How to Create Custom Cards for Your Game Prototype

I create quite a few prototypes of card games and board games of my own design. I am often making custom cards for these prototypes. Here is a simple rundown of how you can create custom cards for your own game prototypes, easily and economically.

[Design Journal: Heroes of Legend RPG] Tribes: Vyrden

Here is another Design Journal entry for Heroes of Legend, a fantasy RPG I’m currently developing. At this point in developing the game I’m focusing on creating the various tribes that populate the setting. In the last four posts on this topic I’ve discussed four different terith tribes – essentially different variations on humans. Today, I’m breaking away from that to tell you about the vyrden tribe.

[Design Journal: Heroes of Legend RPG] Tribes: Juseido Terith

Here is another Design Journal entry for Heroes of Legend, a fantasy RPG I’m currently developing. At this point in developing the game I’m focusing on creating the various tribes that populate the setting. In a previous post I explained what the terith are, and I’ve talked specifically about the hylan, sharadda and kaldari terith tribes. Today I’ll be sharing some information on another terith tribe.

[Design Journal: Heroes of Legend RPG] Tribes: Kaldari Terith

Here is another Design Journal entry for Heroes of Legend, a fantasy RPG I’m currently developing. At this point in developing the game I’m focusing on creating the various tribes that populate the setting. Last week I explained what the terith are, and I’ve talked specifically about the hylan and sharadda terith tribes. Today I’ll be sharing some information on another terith tribe.

[Design Journal: Heroes of Legend RPG] Tribes: Sharadda Terith

This is yet another Design Journal entry for Heroes of Legend, a fantasy RPG I’m currently developing. At this point in developing the game I’m focusing on creating the various tribes that populate the setting. In my last article I explained what the terith are, and I talked specifically about the hylan terith tribe. Today I’ll be sharing some information on another terith tribe.

[Design Journal: Heroes of Legend RPG] Tribes: Hylan Terith

This is my tenth Design Journal entry for Heroes of Legend, and I’ve shared quite a few ideas about the game so far. Over the next few DJ entries I’ll be sharing some specifics of the setting’s tribes, my stand in concept for what are called “species” or “races” in other settings. What makes tribes different in HoL may be some genetics, but the most important differences are often cultural. Today I’ll be talking about the hylan terith tribe.

[Design Journal: Heroes of Legend RPG] Tribes of Legend

In the last few Design Journal entries for Heroes of Legend I’ve focused on some more mechanical aspects of the game. Now I would like to talk about developing some more of the setting for a little while. First, I’m going to focus on tribes.

[Design Journal: Heroes of Legend RPG] How High Can You Roll?

In a previous Design Journal entry for Heroes of Legend I talked about a character’s nine core attributes and the basics of how you’ll make an attribute check. Last time, I talked about different actions you’ll take with those core attributes and how many dice you’ll roll depending on the type of action. Now, I’m going to figure out what kind of numbers you should be aiming to get on these rolls.

[Design Journal: Heroes of Legend RPG] 1 Action Point = 1 Die

In my last Design Journal entry for Heroes of Legend I talked about a character’s nine core attributes and the basics of how you’ll make an attribute check. Now I’m going to go into a little more detail about different types of actions and how attribute checks are made. But first, I want to explain a very important design principle regarding the use of action points and rolling dice.

[Design Journal: Heroes of Legend RPG] Attributes and Skills

This is another Design Journal entry for Heroes of Legend, a fantasy roleplaying game I’m currently developing. In the last couple of articles I talked about combat. I’m switching gears here and discussing some more general types of actions.

[Design Journal: Heroes of Legend RPG] Attacking with Weapons

In my last Design Journal entry for Heroes of Legend I talked about mechanics for combat. I’m going to continue on that train of thought here.

[Design Journal: Heroes of Legend RPG] Combat Grid and Action Points

In my previous Design Journal entries for Heroes of Legend I’ve mostly focused on the setting. Now I’m going to share a few thoughts about the way combat will work. Combat is typically one of the most detailed aspects of a tabletop RPG, a trait that extends from the genre’s roots in tabletop war games. As a fantasy adventure game, Heroes of Legend will put a fair amount of emphasis on combat as well.

[Design Journal: Heroes of Legend RPG] Science-Fiction and Fantasy

Here are some more random thoughts about the setting of my new game project, a tabletop roleplaying game I’m calling Heroes of Legend for the time being. So far I’ve described this game as having a “fantasy” setting, but I wanted to mention some of my thoughts on fantasy and science-fiction and how that relates to this game.

[Design Journal: Heroes of Legend RPG] Dieties, Golden and Otherwise

Here are some more random thoughts about the setting of my new game project, a tabletop roleplaying game I’m calling Heroes of Legend for the time being. I mentioned before that I want this fantasy setting to have an interesting mythology that matters. What I mean by that is: the world’s creation story has an impact on the current state of the world in the setting, and it ties into explanations of other fantasy elements of the setting.

[Design Journal: Heroes of Legend RPG] Initial Thoughts

Hey everyone! I know it has been a while since I posted anything substantial here. For some time I’ve been kicking around an idea for a tabletop roleplaying game, and I’ve decided I’m finally going to do some design work on it. What’s more, I’ve decided that I’m going to do most, if not all, of this design work in public here on my blog. What I mean by that is: all or most of the work that I do on this game will be posted here in Design Journal entries. What you see is what I’ve done. This won’t be another Open Design project, but I will be interested in any thoughts you have on the game as I design it, and your ideas may influence the direction in which I develop this game.

Taking a Hit

This is another case of me throwing out some random thoughts on game design. Again, this time my thoughts are focused on rules mechanics in RPGs. Specifically, I’m thinking about hit points and weapon damage. Basically, my thought was this: What if your hit points actually told you how many times you could get hit?

Growing Out, Not Up

OK, so this article is basically me thinking out loud (or, out written, or whatever). From time to time my brain begins mauling over some random idea for a rules mechanic in a game. I don’t have a specific game I want to use this mechanic in, I just look at how a lot of games do something, and I start thinking about how I might do it differently if I were designing a game. These ideas may end up in some future game if I really like them. For that reason, I’m very interested in getting other people’s feedback on these. This isn’t just an opportunity for me to ramble or rant about the latest rules idea that wandered through my head; it’s also a chance to get feedback from you and to further refine the idea.

[Open Design: Mercenaries #9] Our Progress So Far

It’s been three months today since we started our Open Design project here with the card game Mercenaries. I thought this would be a good time to review what we’ve done so far and consider where we should go from here.

[Open Design: Mercenaries #8] Tags on Mercenary and Territory Cards

I’m breaking my usual Monday and Thursday posting schedule again to bring you three articles this week. I’m posting this article a day early, and another Building Character post will be going up Friday.

This is another quick update on our Open Design project. You can read all of our previous project articles here. An important factor to the intractability of cards in Mercenaries is something called Tags. Tags don’t do anything on their own, but they can be referred to by rules on other cards, and allow cards to be grouped into a variety of categories.

Humandisaster suggested that we should have a set list of Tags that can be used. This list should also give general guidelines as to what sort of concepts each individual Tag covers. I’m going to present here all of the Tags that we’ve used so far.

[Open Design: Mercenaries #7] Mercenary Cards Round-Up

This is simply a quick round-up of the mercenary cards we've created so far for the game Mercenaries, our Open Design project. We have close to a third of the mercenary cards that we need to get the game to its first playtest. Thanks so much to everyone who has already participated, and I look forward to seeing this project continue to progress. Look over the cards listed below, and feel free to leave any ideas you have for mercenaries in the comments to this post.

Because this is kind of a quick article that didn't take a lot of work to put together, I'll be breaking my usual Monday and Thursday posting schedule to bring you three new articles this week. Check back on Wednesday for a new Design Review, and look for another Building Character post on Friday.