Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 10-21-2015, 12:28 PM   #1
johnnyschad
 
johnnyschad's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Northwest Iowa
Default GURPS Cards

A quick search of "Spell Cards" in the forums returned no results, but I can't believe I'm the first person to want to purchase card decks for:

1) Spells. For each of my mages to have their own deck of spells, color-coded by college, would help a lot.

2) Combat. I've used the free "combat cards" and that's ok, but an expanded deck that contained martial arts maneuvers would be nice.

3) Bestiary/NPCs. Having *various* decks for different genres would be cool. Imagine a "Deck of Orcs" packaged with suggested back-story and Cardboard Hero figures numbered to match the cards. A Dungeon Deck could contain all kinds of Icky Things. Various decks could be custom-mixed by the GM to allow for effortless random encounters.

4) Conditions. Whereas #3 covers "man vs. man", #4 covers "man vs. nature". Storms, Fires, Floods, Plagues, Air leaks, mechanical malfunction... This deck too would be separated by genre.

I'm sure others can chime in with ideas.

It would be nice to see GURPS products on the store shelves again!

--Thanks!
__________________
Learn to love, love to learn.
johnnyschad is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-21-2015, 12:48 PM   #2
GM Joe
 
GM Joe's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2014
Location: Chicagoland
Default Re: GURPS Cards

Those are nice ideas, but they're impractical because unfortunately SJ Games doesn't have any expertise producing cards.
__________________
GMing Since 1982.
GM Joe is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-21-2015, 01:08 PM   #3
Nosforontu
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Default Re: GURPS Cards

Quote:
Originally Posted by GM Joe View Post
Those are nice ideas, but they're impractical because unfortunately SJ Games doesn't have any expertise producing cards.
Munchkin might want to disagree with you a bit.
Nosforontu is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-21-2015, 01:17 PM   #4
sonic232
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Default Re: GURPS Cards

Quote:
Originally Posted by Nosforontu View Post
Munchkin might want to disagree with you a bit.
I think he might have forgotten his sarcasm tags there :P


In any case, I have seen a few resources hanging around that were basically 'Fill in your own card' when it came to RPM rituals, equipment, techniques and the like.
sonic232 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-21-2015, 03:16 PM   #5
wmervine4
 
Join Date: Dec 2013
Location: Noblesville, Indiana, USA
Default Re: GURPS Cards

Interestingly, I was thinking about this idea again today, and it is something I have thought about before.

One idea I had envisioned was to have weapon cards with the relevant weapon stats such as damage, weight, and so forth, so that players would always know what their relevant stats were for their equipped weapon. You couldn't mass produce things like this because of differing damage values for a character's ST, weight adjustments for SM, $ value based on quality modifiers, and so on. You certainly could have blank cards that could be filled in based on a specific character's weapons and then printed out for use in a game, and that would be the sort of thing I would find really useful. I think it would also be helpful to have the template card contain a large picture of the weapon so it was always obvious what the weapon looked like (some of the more exotic polearms or strange swords may not conjure an adequate mental image for players unfamiliar with them).

I completely agree on the other ideas as well. Combat cards with all the options for maneuvers would be incredibly useful, and those could be mass produced because the options are well documented in the rules. Spells could be done that way too, but from what I read on these forums, the standard Magic system (while useful for me) isn't terribly well endorsed by the community so that might not be a big seller.
wmervine4 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-21-2015, 04:20 PM   #6
mook
 
mook's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Los Angeles
Default Re: GURPS Cards

I went totally card-happy for a military game a while back (scroll down to the last few pages on any of these PCs), printing gear and weapons out on cardstock and cutting to notecard size -- each soldier then had, frex, a card for his longarm, sidearm, grenades, magazines, whatever. (Oh -- here's some I did for a low-tech game as well).

Out of 18 players total (three groups of 6), I'd say 2-3 actually used them, spread them out in front of them and just checked things off as they got used, and had all their relevant crunchy bits easily accessible. The rest just kind of glanced and used their character sheets. The ones who used them seemed to really appreciate 'em -- there was no middle ground.

I'll certainly do it again for future games, but the "work to utility" ratio was a bit off. (Though, prepping that game is what finally got me to buy my own paper cutter, which has been a godsend).
__________________
How to Be a GURPS GM, author
Game Geekery, Blog (GURPS combat examples, fillable PDF sheets, rules summaries, campaigns and one-shots, beginners' intro)
GURPS Discord, unofficial hangout and real-time chat
mook is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-21-2015, 05:11 PM   #7
johnnyschad
 
johnnyschad's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Northwest Iowa
Default Re: GURPS Cards

GM_JOE, HA! Love it.

Ya, my ever-growing Munchkin collection sitting right next to my GURPS collection kinda connected the dots. GURPS cards just seem like such an obvious revenue source, so I'm sure that the good folks at SJ Games have thought of it. Maybe they're secretly working on it deep in their lair.
__________________
Learn to love, love to learn.
johnnyschad is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-21-2015, 05:23 PM   #8
johnnyschad
 
johnnyschad's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Northwest Iowa
Default Re: GURPS Cards

Quote:
Originally Posted by wmervine4 View Post
Interestingly, I was thinking about this idea again today, and it is something I have thought about before.

One idea I had envisioned was to have weapon cards with the relevant weapon stats...

I think it would also be helpful to have the template card contain a large picture of the weapon...

The standard Magic system (while useful for me) isn't terribly well endorsed by the community so that might not be a big seller.
---
Good idea on the weapons. You could expand *that* to everyday objects: Rope, Lantern, Pick-Axe.. just about anything (except a deck of GURPS Everyday Objects cards as that would risk Interdimensional Infinite Recursion).

As far as the magic system goes, I know that people love to complain about it. I've found it very workable, especially with a few house-rules to augment and flavor. I suspect, given how popular GURPS MAGIC sold, that there are a lot of GM's out there that use the system just fine, but don't yell as loud as those who don't like it. Anyway, I'd buy GURPS Magic Cards if such a thing ever poofed into existence.
__________________
Learn to love, love to learn.
johnnyschad is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-21-2015, 05:29 PM   #9
johnnyschad
 
johnnyschad's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Northwest Iowa
Default Re: GURPS Cards

Quote:
Originally Posted by mook View Post
I went totally card-happy for a military game a while back......
Very cool cards. That's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about.

As far as players using them, that's going to depend (as all things do) on the player and the game.

As the GM, I'd really like to have ready-access to NPC/Monster cards with the Basic Speed prominently displayed in the upper left (or right) corner so that I can build a deck of players and NPCs/Monsters in initiative order, then just cycle through the cards. People or creatures with multiple attacks in the round get more than one card. That way you never skip anyone/anything.
__________________
Learn to love, love to learn.
johnnyschad is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-22-2015, 12:23 AM   #10
kabson
 
kabson's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Somewhere outside London, UK
Default Re: GURPS Cards

Spell and combat cards would be neat, especially with the expanded MA options, and the ability to pick out a Lite set for beginners. I'm not sure the rest would find a market, though they are still cool ideas.

I also toyed with the idea of making cards for weapons/equipment, but didn't get very far with the idea (as usual).
__________________
Hy twegen sceolon tæfle ymbsittan þenden him hyra torn toglide.
[Two should sit at a game together, until their troubles slip away - old English maxim]
kabson is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 05:03 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.