Products I'd like to see:

[cybosage]

I posted this on www.dnd4.com, but as NO ONE goes there I thought I'd repost on a more active forum:

Feat/Spell/Ability Cards
I know we have seen the preview of power cards, but I mean playing card sized dry erase cards with descriptions of whatever feat/spell/ability on them. This would essentially mean each player would pick up a box of the cards that pertain to them. (Arcane, Divine, Martial)

These would be available for $14.95 for the complete set of each, with expansions (as more books come out) coming in at $7.95.

NPC Cards
A deck of random NPCs sorted by profession. Each card would detail name, family, possible relation to other NPCs, and have character traits for the DM to portray. This would greatly increase speed and eficiency in trying to create small towns that have character.

$14.95

Pre-painted High Quality Minis
Let's face it, most of the plastic minis have crap for detail and terrible color bleeding. Metal is the way to go, but you can't really mass fabricate pre-painted metal minis. Someone needs to develop a line of minis that posses the quality of metal with the ease of mass painted production of plastic. This would allow newer gamers to instantly have a connection to their character with a unique, well painted model.
(As a side note, I realize anyone could buy and paint any of the Reaper line of minis and have a great looking mini, but not everyone can paint)

In addition I want odd class combination minis. Do you know how hard it is to find a warforged druid?

$14.95-$29.95 depending on size

Monster/Encounter Cards
Similar to power and NPC cards but containing all relevant stats for each monster on a seperate card. This could even be an alternative purchase to the Monster's Manual. I would love to be able to pull out an encounter card and have a pre-made random encounter of monsters who actually compliment each other's abilities.

$29.95 for full set of MM monsters.


I realize that some of this may already be available, but that fact that I'm an avid gamer, and I can't find it at my local hobby store, or any places I frequent online means it needs to be expanded on. If you know of any of these products, feel free to link them. In fact it might even be worth talking with WotC to see if I could get printing rights to 4e power/spell cards...


Anyone have anything else they'd like to see?

[Duke of URL]

Unless WotC does it themselves, a 3rd-party vendor will either have to provide SRD-only versions of such products or get a separate license from WotC to produce these.

[valadil]

I like the idea at first glance, but how long till it leads to DnD: The Gathering? I don't want to have to buy the Complete Divine in order to play my cleric. I could even see WotC treating complete books as booster packs. How many do I need to buy to get a Divine Metamagic?

The one place where I'd really like DnD cards though is for material components. Turning those into cards with a list of their spells would be a great way for players to keep track of material components AND it lets GMs control how frequently spells are cast. Great for low magic or restrictive magic settings.

[Citizen Joe]

If you're going the cardstock route, you can replace the prepainted minis with cardstock standies. These could be front/back images printed on cardstock and then punched out and folded and inserted into slotta bases. You could even get paper craft kits to make gargantuan things like dragons. I don't think the idea is copyrighted so they just need the specific implementation. It also makes more sense now that they are implementing the Minion Rules so you would need like hundreds of disposable creatures. Likewise, if they put out modules, they could include the cardstock standies for the important NPCs in the module. New monster compendiums could include standies and that means they could get more money for bigger monsters since the standies take up more space/cardstock. I bet they could sucker a bunch of people into paying $5.95 for a new "red dragon" with the cardstock model kit. Then they just tweak the color a bit and send out the next kit the "pink dragon"...

[TheCountAlucard]

Personally, I'd like to see Law and Chaos get some love. After all, according to many books, it's an even bigger conflict than Good and Evil, yet the only alignment books out there are Book of Exalted Deeds and Book of Vile Darkness.

Of course, looking at those two, WotC would probably screw up everyone's views of Law and Chaos even more...

[Sholos]

I like the idea at first glance, but how long till it leads to DnD: The Gathering? I don't want to have to buy the Complete Divine in order to play my cleric. I could even see WotC treating complete books as booster packs. How many do I need to buy to get a Divine Metamagic?

The one place where I'd really like DnD cards though is for material components. Turning those into cards with a list of their spells would be a great way for players to keep track of material components AND it lets GMs control how frequently spells are cast. Great for low magic or restrictive magic settings.

I think you missed the idea. The idea is to have a card that you can very easily refer to that gives you all the necessary information about a spell/ability. That way you don't have to constantly open books and flip pages to find the relevant material. It saves time and space at the table. You don't have to buy cards to be able to use the abilities; the books would still be around. It just saves you from having to lug 5 books around with you to every game.

I think it's a great idea.

[DizzyD]

Allthough I enjoy the Idea, unfortunatly as the Duke said it would lead "DnD: The Gathering." Good thinking though.

[Crow]

Or you could, you know, write it down.

[SurlySeraph]

Personally, I'd like to see Law and Chaos get some love. After all, according to many books, it's an even bigger conflict than Good and Evil, yet the only alignment books out there are Book of Exalted Deeds and Book of Vile Darkness.

Of course, looking at those two, WotC would probably screw up everyone's views of Law and Chaos even more...

How could they possibly screw that up? Everyone knows that Law is all about respect for each other's personal freedom. And Chaos is, of course, all about choosing a set of rules for yourself and then obeying those rules fanatically.

[Duke of URL]

Actually, I've been poking my nose around the technical details a bit to see if the card idea would be possible for a 3rd-party developer.

The answer: maybe.

You can forget about dry-erase cards, I can't even imagine how much that would add to the cost. Looking at two-sided cards, both full-color and full-color on one side and b/w (or b/w + 1 color) on the other, it might be possible to produce short print runs of CCG/playing card type cards in the neighborhood of $0.04 per card, maybe less if you're diligent about shopping around. Not bad, huh?

Well, how many cards per deck? 50? 100? That starts to drive up the price -- with 100 cards per deck, now you're looking at a print production cost of $4 a deck. Add maybe another $1/deck for miscellaneous costs (cutting services, deck boxes, display boxes, etc.), and the production cost is now $5/deck. At a $20 MSRP, you'd be lucky to have a distributor pay more than $7 each, meaning $2 gross profit per deck.

Of course, that assume that you sell all the decks you printed. Even then, you've got to pay for all of the non-printing costs -- the time spent by the people who put the decks together, art work, etc.

Larger runs, of course, reduce costs, but that requires more up-front investment. And all of this is "back of the envelope" calculations at this point.

What it boils down to is:

1) How many cards are going to be needed per deck?
2) What kind of quality of materials is the buyer going to demand?
3) What kind of quality of art/layout is the buyer going to demand?
4) How many decks can reasonably be sold?

[cybosage]

Well, with a large enough initial investment, and the cards covering multiple sections, I think you could get the cost to a manageable level.

I disagree with the "DnD: The Gathering" comments. These would purely be supplements published along side relevant material. I think WotC could release the books, and allow a 3rd party to make the cards for it while requiring some sort of royalty.

And yes, you could write it down. You could spend a ton of time writing down the all the stats for monsters, npcs, items, and spells. Or you could grab a pre printed set of durable easy to store cards, and have everything you need.

You might see this in the coming months!

[Duke of URL]

You might see this in the coming months!

I wouldn't have spent the time I did on this if I didn't think it was a reasonable idea. As a fledgling publishing company, the initial investment would be a tricky proposition, but I think this could work for a run of at least 1,000 units.

[ahammer]

[QUOTE=Duke of URL;4350910]
You can forget about dry-erase cards, I can't even imagine how much that would add to the cost. QUOTE]

it called lament. it sould not add much. we use the 3 ring kind for are gaming group char sheets.

and dnd4.com is a good site and I saw this post on there just dont think you would be happy with the cost of what they would want to charge you for the end product... you would print this out yourself for cheep

[valadil]

I think you missed the idea. The idea is to have a card that you can very easily refer to that gives you all the necessary information about a spell/ability. That way you don't have to constantly open books and flip pages to find the relevant material. It saves time and space at the table. You don't have to buy cards to be able to use the abilities; the books would still be around. It just saves you from having to lug 5 books around with you to every game.

I think it's a great idea.

It's not that I missed the idea, it's just that that's where I'd expect WotC to take the idea. If these were just a supplement and in no way required they'd be great. And even if some 3rd party group does publish these, if they have any signs of profit I'd expect WotC to release their own version, and incorporate it into the basic game.

Just to be clear, I think it's a great idea, but I don't see it happening in a manner that focuses on the player instead of the revenue.

[RTGoodman]

You can forget about dry-erase cards, I can't even imagine how much that would add to the cost.

As ahammer, has suggested, there are ways around that. I mean, the simple way would be just to make the cards the exact size of Magic cards and put them in protective sleeves. Those are made out of a material that should allow you to write on them (to add in relevant information) with a wet-erase overhead-type marker and then erase it with a spray-bottle and a napkin.


I'm personally just buying some thicker computer paper and making my own power cards with the Magic Set Editor that you can download online. I mean, art is easy enough to find, and there's enough room for all the info you need. Search these forums and you'll find a thread on the exact topic.


I personally don't like the OP's idea about monster/encounter cards. I mean, what's the point of putting something that's easily indexed and available as-is in the Monster Manual into another identical version (aside from mobility)? Sample NPCs or BBEG's or whatever would be pretty cool though. Sort of like the 3.0 Enemies and Allies book (or whatever it was called - I can't seem to find my copy right now). The only problem is that, as far as I know, a lot of NPCs in 4E are going to be statless "non-heroic" characters, so you'd only be able to have cards for those who are either adventurers or major characters.

I could care less about miniatures, but some variety would indeed be good. I can't paint and don't have the time or desire to do so, but I'll also agree that some of the official D&D miniatures are a little... lackluster.