I just may have done something clever for once. I would appreciate some opinions...

I was doing some thinking the other day, and it occured to me that it's really annoying sometimes to keep flicking through a large number of thick manuals to find small amounts of information, like a spell's effects, or a monster's reflex save. So ... I have decided to put them on little cards instead!

The idea came from a card-based RPG I once tried to make many years ago. The game idea was rubbish, but the premise was to do away with character sheets and huge reference books with lots of cards instead, and certain things like health-points represented by counters. These cards won't do away with character sheets, but it might make D&D a little bit smoother.

Below are two of my sample creations: a monster card for a Shocker Lizard, and one of its abilities.


Each card contains a very, very brief summary of whatever it's meant to be. The monster card, for example, contains everything but the skill modifiers (which I may put on the back) and flavour-info (which I would expect DMs to look up in advance anyway); and the ability card contains the ability in very accurate terms (the 1/arrow-thing at the top is a shorthand way of saving "usable once per turn".

I was thinking this could work for lots of things. Spells and feats could have special cards, to prevent players interrupting a fast-paced combat scene while the DM looks up if it was 10 or 20ft range. Each player could have a stack of cards for each of these, and it could reduce clutter on character sheets.

So, what do people think?