Based on Judd "Warbringer25" Jensen's Cities of Adventure urban encounter tables, this package contains graphics for 10 RB sized cards: 8 for the Cities, 1 Rules Card, and 1 Statistics card. There are now three methods for generating urban encounters based on Judd's original tables each time you enter one of Terrinoth's eight settlements. The cards are more convenient to quickly pass around as needed, small enough to keep stacked table-side during a game, and they fit in whatever card box you're using for your other RB cards.

NOTE: This package was submitted to, and approved by, Judd Jensen before its public release.

The package will be uploaded to BGG within a few days. In the meantime, you can read a little more about it and acquire the package directly at Fantastic Diversions .

Sample Cards:

Very cool. I put together some similar cards on BoardGameGeek a while back, for printing out with Artscow. (It doesn't seem to show up for the main game, but you can find the versions for the various expansions.) You did a much nicer job at the graphics, though -- I'd certainly recommend your set over the ones I made. I like that you have the terrain icon right next to the relevant text That's an important speed-up.

One technical note Although the preview links look great, at the moment I can't download your cards. Instead, I get an "Oops! (404)" screen when I try to click on the link.

This is very awesome man!

I had been following his works on BGG. I want FFG to know that I purchased Runebound 1st, 2nd, and The Isalnd of Dread. I HATED Runebound until this guy put all this work into doing this variant. FFG you owe this man a huge thank you. I guarantee you his variant boosted sales of Runebound. It did when I used it at a game night at my local store. I now own a ton more Runebound products because of your work.

JC thanks for all this work. Thank you for taking the time to go back over it and make it more professional and less "bulky".

Lindsey said:

Same here, JC can you look into this?

Oh, my. I messed up the link somehow. Give it another try, folks.

Fantastic Diversions Download Page

If any of your are still having problems downloading from my site, please let me know herein. The link has been fixed, but I now suspecting something is wrong with where I actually store the files.

Works! Thanks a ton. Taking this up to a high quality printing place that can make high quality plastic cards out of these. Will you be making cards for the other expansion cities?

Curator said:

That is on my list, as you're not the first (over even tenth) to mention it in the last 48 hours. It's a little overwhelming, and for the moment my schedule is crunched with deadlines for two books in different stages. But yes, it is in process already. The next one to be address will be Sands of Al-Kalim... simply because that's the only big box that I've acquired so far.

I also have a bigger notion sparked by Judd's work... a possible full encounters deck for the cities, where you draw a card upon entering one of them. I'm already building the statistics tables for its development in my spare moments. But that's for well after expansion the reference cards connected to the popular CoA system are addressed. More later.

BY THE BY... do you know some place that actually does the European 2.25" x 3.5 cards vs. the USA 2.5" x 3.5" cards. RB uses the European format, and I can't find anywhere (even ArtsCow) that handles that format. If and when all CoA docs are converted to cards, it might be nice to set them up someplace like ArtsCow so people can order. But ArtsCow itself just isn't going to cut for RB sized cards. If anyone has notions, please share them.

Yep, they file now downloads just fine for me.

I've got a question on the graphics. How did you make the nice city crest pictures at the top of the city cards? And would you be okay with someone else (like, say, me) using those crests for our own variants?

The city icons were re-created from scratch into vector shapes in Photoshop CS 5 Extended, plus additional point and vector manual adjustment. They actually aren't as good as the originals created by some talent people at FFG. Each city icon is on four duplicate vector layers with up too five customized filter effects per layer, and four syncronized textures clipped to the quad of the one icon layers group. In other words... about 1-5 hours of work for each icon to be constructed to fit this cards motif/design. Now that I have them constructed, I may be able to reuse about half of the work in stepping on to some of Judd's other CoA documents.

The whole design itself comprises about 27 various layers for textures, tiles, objects, drawn entities, and brushed work, some adjustment through up to 5 different commercial plugin packages I paid for myself, with an addtional average of 3 to 4 inline filters per half the layers, and hand masked non-destructive adjustment layers for about a fourth of the other layers. The only exceptions are the in-text icons, which come from a font created by someone else.

Total time to create the template through experimentation with all elements is unknown, but at a guess is around 30-60 hours. I'm not a professional designer, just a graphics hacker who learns by trial and error experiments during spare time. As stated in the manual with the cards, all graphics created by me are not for reuse in part or whole, whether original or recreations.

Please don't take this personally, Lindsey, but I got rather jaded over the last two years. But I very much appreciate that you asked me directly first.

Work on PSD templates and game elements that I had done in other game fan communities, and shared in whole or pieces with other developers (or was just taken by them), ended up all over the place, regardless of instructions otherwise. It was used in ways not intended, in addition to some of my expansion content or underlying concepts being walked off with. In almost all cases, I wasn't even credited. In five cases, including one commercial venture I won't name, credit for either work or design concepts and mechanics was taken by some other person or entity.

I really enjoy creating this stuff for people to use free of charge in their games; that's my payment. But I ended up abused just a few too many times. I'm not sharing anymore of the behind the scenes work for the time being... just the end results. If this seems a too long winded answer, I just wanted you understand why I'm compelled to say no for now.

And since the release of these cards in only about two days, you are the politest of five request for part or all of this template. I don't really get it, but there it is. One schmuck had the audacity to claim she would rat me out to FFG for those icons if I didn't share them. I told her to go right ahead, since they're already on display here. This nonsense can make one very very tired.

JCHendee said:

<sigh> Some people seem to think the world owes them a favour or that they deserve to share in the results of other's hard work. It's a sad state of affairs really.

By the way, awesome work as usual JC!!

Yup... its also the whole online thing. Some people think that a handle or login ID instead of a name gives them license to say or do anything without facing repercussions. And sometimes they are right, unfortunately. Oh well, back to the game.

And if anyone has objective criticism about the cards, it is okay to voice them. You might even help improve my work when the next batch comes around, though not sure how soon that will be. The details of fixtures in the cards will change a little for SoAK cards. And I'm still on the hunt for someplace to make those European sized cards for people.

Just wanted to take a moment to give my thanks to JCHendee for these awesome cards. When I came out with the original City of Adventure rules a few years back it was mostly on a whim and I've been blown away by all the creative uses and variants people have made. That said, JC's cards are simply amazing and have my full support.

Its even got be blowing the dust of my Mists of Zanaga variant for Cities of Adventure.... which had sort of fallen to the wayside with all the great games coming out in recent months. That said, I've been inspired by JC's work and with a little luck, I can hopefully get the CoA rules for Zanaga finished up shortly.

Great job JC!

Judd

When you see great concepts like this and the professional level of detail that goes into their creation you wish FFG would have annual contests for house rules where they would and produce a few every year as "official" expansions.

@Miles601

I think FFG does watch what's going on in some fan creator circles for certain games. What they do or don't do with it is another matter, and I'm not so sure that commercializing it, even on the periphery, would be good thing. Leaving it to the rogue mad scientist mentally let's it people fly in all directions by their own inclinations. Maybe most of it won't appeal to the majority, but in being so unrestrained... even unfocused... it's just more fun to see what comes out of the chaos.

@Warbringer25

Hi Judd! Ain't it amazing when you put something out there just for the heck of it and it takes off?! Don't ask me to guess why or what'll do it, 'cause sometimes there's no guessing, but you definitely struck a cord.

When I get time, I'm going to do cards for your SoAK rules, as that's the only big box I have. I'll run them by you first when they are done... after that, if you want me to continue, maybe you can just point me at the next set I should work on. And definitely you should revisit a set of urban encounters for Zanaga and keep your series going.

And my deep bow to you in return for your worthwhile contributions.

ADDENDUM: Anyone else getting hit with that "interlude" Arkham ad coming up everytime you post? It's get real annoying.

Warbringer25 said:

[sorry about the slow reply -- I forget that Fantasy Flight still doesn't have a "notify on replies" feature on these boards.]

No problem at all. You're definitely not required to let strangers on the net (or anyone else, for that matter) use your work for free! And the icons clearly took a lot of work -- I know because I had tried to put together some similar (but less professional looking) graphics myself. Sorry to hear about the rude requests/demands you got!

I do actually like miles601's suggestion, myself. Fantasy Flight has slowed down a bit on their own Runebound expansions, so it seems to me they might be receptive to an expansion submission from Judd.

These are AWESOME! Thank you guys so much for your contribution! Can't wait to get these printed off

I've been messing around with market cards to create a unique deck based on the character of each town presented in Cities of Adventure and together these will be perfect!

Artemus Maximus said:

I like this idea quite a bit. Mind posting futher on what you've come up with so far?

not at all -

certainly do not want to take ANYTHING away from this awesome variant in this thread, but using the cities' 'character' described on the cards, i've distributed the market cards as such.

Riverwatch = rogueish marketplace = many 'run of the mill' weapons, allies like Crim, WIlds Smuggler , Orphan of Light , etc, common 'artifacts' like potions, your average weapons & armor like Westerian Shell Shield , leather armor, chain mail being the highest-priced due to the nature of the market! From the wonderfully gimmicky ' Cloak of Useful Items ' , to the marketing genious behind ' Backpack of Holding ©', to the "but honey...it wouldn't cost this much if it DIDN'T work...I've heard the Koths' even have one...." ' Healing Toad ' - all types of items you'd find here, but no Runes. Your one-stop shop for all your adventuring needs! Probably the first place heroes will want to go after leaving....

TAMALIR

"POSTED: Due to recent insurgancy, we can no longer allow the sale of weapons within the city limits. Thank you for your cooperation!"

= political, aristocratic allies like Cardinal Koth, Urian the Acclaimed, Zetes the Benevolent . Artifacts you'd find in its galleries, like Harp of Tranquility, Chalice of Tamalir, Charmer Flute, obviously cater to the city's richer & conceited inhabitants. Some nice upper-class armor like Champion's Plate .

Feeling Sinful? Need some Spiritual Fire? Make your pilgrimage to Vynelvale today! We offer daily blessings and sanctioned allies to guide you spiritually on your quest! The home of all Officially Liscensed Kellos™ gear: Vynelvale .

= Abydos Flame Child, Acolyte of the Flame, Burning Priest, Guardian Dog, Sword of FIre, Shield of Fire, Mace of Kellos™, etc.

and so on

Thanks, Artemus. I'm glad you understand, and it looks like you've got your own major project in the works. As a brief update on CoA, I am proceeding with the next batch of CoA cards (for SoAK); it's just taking me some time to come up with a card interface that has a dash of something suitable. More on this later... and looking forward to seeing some of this new take on a market deck.

Just a brief update. The reference cards for Judd's Cities of Adventure : Sands of Al-Kalim are in their final stage of development. Once they are finished, I will have Judd review them for approval. Pending that, I hope to have them available within in a week. And in the meantime....

I did SoAK next because it was the one big box expansion that I had. I recently acquired Island of Dread for my birthday, along with a bunch of other gaming goodies. But likely Barb and I won't get to IoD for a while, as we are barely about to dip into SoAK . So, I'm wondering which reference cards other people would like to see next.

So far, Judd has also produced CoA material for Midnight , Isle of Dread , and Frozen Wastes . I don't know if he intends to do Mists of Zananga . So cast your votes here (if you feel like it) by listing in order any of these three (or four) sets of reference cards you would like to see next.

If you have a question you can post it here, send me a PM, or go to Fantastic Diversions and use the "Contact" page.

The initial card content is now complete. I still need to do some color correction on some of them. I will contacting Judd for his review as well.

In the interim, others are welcome to preview them and offer any suggestion as seen fit, though Judd's comments will take precedence.

You can find the online review gallery HERE .

HC,

These look as amazing as your first set and you absolutely have my permission to use them however you see fit.

I'll play around with them this weekend, and if I spot any typos or problems, I'll be sure to let you know.

Thanks for all your hard work,

Judd

Reference cards for Judd's Cities of Adventure, Sands of Al-Kalim are now available. Some issue are still pending, but you can still see what's up and acquire the cards now at Fantastic Diversions . Happy gaming!