Spell Cards & Powers/Psi

[ericbsmith]

First, I really like the icons you picked for each college. They fit quite well and look good while being very simple.

What's the deal with the info boxes on the left side? You started out with the Air College card having 7 info boxes (including page) but somewhere in there you changed the template and cut it down to 4 info boxes.

Originally Posted by Highland_Piper

• Ritual
• Symbol College
• Syntactic College
• Wild Magic

Ritual Spells are technically just another source of spells, just as Clerical spells, as well as the various Cleric "god" sources in Dungeon Fantasy. What I would suggest is to use the exact same format as for magic spells, but change the book cover for each of the sources you want to include.

Syntactic Magic doesn't really have Colleges, but what it does have is a breakdown of spell skills into Nouns and Verbs. You cast a spell by pairing a Noun with a Verb, so the natural breakdown there is apparent. What would be good is to have the cards for the two spell types to naturally flow into one another somehow, so that it's apparent that one is a Noun, one is a Verb, and the two must be combined.

For Symbol Magic I'd suggest using the Futhark Runes from page 208 (note that while the specific pictures of the runes on 208 are probably copyright SJGames, the Runes themselves are real ancient runes so cannot be copyrighted, so there no issues with using them here).

Originally Posted by Highland_Piper

Also I am replacing the word "Spell" with "College"

For the most part I'm fine with that, but Meta-Spells is technically a hyphenated word, making the name of the college Meta-Spells College. This is further reinforced in the Spell Tables where they actually call the college Meta-Spell instead of shortening it like they do most of the other college names (I mean, Light & Darkness is called Lt-Dk to shorten it).

[Bruno]

In general, I'd prefer a black and white card - like many people, I don't have a colour printer, and colour is danged expensive anyways. I do have a black-and-white laser printer and printing with that one is cheap as chips.

A black and white card (with white background, not greyscale patterns) is also very readable for people with vision problems. It's not the only way, but it is the best way. The flat background colour in your filled sample is OK, but if sticking with a coloured background I'd recommend making it a touch more pastel (lower saturation, higher lightness).

You've picked a good font. Please don't change it to something "fantasy themed" :) Even better is if the form lets you pick the font yourself!

[Highland_Piper]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

What's the deal with the info boxes on the left side? You started out with the Air College card having 7 info boxes (including page) but somewhere in there you changed the template and cut it down to 4 info boxes.

Each spell card has 6 options, 4-7 info boxes depending on your needs.

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

Ritual Spells are technically just another source of spells, just as Clerical spells, as well as the various Cleric "god" sources in Dungeon Fantasy. What I would suggest is to use the exact same format as for magic spells, but change the book cover for each of the sources you want to include.

Sounds good, and easier for me :)

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

Syntactic Magic doesn't really have Colleges, but what it does have is a breakdown of spell skills into Nouns and Verbs. You cast a spell by pairing a Noun with a Verb, so the natural breakdown there is apparent. What would be good is to have the cards for the two spell types to naturally flow into one another somehow, so that it's apparent that one is a Noun, one is a Verb, and the two must be combined.

This one is going to take me some time to figure out. I'd like to do a combination of what you suggest and have a card for custom commonly used combinations.

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

For Symbol Magic I'd suggest using the Futhark Runes from page 208 (note that while the specific pictures of the runes on 208 are probably copyright SJGames, the Runes themselves are real ancient runes so cannot be copyrighted, so there no issues with using them here).

Another good idea

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

For the most part I'm fine with that, but Meta-Spells is technically a hyphenated word, making the name of the college Meta-Spells College. This is further reinforced in the Spell Tables where they actually call the college Meta-Spell instead of shortening it like they do most of the other college names (I mean, Light & Darkness is called Lt-Dk to shorten it).

Opps! Well there was bound to be a mistake somewhere.

Black & White cards will be coming but not until all the colour cards are done.

[Highland_Piper]

UGH! I made a rookie mistake. I had all of the main colleges finished then realised when I exported them there was a hidden layer with all the options I was working on making each pdf 25MB instead of 4MB.

I was hoping to post a link but now I got another hours worth of work at least.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Highland_Piper

I was hoping to post a link but now I got another hours worth of work at least.

Egad, there's no batch script or action for extracting that layer?

[Highland_Piper]

Done!

More to come later but I've spent six hours on these today and I need a break.

[Highland_Piper]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Egad, there's no batch script or action for extracting that layer?

I no longer save my pdf's with preserved Illustrator Editing Capabilities after some nob extracted my layers and used them in a product on RPG Now.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Highland_Piper

The blank areas before the info boxes will be a user filled text box so you can place whatever you want in front of them. Text colour will be white for easy reading, just as the the word 'Page' on the bottom. There is too much diversity in spells to make for a good standard set up, and I think this way is best as you will get three to six info boxes (not including the 'Page' box) to place what you want. this way you can add damage, bonuses, penalties, Area of Effect, or whatever you want.

Not having the format standard fields makes this nearly useless for me. Enabling idiosyncratic notation is the opposite of what I would want cards for. I need something that players will all fill out exactly according to GURPS Formats. A card with nothing but blanks is essentially the same as an index card.

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Not having the format standard fields makes this nearly useless for me. Enabling idiosyncratic notation is the opposite of what I would want cards for. I need something that players will all fill out exactly according to GURPS Formats. A card with nothing but blanks is essentially the same as an index card.

On the one hand I kind of agree, OTOH you can easily go in and pre-label the fields whatever you want and save the PDF. Then when the player fills them out they fill out that information in that field.

I would kind of like to see some of the fields pre-filled out though, even if they can be edited later. Duration, Energy Cost, and Time to Cast are standard fields all spells have. Skill level is another all spells would have and I imagine most players would like listed on the card.

[wmervine4]

Wow. These cards are fantastic! Thank you Highland_Piper for making them so swiftly!

Now, I may just not know how to use Adobe Reader very well (and this may not even be possible with the free version), but I am thinking that one of these cards looks like it would only take up about a quarter of a standard 8.5" x 11" piece of paper, so one could conceivably print 4 cards to a page. I think page 2 of the latest version of the Air college cards matches exactly what I would like as far as number of fields and layout.

So my question is, is there a way to get 4 copies of page 2 of the PDF to print out on one piece of paper with the free version of Adobe, or is that beyond the capabilities of this free software? Alternately, is there another obvious option I am missing for getting multiple copies of the same card to appear on one page?