Creating cards for the Full Tilt game

At times, when we're unable to work on the hardware for our eletronically-enhanced, app-augmented version of Full Tilt, we're still able to make progress on the overall game, creating "digital assets".

The original rules suggesting using playing cards to represent various knightly virtues and jousting ploys. We thought it'd be fun to turn these into dedicated cards for the game (and maybe even add a simple RFID tag to each card, so it could be read by some device, when placed on the playing area.

ThemeForest have some great-looking TCG (trading card game) templates and we thought this one fitted in quite nicely with our medieval-but-not-so-old-fashioned theme for the game: https://graphicriver.net/item/trading-card-game-creator-vol-19/34316262

The templates are super-easy to modify using GIMP and the templates provide for a (small) range of alternative modifications. We went with a pretty simple layout:

A summary of the rules and the "pips number" is all we need on each card. The different card types (ploys, virtues and favours) each have their own coloured back, and a corresponding colour for the card index number.

In the original game, each knight can approach the Royal Box and be awarded "favours".
For each favour awarded to your knight, they get one re-roll (so any dice roll the player is not happy with can be re-rolled - the second result must be accepted, even if "worse" than the first).

We felt like we could do a little more with the favours - as well as awarding each knight a number of re-rolls, we created some "virtue cards" - each player draws the number of cards that their knight has been awarded favours.

Favours add a one-time "bonus" for players to play when choosing their ploy. For example, the player might play a favour card which gives them a +1 modifier to their dice roll when trying to hit their opponent. Or they might get +1 to their dice roll. Or they might be able to negate any bonuses claimed by their opponent for that round! (anyone familiar with the "nope" card in Exploding Kittens will appreciate how careful use of this tactic can be devastating!)

The plan is to have a number of RFID readers embedded into the playing surface, and add RFID stickers to each card - as a player places their card (face down) to indicate that it is in play, the reader will be able to determine the card played and send this information to the connected smart device, to apply the appropriate effects to the game.

It's the creation of ancillary things like cards that really bring a game idea to life - it makes it feel less "conceptual" and more like a real "thing" when you have actual, physical items to hold. We've a double-roll office laminator knocking about somewhere, so should be able to use a regular inkjet printer to create the cards.

Now, where did we leave that poker-card hand-punch....?