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Old 07-22-2018, 06:12 AM   #11
David Bofinger
 
Join Date: Jan 2018
Location: Sydney, Australia
Default Re: Character Cards

A deck of starting characters would be pretty handy for NPCs as well: random encounters; searching for hirelings; the wizard's bodyguards; who's your cellmate in prison; etc. I don't think they need to be dry erase: if they survive long enough they'll have been copied to a character sheet.

You'd need a bunch of decks: one for warriors, one for archers, wizards, Jacks of all trades, etc. So you can pick based on a rough type. With info to help role-playing as well as game mechanics.

ST 11, DX 12, IQ 9
Knife (1), Sword (1), Shield (1), Bow (2), Alertness (2), Elvish (1), Boats (1)
Cloth armour, small shield
Polite, Cautious, Likes warm weather
"If the orc commander is smart he'll have put archers amongst those boulders."
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Old 07-22-2018, 06:35 AM   #12
tomc
 
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Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Carrboro, NC
Default Re: Character Cards

My dungeon generator has decks of cards for foes, broken down by attribute total and type (humans 32-34, dwarves 36-40, etc) and well as monsters grouped by whatever is useful (flying creatures, undead, water dwellers, super-tough ones, etc).

You can mimic or adjust the bell curve you'd get from rolling multiple dice on a chart by adding or removing duplicate (or just similar) cards.
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Old 07-22-2018, 10:37 AM   #13
Skarg
 
Join Date: May 2015
Default Re: Character Cards

I and the other TFT GMs I played with maintained a supply of pre-made opponents and other NPCs at various levels of detail, as well as pre-thought-of-names lists and character/situation ideas that might be applied to different unplaced NPCs as made sense in the game situation.

However we didn't like re-using NPC stat blocks for people who were already used, especially not ones whose details were already known to the players. (I still have the folders with most of the characters & NPCs (including roadside thugs) who ever died in the campaign. Kind of fun to glance at and see who died and sometimes how (I often note in shorthand wounds with things like location, type, whether an arrow is stuck in the body, e.g. "-3 L arm A").

It's so easy to make a TFT character and only requires a few inches of paper space.

ST 11 Spear 1d
DX 11(10) Lg Shld 2 -1DX
IQ 9 Dagger 1-1
MA 10 11sp 32cp in bp, bag w. 3 dys rtns
PlWpns Shld Knf Swm Farm Alert

I can still make that stuff up about as quickly as I can type or write it down.
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Old 07-22-2018, 11:20 AM   #14
Chris Rice
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Location: London Uk, but originally from Scotland
Default Re: Character Cards

Quote:
Originally Posted by Skarg View Post
I and the other TFT GMs I played with maintained a supply of pre-made opponents and other NPCs at various levels of detail, as well as pre-thought-of-names lists and character/situation ideas that might be applied to different unplaced NPCs as made sense in the game situation.

However we didn't like re-using NPC stat blocks for people who were already used, especially not ones whose details were already known to the players. (I still have the folders with most of the characters & NPCs (including roadside thugs) who ever died in the campaign. Kind of fun to glance at and see who died and sometimes how (I often note in shorthand wounds with things like location, type, whether an arrow is stuck in the body, e.g. "-3 L arm A").

It's so easy to make a TFT character and only requires a few inches of paper space.

ST 11 Spear 1d
DX 11(10) Lg Shld 2 -1DX
IQ 9 Dagger 1-1
MA 10 11sp 32cp in bp, bag w. 3 dys rtns
PlWpns Shld Knf Swm Farm Alert

I can still make that stuff up about as quickly as I can type or write it down.
It's easy to make up characters on any old scrap of paper, that's true. But if we're trying to attract a new generation to TFT; a generation who are used to high quality graphics and top notch physical game components, I believe these cards will be a major boon. These will make it much easier for me to attract new players to a pick-up game; they don't even have to generate a character - just pick a card and off we go.

I'm coming to the conclusion that these might not be absolutely essential, but could be very important.
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Old 07-22-2018, 12:15 PM   #15
Skarg
 
Join Date: May 2015
Default Re: Character Cards

Yeah, I wasn't intending to argue against them. (Except maybe that I probably wouldn't use dry-erase myself, as I like having a paper-trail of doom.)

They do seem handy for various things such as new players, random warrior selection outside detailed campaigns, etc.

I would likely use blank ones, and a program and/or a program and/or web site that generated them to print out.

I agree though that it should list base DX followed by Adj DX, not just Adj DX.
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Old 07-22-2018, 03:24 PM   #16
Rick_Smith
 
Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: Coquitlam B.C.
Default Re: Character Cards - 3x5" index cards.

A long, long time ago, before ItL, AM and AW came out I ran a campaign using Basic Melee & Wizard. I had a little metal box for holding recipes filled with 3x5 index cards, and I wrote an NPC fighter on each.

I made a difficulty curve with lots of low level fighters (a few less than 30 attributes), so many medium level fighters and a few tough and very tough fighters, and the cards matched exactly this distribution. About 1 in 50 cards was a wizard. If there was a fight with 8 bandits, then I pulled out 8 cards.

If the players were low level and there were two tough cards and a bunch of medium ones, then the party would likely die. (I was a killer GM in those days, and writing up a new character took 15 seconds. People went thru a LOT of characters.)

When ever I wrote up a new NPC, it was placed on one of these cards and it went into the box. I made sure to keep the proportion of weak to strong people approximately right. Once in a rare while I would audit the box and create a few new guys to get things right again.

If you guys are talking about high quality cards, (like poker cards), with characters written on them that were like these, and they had spells and talents ready I might be interested. I could see several releases:

-- Thugs & bandits.
-- City folk & thieves.
-- Wizards & adventurers.
-- Seamen & pirates.
-- Rangers & ninja.
-- Nobles & calvary, etc.

Hopefully they would have a majority of cards at low level, a bunch of medium levels, with a few that are maxed out characters in each expansion. (The wiz & adventurers might have a few more tough characters.)

Of course it does not have to be this way, but something like this is the only thing I would be tempted to buy.

Warm regards, Rick.

Last edited by Rick_Smith; 07-23-2018 at 12:09 AM. Reason: Fixed spelling error.
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Old 07-22-2018, 10:52 PM   #17
zot
 
Join Date: May 2018
Default Re: Character Cards - 3x5" index cards.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rick_Smith View Post
If you guys are talking about high quality cards, (like poker cards), with characters written on them that were like these, and they had spells and talents ready I might be interested. I could see several releases:

-- Thugs & bandits.
-- City folk & thieves.
-- Wizards & adventurers.
-- Seamen & pirates.
-- Rangers & ninja.
-- Nobles and calvary, etc.

Hopefully they would have a majority of cards at low level, a bunch of medium levels, with a few that are maxed out characters in each expansion. (The wiz & adventurers might have a few more tough characters.)
Well I would certainly buy several decks of those! That's a great idea!
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Old 07-24-2018, 02:13 PM   #18
Fred Skin
 
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Join Date: Jun 2005
Default Re: Character Cards

I like the idea of cards for pc/npcs, monsters, etc. I think it would speed up game prep & record keeping
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Old 07-24-2018, 02:35 PM   #19
Dave Crowell
 
Join Date: Jun 2012
Default Re: Character Cards

I like the idea of decks of pre-generated character cards for TFT.

As for dry erase character cards, the new edition of Paranoia includes dry erase character sheets on heavy card stock. Quick and fun for one-shot play. For those of us who enjoy TFT as an arena combat game dry erase character cards would be useful and fun. For campaign play I would likely copy them and write the stats in with pencil the traditional way.
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Old 07-24-2018, 02:43 PM   #20
larsdangly
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Default Re: Character Cards

A card sized format for TFT characters is a must - one of the great powers of the system is that you truly don't need more than this to describe characters.

I have nothing to add about the details of what should go on it, other than that it should include the obvious stuff (basic and adjusted stats; MA; weapons and armor; maybe talents and spells on the back).

But I will say that I really like the look of Gorpo. That guy is going places.
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