BF Monster Cards

Creating game materials? Monsters, spells, classes, adventures? This is the place!
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Babarock
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Re: BF Monster Cards

Post by Babarock »

I think Monster reference cards would be awesome and very handy! I'de keep them in alphabetical order, or even store them in an UltraPro case like Magic cards for easy reference. There are only so many commonly encountered monsters. A deck of 60 cards (base set) and an expansion deck of another 60 would cover 90% of normal encounters. If the illustration was on the back of the card, then the GM could flash it to the players without revealing the attached info/stats.

I hate it when a GM has to lift up a bulky book, with his hand over half the page to hide vital details. I also am annoyed by GM's who fumble with tablets and laptops while we're trying to play a 'tabletop' RPG. 'Pen and Paper' boys! Isn't that the name of the game? I don't think staring at a screen and disconnecting from the synergy at the table for ANY length of time is any substitute for having the creatures in an adventure set aside and conveniently sitting behind the GM screen in card form.

I found this thread because I was hoping somebody else had already done it. Instead I find good people shooting down good ideas. As a graphic artist, I would love to put this deck together and may start doing just that. It would even give me a platform to illustrate some of the 'unillustrated' monsters for the card backs. Old thread, I know. Any takers?

http://postimg.org/image/h5gkpnlyp/
dpelletier05
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Re: BF Monster Cards

Post by dpelletier05 »

in fact,
I think I would not use CARDS on hard paper but instead, if an there was an app with all the stats and pics in a database...

when the GM plans his sessions, he goes on a form and check all the box from the need monsters on a list and click submit and can print or PDF only the needed monster on one or 2 sheets ( Or pdf pages ).

Once all the Basic monsters are in the database, if we have to generate cards or other monsters, we just have to add entries to the database.

I think it would be a cool project...

If it is in a database, there could event be a choice of language for the cards...

I might be interested in the programming of such app, but I would need someone to look at the layout for the cards and the graphics.

If Solo is Ok with that kind of tools, I can try to see what I can do...

A good point about having this in a database is also that we could do a few "template" for the layout and the GM choose the one he prefer.


once the template is done, we can even extend this to spells... I can see myself giving this to beginners BFRPG players who plays magic Users. You know magic missile, here is the spell card. You just learned another spell, Here is the card..
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Dustinian
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Re: BF Monster Cards

Post by Dustinian »

Since Babarock and dpelletier05 seem interested in working on this, I moved it to the workshop.
Babarock wrote:As a graphic artist, I would love to put this deck together and may start doing just that. It would even give me a platform to illustrate some of the 'unillustrated' monsters for the card backs. Old thread, I know. Any takers?
To get you started, I lifted the monster tables and descriptions out of the SRD thread and slapped a (very) quick embedded stylesheet in the head. I'm hoping it's normalized enough to get you started. You can find it here: BFRPG Monster Cards
dpelletier05 wrote:If it is in a database, there could event be a choice of language for the cards... I might be interested in the programming of such app, but I would need someone to look at the layout for the cards and the graphics.
The link above are the monsters in quite normalized HTML. Should be very simple to convert them to XML to feed the back end of such a tool. Let me know if you'd like me to make the XML conversion happen.
dpelletier05 wrote:we can even extend this to spells...
It would be just as easy for me to pull spells out of the SRD as it was monsters. Let me know when you're ready for the spells in XML format.

Good luck!
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teaman
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Re: BF Monster Cards

Post by teaman »

I've used a program called Magic Set Editor, though I am not sure if it is maintained any longer. I've had trouble downloading and installing new templates, though that could just be me doing it wrongly.

Also, I've found it VERY helpful to have a few NPC cards. These cards just have pictures and a name on them. At my last game, someone said "Is there an alchemist in town." Just pulled out an elf card and he was the local alchemist. Another wanted to talk to a ranger. Boom, had a mustachioed fellow who fit the bill. These work surprisingly well and could easily be done online as well. I need to whip up an NPC deck for my regular campaign.
Teaman is the sole proprietor of Sharp Mountain Games at roll20 and DTRPG

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teaman
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Re: BF Monster Cards

Post by teaman »

Babarock wrote:I think Monster reference cards would be awesome and very handy! I'de keep them in alphabetical order, or even store them in an UltraPro case like Magic cards for easy reference. There are only so many commonly encountered monsters. A deck of 60 cards (base set) and an expansion deck of another 60 would cover 90% of normal encounters. If the illustration was on the back of the card, then the GM could flash it to the players without revealing the attached info/stats.

I hate it when a GM has to lift up a bulky book, with his hand over half the page to hide vital details. I also am annoyed by GM's who fumble with tablets and laptops while we're trying to play a 'tabletop' RPG. 'Pen and Paper' boys! Isn't that the name of the game? I don't think staring at a screen and disconnecting from the synergy at the table for ANY length of time is any substitute for having the creatures in an adventure set aside and conveniently sitting behind the GM screen in card form.

I found this thread because I was hoping somebody else had already done it. Instead I find good people shooting down good ideas. As a graphic artist, I would love to put this deck together and may start doing just that. It would even give me a platform to illustrate some of the 'unillustrated' monsters for the card backs. Old thread, I know. Any takers?

http://postimg.org/image/h5gkpnlyp/

What program did you use to make the card? I'm assuming you're an illustrator and that card is unbelievable.

Here's some cards I've made over the years, NPC and Monster. Now I used Magic Set Editor and some art I did (though for personal game use I use images online). So they are only meant to give an idea of things. I love your version of the Leech.

Image

Image

Image

Image
Teaman is the sole proprietor of Sharp Mountain Games at roll20 and DTRPG

https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/p ... tain-games
http://drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/8418 ... tain-Games
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LibraryLass
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Re: BF Monster Cards

Post by LibraryLass »

Cards are definitely a cool idea. Or maybe removable binder pages like the old 2e Monstrous Compendium... Something where I could have the stuff I know I'm using ready to hand.
dpelletier05
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Re: BF Monster Cards

Post by dpelletier05 »

Teaman, Those cards seems to have the perfect layout it would be pretty easy to generate monster cards on that layout, only need the illustration and monster specs in a Database.

Dustinian, thanks a lot for the extraction, but I was thinking of using the Basic fantasy RPG Creature list by Mike Roop to get started.. I am more a CSV guy than an XML guy ;)

Of course, thinking about it, It might be usefull in the future to have the descriptions already on the database ( to make a monster lookup feature )

So I am gonna start working on it on my spare time If out friend Babarok or any other illustrator want to help make illustrate the project, PM me to know where to put the files !

I might build a form for the picture import once the database is built so it wuould be kind of "self-serve".

Tell me what you think ! I am open to input for feature / idea !
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teaman
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Re: BF Monster Cards

Post by teaman »

dpelletier05 wrote:Teaman, Those cards seems to have the perfect layout it would be pretty easy to generate monster cards on that layout, only need the illustration and monster specs in a Database.

Dustinian, thanks a lot for the extraction, but I was thinking of using the Basic fantasy RPG Creature list by Mike Roop to get started.. I am more a CSV guy than an XML guy ;)

Of course, thinking about it, It might be usefull in the future to have the descriptions already on the database ( to make a monster lookup feature )

So I am gonna start working on it on my spare time If out friend Babarok or any other illustrator want to help make illustrate the project, PM me to know where to put the files !

I might build a form for the picture import once the database is built so it wuould be kind of "self-serve".

Tell me what you think ! I am open to input for feature / idea !
Those contain some layout artwork that might be proprietary (I'm unsure of the legality of Magic Set Editor), but figured I would post them just to gives folks an idea how I use them.

This sounds like a great project and I look forward to seeing where it goes. I have some artwork posted in the forums and some monsters in the "New Monsters for 2015" thread that you are welcome to use.
Teaman is the sole proprietor of Sharp Mountain Games at roll20 and DTRPG

https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/p ... tain-games
http://drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/8418 ... tain-Games
dpelletier05
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Re: BF Monster Cards

Post by dpelletier05 »

teaman wrote: Those contain some layout artwork that might be proprietary (I'm unsure of the legality of Magic Set Editor), but figured I would post them just to gives folks an idea how I use them.

Thanks for the clarification, but I was only talking about the layout. photo on left, Information on the right side.

I am working on a template for the cards, I'll post it here once it is done.
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teaman
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Re: BF Monster Cards

Post by teaman »

They could work in a vertical arrangement too, like standard Magic cards.

Oh, I only list the "Save versus Spells" for monsters as that is their most likely save. One could list them all, but I'd use some kind of abbreviation.
Teaman is the sole proprietor of Sharp Mountain Games at roll20 and DTRPG

https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/p ... tain-games
http://drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/8418 ... tain-Games
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