Dungeon Crawl Update: Monster Card Backs

[@jackbotsford8688]

Man I can't express how awesome this is

[@bluebotic2327]

Hey thanks Jack. It's been a long, imperfect journey.

[@1nfty-]

Heres what gonna happen: You gonna release this game, a community will form around it and it will be a hit. Then, in a couple years people are going to ask for a "enhanced edition" and you are going to bring it with a combo of the reworked and upgraded base game plus two smaller boxes expansions and optional pledge for full detailed miniatures of the heroes and creatures. Boom.

[@bluebotic2327]

I like the way you think! To your point, I do think v1.0 will be a little rough around the edges and require an extensive FAQ and errata. I see 2nd Edition as a really solid air tight delving engine with way more content.

[@mtdav78071]

I agree

[@SandorHQ]

By Jove, these monster cards look stunning! The Moldman is my current favorite because it feels fundamentally creepy with its passive yet deadly behavior. I bet even the other monsters avoid him. Reminds me of the Revenants from the Brogue computer game. Very, very cool!

[@bluebotic2327]

That's the first By Jove I've ever gotten. Thanks! I played Brogue a few times. I was on a Rogue-like kick for a while. Even built (prototyped) my own in Python.

[@weirdocollector]

Those monsters cards are a thing of beauty!

[@bluebotic2327]

Thanks weirdcolllector!

[@Lwilibert]

gorgeous work!

[@bluebotic2327]

Thanks Luchiop! Good to see you!

[@johnmiddleton4291]

I like all the info on the monster cards. It's cool to have abbreviated text on the front and then elaborate on it on the reverse. That will save lots of rulebook flipping or even preclude needing all that in a separate place. It might not hurt to shoot out an email of the monster card text so that we can look it over and see it it all makes sense to outside eyes as you work to finalize it. You could do a small box tray that holds the cards in place in the main game box or a larger one for the counter storage side. I'm not sure if that would be easier than having inserts when this is eventually released on game crafter. I swear that the Dark Gate said "Fucker" for the warning....had to pause it to read properly as "Flicker"! Maybe that's Freudian? Adrian Smith's work is pretty amazing. He is one of the major influences on the really bulky and heavily armored space marine style in Warhammer 40k and also the more modern Chaos daemon styles. You should look at the stuff he did for GW through the 90s and 2000s. Very influential even today. The boardgame Hate that he did a few years back with Cmon is also great, both as a campaign game and as art. They published a separate art book for the game that is really cool. It's pretty much fantasy battle Chaos warbands from the 80s is a more modern art style. Maybe a project for the future would be contacting the Fighting Fantasy people to do an artbook?

[@bluebotic2327]

Curious if I could just do a tuckbox for the cards, include half a dozen 2x3 inch ziplocks and call it good on storage solutions. I'll have to look into tuckboxes. GameCrafter has limited organizer stuff. After I do another pass on monster cards, Ill share them to get more eyes on them. Good idea. Dark Gate is a bad MF for sure.... I owned the Hate graphic novel/comic for a bit but purged it a few years back due to limited shelf space, right before I moved to a place with tons of shelf space... A dream of mine would be to actually do the illustrations for a FF book! I'd need to up my game first. But that would be a dream. But yeah, someone is missing a huge opportunity by not producing an 'Art of FF' coffee table book. It could even be wordless. Just a thousand images with an intro that says: 'Here:'

[@johnmiddleton4291]

@@bluebotic2327 Honestly, for most games with cards, I stick them in 4x6 baggies and call it good. for games with lots of cards this helps to keep all the decks separated for faster setup. though that isn't likely an issue here.

[@bluebotic2327]

@@johnmiddleton4291 Yeah, it could be that I'm overthinking it. This game has surprisingly few cards. It was probably a bigger deal when I had 50 monsters and 8 heroes and cave tiles, etc.

[@johnmiddleton4291]

@@bluebotic2327 There's always the option to create a card storage box with dividers and such later on if expansions warrant it. Sort of like how Iron Helm did it. I certainly wouldn't worry about it for the prototypes, though it would only take you a few minutes to do folded inserts for them.

[@nightbirdgames]

I LOVE the Moldman, so freaking cool looking and I dig his mechanics. Monster cards are looking great(er). Did you do some texturing on the monsters here and there? Like on clothing? Something looks different which I really like.

[@bluebotic2327]

Thanks Nightbird. Nah, I haven't really touched the monster art in a quite while. I did do some cleanup to the portraits. The Mold Man portrait has some new highlights, etc.

[@nightbirdgames]

@@bluebotic2327 Might be the background making me think their different. Either way they are awesome.

[@allluckyseven]

Monster cards look great, chits look great... The new monsters look suuuper cool. They brought something fresh and exciting to the game. I think that in the Viper monster card, you could make the HIT and DMG boxes under the CoR narrower, widening the NAT1 box and then instead of having "DOUBLE..." there, you could perhaps put "DBLSTRIKE" or even change it to "DUAL STRIKE" if that would fit. With the game box, will TGC be able to do the inserts the way you want them to be?

[@bluebotic2327]

Good idea for the Viper. Though, that table is a smart object, but I could rasterize and modify it for that one card. TGC doesn't seem to appease individual game devs with special requests. I've reached out to them a couple times over the past couple years and when I get a response, it's generic. I'll have to see if I can add a special laser cut component to the game that is a divider. But, it'll probably make the game too expensive. I may have to just include instructions on how to build our own. Which is super low fi. I have a new divider idea which is even simpler than the one I just showed, but still effectively divides the space the same way. Cards/dice/chits. I'll play with it until V1.0 ships.

[@nightbirdgames]

They don't really have a good insert. They have 1 that splits the box in half with a single divider. I don't think including an insert would be that advantageous for the game. Anybody can supply their own and would probably want to do their own.

[@bluebotic2327]

@@nightbirdgames Realistically, that's probably what will end up happening. I like the idea of sharing downloadable templates so people can build easy, useful dividers etc.

[@allluckyseven]

@@bluebotic2327 ​ Yeah, that's a good idea. You could upload them to the game page on BGG, and like @Nightbird Games said, they'll probably want to make their own, so I imagine that there will be alternative insert design files posted there, photos of storage solutions, tuckboxes for the cards, etc. I guess that the monster cards may come packed in cellophane, and if so that would prevent them from moving inside the box during shipping. Will the unpunched chits also fit in that big square area on the right? As for the Viper CoR table, yeah, you can put that smart object inside of another smart object that would have a layer on top with your alterations for cards that need a wider NAT1 box. Oh, and for your alterations in the rulebook, having to replace the old images with newer ones, I'm not sure if you're aware, but you don't have to embed the images in the .indd document, they can be linked externally. If so, whenever you open that file, the pages will be updated automatically. You just have to use the same filenames.

[@bluebotic2327]

@@allluckyseven Oh yeah, I use linked files. I probably misspoke. I need to update the Photoshop files and save them out. The InDesign project will auto-update. Yeah, the unpunched chits should all fit in the box, if I did the math right. They come on smallish cards of 15 chits each? and there are 10 cards. And they are each less than a 1/10 of an inch thick. So they'll stack in a volume slightly bigger than the card decks. Oh yeah, god idea, I can just paint a quick decal and put it on top of the CoR table to modify it. Not sure why that didn't occur to me, as I've done such things about 3.2 million times!

[@mtdav78071]

Hey BB where else can we find you?

[@bluebotic2327]

I don't really have any other social media. I stopped cold turkey in 2016. I even deleted my boardgamegeek account a while back for no good reason. And since this is just a side project for me and not a serious business endeavor, I don't have all the usual business hooks in place. I do have www.makestuffgames.com which I've done almost nothing with. At the moment, this youtube channel is it. I can be reached at [e-mail]. I will eventually sell this game on gamecrafter. And I will probably rebuild a boardgamegeek account and add this game to it.

[@mtdav78071]

@@bluebotic2327 Awesome. Glad to be along for the ride.

[@bluebotic2327]

@@mtdav78071 hey thanks, I really appreciate that.