines on the bottom. I write things like "Longsword from goblin leader" on the card. Then when they figure out what the item is or get it identified, they get the actual card, which has a picture, the stats, and some flavor text. (And I just cross out the text on the unknown card and use it again.)
I designed my cards in Campaign Cartographer 2, mostly because I did not have any other kind of graphics program at the time. It works fairly well, though I have problems putting the description and other text in and getting it to look right.
I fit nine cards on a sheet, 3x3, with a border around the edges.
For actual use of the cards, I bought a bunch of cheap sleeves at Wal-Mart for baseball cards. The player puts them in their character folder (cheap school folders with the three prongs). We were already keeping character sheets in clear sleeves in those folders, so people could mark on them with the wet erase markers.
I even rigged up a set of sleeves for each character that has all of the slots labeled. So, if you get a helmet, you put it in the appropriate slot, and now you know for sure you can't put a headband on with it.
The majority of my images in the past came from an old 2nd Ed TSR product that had all of the books on a CD and a character generator. There were tons of equipment pictures in there. However, once I started using more of the cards, I went looking for most pictures on the web. Most of what I use is clip art.
I'm a big fan of potions and I run it so that formulas produce consistent results. So, if two different wizards use the same formula for a Potion of Invisibility, the potions look, smell, and taste the same. So, I run off sheets of nine for the common potions, all with the same picture. The players get those cards once the potion is identified, and after a while they can start recognizing the potions in their character's sleeves by the picture as well as by the title.
I use item cards for all of the magic items in my game. Initially, when someone uses "Detect Magic", they get a card that says "Unknown Magic Item" that has some blank lines on the bottom. I write things like "Longsword from goblin leader" on the card. Then when they figure out what the item is or get it identified, they get the actual card, which has a picture, the stats, and some flavor text. (And I just cross out the text on the unknown card and use it again.)
I designed my cards in Campaign Cartographer 2, mostly because I did not have any other kind of graphics program at the time. It works fairly well, though I have problems putting the description and other text in and getting it to look right.
I fit nine cards on a sheet, 3x3, with a border around the edges.
For actual use of the cards, I bought a bunch of cheap sleeves at Wal-Mart for baseball cards. The player puts them in their character folder (cheap school folders with the three prongs). We were already keeping character sheets in clear sleeves in those folders, so people could mark on them with the wet erase markers.
I even rigged up a set of sleeves for each character that has all of the slots labeled. So, if you get a helmet, you put it in the appropriate slot, and now you know for sure you can't put a headband on with it.
The majority of my images in the past came from an old 2nd Ed TSR product that had all of the books on a CD and a character generator. There were tons of equipment pictures in there. However, once I started using more of the cards, I went looking for most pictures on the web. Most of what I use is clip art.
I'm a big fan of potions and I run it so that formulas produce consistent results. So, if two different wizards use the same formula for a Potion of Invisibility, the potions look, smell, and taste the same. So, I run off sheets of nine for the common potions, all with the same picture. The players get those cards once the potion is identified, and after a while they can start recognizing the potions in their character's sleeves by the picture as well as by the title.
