Now the issue that I assume I'm going to come up against is the Rivals and Nemesis who will need different backs. Is that going to be doable as well?

Seems so. Snagged from their website:

Specifications:

• Type: Poker sized blank cards
• Number of cards per deck: from 18 up to 234
• Customization: Each card can be customized individually both front and back as required.
• Dimensions: 63mm x 88mm, 2.5" x 3.5"
• Material options: [cardstock details]
  • 270gsm promotional quality card stock with blue core
  • 300gsm premium quality card stock with blue core (smooth finish)
  • 310gsm French casino quality card stock with black core (linen finish)
  • 310gsm German master quality card stock with black core (linen air finish) - Minimum order quantity of 1000 required for this option
  • 13pt 100% white plastic (0.325mm)

Of course a truly organized person would make separate decks for minions, rivals, and nemesis.

Ok fine

As an experiment with a two sided card, check this and let me know your thoughts:

Thanks be to Donovan Morningfire for the stats which can be found in their original form HERE

Hmm. Is it “saber rake” or “sabre rake”?

You’ve got the former spelling in the body of the text on the back of the card, but the latter spelling in the title of the card.

Okay, so I printed off the latest cards, and I’m still having a very hard time reading the white typeface on a dark background. Just to prove that it’s not my eyes that are having a problem, I scanned in the printed cards to a PDF file at https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79813707/SW-EotE/Cards/gm_hooly_v2.pdf .

The first page of that document should look something like this:

What level of DPI are you printing it off at? Its set at 300 DPI.

What level of DPI are you printing it off at? Its set at 300 DPI.

I’m printing at 300DPI. But the colors that are being used require a mix of good parts of Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, and Black (CMYK), which means that getting good registration of those four layers of what is called “process colors” can be very difficult. You have to get the layers to line up perfectly or almost perfectly, if you want the white text to show up well against a deep multi-color background like this.

I’m not going to get into a discussion of screening, process color versus spot color, etc… mostly because I don’t really know what I’m talking about in those areas. But I do know enough about them that you want to take a close look at your CMYK separations and the limits of reproducibility of the typical hardware that will be used to print these kinds of things, as you’re doing your graphics.

What shows up on your monitor almost never makes it out to the printer, and there’s lots of stuff you have to be aware of if you want the resulting output to look good. And the deeper you get into this process, the more often you want to do “proof prints” and use short rapid prototyping cycles.

But I do have another idea for you that will help eliminate the problem of printing clean text over complex graphic backgrounds.

In short, do the graphics on one side of the card, but no text. Maybe a card number, but nothing else. You want this to be something that could be shown to the players and wouldn’t give anything away, unless they’ve seen a picture of one of those things before.

On the face of the card, you keep that a simple white background, maybe with some simple boxes and other borders, but the focus is getting good readable black text on the white background. I’d be inclined to put a small logo at the top of the card to show what system the Adversary in question comes from, as well as what book it comes from, and then the standard stat block and fluff text, etc….

Out of curiosity, what is your opinion of the FFG created Adversary Cards?

Out of curiosity, what is your opinion of the FFG created Adversary Cards?

I think they’re pretty good, but they have the problem that you can’t just pass them around to the players in the game and show them a picture of whatever it is that they’re up against.

To be honest, I think your cards are already as good as, or better than, their cards. But this is a golden opportunity to fix a couple of problems they have built into their card design, which I think will result in your cards being much better than theirs.

The intention was never to have these as a player resource or to use as a visual reference. I'm all about making tools for the GM to make life easier for them.

I get what you are suggesting though.

The intention was never to have these as a player resource or to use as a visual reference. I'm all about making tools for the GM to make life easier for them.

I get what you are suggesting though.

I think that this is a happy confluence of design factors.

Doing any kind of white text on a colored background is going to be hard to get the various color layers to line up. That’s just a fact of the physics of the way most printing is done. That wouldn’t be an issue if you were doing Dye Sublimation output, but dye-sub is very expensive, takes special paper and ink, and can’t be easily scaled up. If you’ve got a dye-sub printer and you’re printing up your own playing cards on it, I want to be your best friend!

So, if you do dark (or black) text on a light-colored (or white) background, the result is that you get much more readable text.

That then leaves the issue of where can you put the pretty graphics? If you try to put it on the face of the card along with the text, then you run into a problem where some Adversaries who have a lot of text to go along with them won’t be able to have much in the way of good visible pretty graphics, and you’ll have to carefully adjust the graphics and text for each and every card.

It would be a lot easier for the graphics if you could just take the entire front or back of the card, or virtually the entire front or back, and then leave the other side for all the text.

Sure, if you go graphics on one side and text on the other, then you won’t be able to look at the pretty graphics for the card while you’re also reading the text. But I think that would be a better fit for the function of the cards, and you can still make the form very attractive.

Now, if you have already committed to a format where the graphics is (mostly) on one side and the text is (mostly) on the other side, then you arrive at a situation where the cards could potentially be used in an unexpected additional manner — as aids to show the player(s) what they are up against. You would no longer have to go to Wookieepedia or some other source, or try to describe the Adversary using only words, you could now show them a picture.

But in that case, you’d want to be certain that there is nothing showing on that side of the card that could potentially give away the details of what is on the other side. Sure, you might know it’s a Wookiee or a Drall or a Neimoidan or whatever, but that wouldn’t necessarily tell you any details of this particular individual.

So, it might not be an intended purpose of the cards, but I think that it is a positive side-effect that can come out of the process of good graphic design.

The question is — what do you want to do?

And how do you want to do it?

And what can we do to help?

And what can we do to help?

Seconded. I think that the existing look is going to look fine when professionally printed, but not printed on non-commericial-level printers, even expensive office printers. But if we're going for easy-to-print on home equipment, then yeah, black on white is better.

I’m printing at 300DPI. But the colors that are being used require a mix of good parts of Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, and Black (CMYK), which means that getting good registration of those four layers of what is called “process colors” can be very difficult. You have to get the layers to line up perfectly or almost perfectly, if you want the white text to show up well against a deep multi-color background like this.

Also, is it a case of bleed? On a laser printer or at a printing place like the www.makeplayingcards.com I would imagine it wouldn't be a issue correct? I don't have a laser printer to test unfortunately

The intention was two fold:

1) Design a card to be printed at a professional printer or on a laser printer.

2) Help Game Masters (and myself)

3) To get noticed by FFG.

The last point may seem egotistical, but I really want to do freelance or at the very least get involved in play-testing.

As far as aiding players and using as a kind of player aid so the game master can say "This is what you see", that was never the intention and considering the idea behind the FFG system, I think having a card for every bad guy is a bit too "Paizo" for my liking. The stats are supposed to be generic enough for a GM to be able to re-skin at a glance.

Don't get me wrong guys, I really appreciate the feedback, and its been invaluable.

Redone:

CARD FRONT

CARD BACK

Also, is it a case of bleed? On a laser printer or at a printing place like the www.makeplayingcards.com I would imagine it wouldn't be a issue correct? I don't have a laser printer to test unfortunately

Look at the actual PDF. I printed each card on a separate page, so it’s 100% full size — with lots and lots of white space all around. Bleed is not a problem here.

Since I do have a pretty good color laser printer (Brother CDW9840), I’m happy to do the prototype printing. And since it’s got a built-in color scanner, for whatever I see I can then scan it back in and post the PDF.

As far as aiding players and using as a kind of player aid so the game master can say "This is what you see", that was never the intention and considering the idea behind the FFG system, I think having a card for every bad guy is a bit too "Paizo" for my liking. The stats are supposed to be generic enough for a GM to be able to re-skin at a glace.

That’s fair enough. And having the graphic and the text all on one side does have the advantage that the GM can see both at a glance, and that might help with being able to better role-play the Adversary in question.

I would like to see a “no compromises” version where the text is all on one side and the drawing is on the other, so that you can see the full drawing and get the full visual impact, without having to make any changes to accommodate the text. And likewise, the text would be as readable and well-presented as possible, without having to compensate for being laid on top of a drawing.

But I think the most important thing is to make the cards as good as they can be, in whatever way you want to do them. And I want to do whatever I can to help make that happen.

Redone:

Okay, so after printing on my color laser printer and then scanning them back in, what we get is below. Note that these look slightly skewed because of my scanner, not the printer.

PDF: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79813707/SW-EotE/Cards/adversary_cards_tapani_rake_v2.pdf

Front:

Back:

I will say that using the bold white font on the dark background looks much better than the previous non-bold font. These are now pretty readable, even for me.

On the back side, the dark text on the light green background also works well.

Edit: On looking at these again, I note that the text in the stat block is a bit small and blurry. I know which stat is supposed to be Brawn and which one is supposed to be Agility, etc… but just reading the words under each number, it’s pretty hard to read. A larger and/or bolder font might help here, since this is another case of white type on top of a dark background. Same for the words for the Soak, Wound Threshold, etc….

I've tightened up the font on the CHARACTERISTSICS but will have to pay with the others as they need to be small. I'll post after I've had a play. I also centered the skills/talents at the front. It was annoying me that I missed that.

GM Hooly, I'd love to help out and create some more cards. Any chance you could share the template? I'm working on compiling a spreadsheet with stats.

Awesome cards.

GM Hooly, I'd love to help out and create some more cards. Any chance you could share the template? I'm working on compiling a spreadsheet with stats.

Do keep in mind the full list of all known published Adversaries at http://swrpg.viluppo.net/adversaries/adversaries/