What's the cause of the delay this time round Iain? It would be good to get an insight into the world of card games!

...when B-Movie comes out.

It will deserve the celebration.

I noticed that the Guild of Blades are considering moving into POD card production sometime in the future. I don't know if that'll be of much help to you. They've started a thread over on RPG Net about it.

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=364780

Ash

Thanks Ash, I have asked them to email me about it. Gregor, I will hold you to that!

Cheers

IainMob Justice now available!

'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.

Sorry Andrew I never got back to you on this. Basically it is being delayed by lack of printer. As those who have played it can testify it is really good and ready to go. I was trying through avalon but they have come up blank after the first printer was no good.

I am looking into either doing it myself, though I need to work out logistics, or through a printer when I can find one. If anyone comes across anything I would be grateful if they alerted me.

There are two problems with printers for card games:

1) Small print runs tend to be expensive and you only get into profitable areas with a massive run. Also many will not take an order below a certain amount. As an example one of the bigger ones would only take a min order of 2150 decks. Great if you have the money, crap if you don't.

2) Quality needs to be really high for a reusable deck that can take some punishment. The first sample I got had a horrible plasticy coating that scratched really easily.

I will get there in the end though. Thinking about a PDF and homemade route in the meantime at much lower runs.

Cheers

Iain

Mob Justice now available!

'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.

Ok, first off you need a high quality printer that's built to handle quantity. They're pricey, but you can hire them. Then you need a die cutting machine to stamp 'em out. Don't even think about printing them on a home printer and cutting them out by hand, even if you've got one of those handy corner-rounding clippers. I've done this myself for playtest sets and it takes forever. Rounded corners are a necessity too, otherwise the corners get bashed up and start coming apart really quickly. If you can afford to linen coat the cards, brilliant. Alternatively you could print onto very thin plastic sheet - this works surprisingly well, and makes the cards waterproof and resistant to damage. However you need to be sure that printer and plastic are compatible with one another and you're not going to melt expensive stock to even more expensive printer roller.

Once you've printed and collated the darn things, you'd have to think about packaging. You could either contract out for it, there are some very nice plastic boxes available that would be eminently suitable given a simple sticker on the cover, or you can order cardboard ones from a specialist. Otherwise you'd need a box making machine and another set of dies for your die cutter to produce the nets. In small quantities you could maybe fold the boxes by hand, but if you're spending all that money on other equipment you might as well get it all and offer a service to other people too to make a bit of cash. A shrink-wrapper or similar would also be extremely useful to protect the boxes in transit and stop people opening 'em in the shop.

I really wouldn't want to go about trying to market card games with ordinary home-quality or even office-quality equipment. I think it would prove tiresome and irritating. It's times like this I wish I could afford to set myself up in the POD business too.

Ash

Thanks for that summary ash, I knew some of it already but it is nice to bring it all together.

I am talking to Paul and Graham at the moment about ideas to do small runs, but I agree that it would be a monumental pain in the ass.

Cheers

Iain

Mob Justice now available!

'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.