Saturday, February 5, 2011

Old School Gamer Bling

I'm a big proponent of "do it yourself".  I think that's the spirit of the OSR.

I like props/minis/stuff at my game table and I always have.  I don't particularly like the 4e approach where every character ability/spell/power/etc. is a card, but for unique magic items I like that a lot.

To that end, I have embraced Paizo's "gamer bling" cards.  They're great, but they don't always fit what I have in mind.  I've purchased several decks of their cards and I've used them (mostly) with Savage Worlds.

But what to do with my CotMA game?  Make them yourself!

Check out this site: GoDeckYourself.com.  You build the cards and then export them as a PDF file for printing.

You can sign up for a free account and make cards that suit your fancy.  You can distribute them to your players as they find magic items and other loot.

Here are the cards I've given to my players to represent the loot they've found.  Enjoy!


7 comments:

Chris Kutalik said...

This is brilliant, I like having homebrewed visual aids to spice things up at the table. Thanks also for the link to the card-making site.

Dig the Time Bandits pic on the Hat of Infravision.

edowar39 said...

Awesome cards! GoDeckYourself is a great site. I've been thinking of using it to make some post-apoc loot cards, should I ever get the chance to GM one again. If I may ask, where did you get the images for your cards?

Ed Green

P.S.: I'm totally stealing the Silly Hat of Infravision.

Jim said...

@ckutalik -- I like the hat too. It was possibly the first item the party found and I described it that way, I had John Cleese in mind from the start.

@Ed -- thanks. I'm glad you're stealing the hat. I'm glad I put it into my game. As for the pics, I'm afraid that I didn't ask permission or credit the artists/originators. I just used Google Image Search until I found something that I liked. Then I used GIMP to crop to the proportions 1:1.35. That keeps the pic from being too distorted.

Aaron E. Steele said...

You're my new hero.

I've been using paizo cards, and i'd earlier put together my own mockups of 1" x 1.5" cards, but your solution is sheer brilliance.

Now I can create those Vancian "Dying Earth" hat cards that i've been dreaming about.

Jim said...

@Paladin -- if you do the Vancian Hats -- please share! Thanks!

5stonegames said...

Thats crazy cool.I love the idea and if/when I run again I am so going to make item cards. Thanks.

Michael S/Chgowiz said...

It must be in the air because I independently started wanting to do this too and was pointed to this blog entry. Too funny! Thanks for the link...