Monday 3 December 2012

MaliQuest: Character Cards

Good Monday everyone (damn I'm tired).

This weekend my MaliQuest focus has been two fold.

First: Finish cutting out my Loot Deck: Essentials cards.


As you can see, it's big! By my count in fact I make it roughly 250 cards.

But this is everything in the deck, my aim is to encourage people to play with only the cards they want.

For example: when it comes to SkypeQuest, I'll probably remove everything below rare quality (other than mods) which will drastically reduce the deck size and increase the chances of good draws.

But my main focus has been on designing the character cards.

So on Friday I came up with the following:


The aim is to allow for the players to laminate and write in their character name and stats and then mark off when they equip gear.

In addition, the Wound and SoulStone markers work in reverse of those found on Malifaux stat cards. You fill in however many you have, and then as you get hit/use stones, wipe them off the laminate, meaning everyone can have up to 10 Wounds and 8 Stones, but starting with much less.

I've had some feedback and based on that the following v2 was created:


The plan was to de-clutter the card, however as my wife pointed out, now the space for recording stats is drastically reduced.

Something I'll be trying tonight is creating some more cards, the first will have the Head/Gloves cogs moved to be in line with the Torso/Boots cogs.

The second will have all 4 cogs moved to be next to the Wd/SS blocks.

The third version will have the cogs removed all together and replacing them with a manual writing space, thus suggestion came from @Gorbad13, and I am curious to see how it will compare to the others.

I welcome any comments/suggestions. For obvious reasons, my trail of thought is so stuck into wanting there to be cogs, the idea of not having any had not even occurred to me!

Anyway, please excuse me while I take a nap on the way to work.

Stay safe, and I'll see you all breachside!

- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley

6 comments:

  1. What I was thinking was to have a couple of lines on the card under the wound and soulstone counters for you to write the names of abilities, spells, triggers, etc. Just so you can look at the one card and see what you have and then you can go to your deck of cards for the details of how exactly it works if needed.
    The cogs are great from a stylistic point of view, but game aids needs to be practical.

    Speaking of, what is the purpose of the body on there? Or is it just a place holder for you to put in a picture of your actual character?

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  2. Well currently I am unsure which is the more practicle considering the amount of spells and abilities are very small, 2 weapons, 2 Artifacts (spells) and 4 equipment, but this is why I'm throwing the idea out there, I want to see what the majority think as I may be looking at this from the wrong view.

    The reason for the silhouette is to hark back to the good old PC point and click character days: http://www.blackviper.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/drdoom40.jpg take this (completely random character I just pulled off Google) for instance.
    - if you look at the v1 card, this makes more sense, but yes, now the figure is designed as a stand in for an actual picture

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    1. Plus! While I like the idea of having a 'notes' section, I want to retain somewhere to give the players a visual aid as to what slots are equipped and what are not.

      What I might do is keep the cogs, but make the card similar to a Malifaux card...

      The best way to describe that is as follows: currently it's A5 in size, if I was to add another page next to this, that turns it A4 in total, and the ENTIRE of page 2 can be for note taking, but if you don't want/have any notes it can be folded over and you still have the A5 available.

      How will this work for laminating? Can a laminated card be manipulated in a way to enable it to fold over?

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  3. I was just wondering if there was a rules interaction I was missing with the silhouette, like damage locations or something. I like it there, it looks good. And you can always replace it with a photo or something if you want.

    Taking a step back, we want the stat card to be visually distinct/interesting/thematic and present all the information you need for playing at a glance.
    The cogs takes care of the visual aspect so I actually like them on there.
    Could we have cogs that had what they were written on the ring (so weapon, or artifact, etc.) and then left space inside them to write the name of it?
    If it's simply something to check off to indicate you have a card for said location I think I prefer v1 of the card, although I might have placed the cogs on a straight vertical line on the silhouette. Then you can indicate on there you have a card for said location and then refer to the card.


    As for folding laminated card, I would think there is a way to do it, but I don't have very good(or much) experience with it. I would say just put it on the back, but then it will just rub off.

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    1. Awesome! That's given me lots of things to think about.

      Either tonight or tomorrow I'll be creating a variety of v3 cards, I'll post them up and let people 'vote' for their favourites

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  4. Of course, there is also the option of having a couple of different styles and just let people pick individually. Just make sure they all fit together stylistic.

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