Comments on: Homemade Initiative Index Cards

By: Use Index Cards and a Cork Board for Game Prep - Treasure Tables

Use Index Cards and a Cork Board for Game Prep - Treasure Tables — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 13:37:23 +0000

[...] one of my favorite GMing tools: Index cards (handy for tracking initiative, among other things). Permalink | Posted in Tips, GMing Tools, Prep | [...]

By: Martin

Martin — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 21:19:33 +0000

The samples are now hosted locally — if you couldn’t DL them before, try again. (Thanks, Troy!)

By: Martin

Martin — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 19:09:48 +0000

Fletcher: I just tried to DL them, and had the same exact problem. I can’t figure out what’s going on, so I PM’d Troy and asked him to email them to me — that way I can host them locally, and skip the login issue entirely.

Sorry about that, and thanks for letting me know!

By: Fletcher

Fletcher — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 15:40:08 +0000

The two sample links are giving me fits.
Whenever I click them, they take me to the login page, but after logging in, it just goes to the main section of the forum.
Anyone else having this problem?

By: Martin

Martin — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 03:51:36 +0000

(Troy) I just wanted to say thanks again to TT for having the contest. It’s been great fun and I was honored to be selected from among so many very fine entries. A lot of really good ideas were presented in this contest.

You’re welcome! It was a fun contest to run, and a tough one to judge. I hope you like your prizes.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 21:58:40 +0000

I tried out initiative cards recently. I enjoy the, however I found out that I fiddle with things too often for my own good, so I do tend to ruin the purpose of the cards by pratically shuffling them like a deck of cards.

So, if you don’t fidget, I highly recommend using index cards

By: Troy Taylor aka Carolina

Troy Taylor aka Carolina — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 20:33:50 +0000

AppleWorks is an integrated word processor/database/spreadsheet for the iMac, and in this case the database has a layout function (basically I can design any layout format to display the information).

I imagine that the same could be done with any other integrated software, such as Microsoft Office or Open Office.

By: Larry

Larry — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 20:26:13 +0000

Troy, they look great. Only problem is I don’t have AppleWorks or even Photoshop to make up my own. Otherwise, I’d probably do the same.

By: Troy Taylor aka Carolina

Troy Taylor aka Carolina — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 16:41:45 +0000

I had first encountered the idea of intiative cards for d20 games with the release of The Wheel of Time rpg in 2001. At that time, the Wheel community was looking for ways for GMs to juggle all the statted NPCs, since the game relies more heavily on encounters with humans than it does with monsters.

It seems funny, but none of the various intiative card creations then appealed to me then, primarily because they were being designed four to a page, not for index cards. Printing out and then cutting up regular bond paper didn’t seem worth the bother for me personally, although many others reported using the tool successfully.

What got me thinking about making my own was the release of new stat block in the DMG2 and in Dungeon magazine last summer. Seeing the stats diplayed in an organized, tabular format made much more sense than the dense paragraph. The problem was those numbers were sometimes spread out over two columns of type or split between pages, depending on how they were displayed in print.

Then I remembered that back in the 1980s, when my friends and I played Basic D&D, we had used 3×5 index cards as player sheets. It worked out great, because we could just paper clip that card in our three-ring binders, carry a few dice and we could adventure anywhere — on the bus, at lunch, after school, etc.

So when I made these cards, I blended the three ideas — the Wheel of Time NPC cards, the new stat block and our old D&D player cards. The design of the cards has gone through several variations since last summer — but two things have remained constant: Initiative scores in the upper right so I could glean them at a moment’s notice and a hit-point tracker.

I just wanted to say thanks again to TT for having the contest. It’s been great fun and I was honored to be selected from among so many very fine entries. A lot of really good ideas were presented in this contest.

By: DMN

DMN — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 15:28:06 +0000

I have to second Larry’s comments. The Game Mechanic’s initiative cards are very handy, and yes, they can be edited and printed out in batches of 4. They can also be saved and stored for future use.

I would also like to second Martin’s comments on Carolina’s sliding paper clip idea. I’m intrigued by this. I also like the idea of attaching the initiative cards to the section of the adventure that they are used. Seems so obvious now.

Good post, and congrats Carolina!

By: Larry

Larry — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 15:04:55 +0000

An addendum: I just realized that I can actually type text into the TGM PDF files and then print them out. While I’d still like a singular card to print, this development makes the cards even more useful to me. No more handwriting all the stats in for me!

By: Larry

Larry — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 14:27:28 +0000

I've been using The Game Mechanics's initiative cards and they work great. My biggest complaint is that when I print them out, I have to print them out in batches of four and then cut them out of my cardstock. I'd love it if they'd put out PDFs of the single cards so that I can print them out individually on index cards, instead of on 8.5" x 11" cardstock.