Koi Pond Tuck Box - Free Print-and-Fold Download

By popular request, here's a Koi Pond tuck box available for free download. It's sized to accommodate the complete basic Koi Pond deck, plus wiggle room for your card sleeves. Below are two PDFs. The first has the art and guides on one page. If you're feeling fancy, the second link has the art on one page on its own with the guides reversed on the second page, so you can print this PDF double-sided and have a nice clean finished product.

» Tuck Box with Guides
» Tuck Box with Guides on Other Side

InDesign DataMerge Playing Card Example [Free Download]

Happy holidays! This season, I thought I'd give something to anyone interested in designing their own card games. You may recall I posted a hodgepodge collection of tutorials I found regarding the use of InDesign's DataMerge feature to automate much of the card layout process. I plan to make a video tutorial of my own soon, but for now here's a .zip file with a very basic example of a DataMerged deck of playing cards.

[DOWNLOAD]

Open DataMergeExample.indd in InDesign CS6 or DataMergeExample.idml in older versions of InDesign. You'll find empty text blocks and image blocks. It looks like there's nothing there, but there is! These are placeholders for the text and images that DataMerge pulls from the the .CSV found in the Assets folder. When you check the Preview checkbox in the DataMerge panel, you'll see each of these placeholders populated. (BTW, I just used a default font for Mac: Times, which can be replaced with Times New Roman if you wish.)

/ASSETS
This is also where you will find .EPS files for the suits and face cards. I like to use .EPS for vector files since they can be resized to any scale without losing resolution. So far as I've found, a .CSV is most reliable  for DataMerge if it is in the same folder as all of the card assets. Theoretically you can use the .CSV to populate from a deeper directory, but I haven't been able to do so reliably.

/RAW FILES
Here are the InDesign files for the suits and faces, saved in .INDD and .IDML formats.

/RENDERS
I've already exported a DataMerged InDesign file which you can find in the Renders folder. There you will also find a folder with all of *those* cards exported to flat .EPS files. It is from a folder like this that I pull individual card assets for use in example diagrams or print-and-play files.

/STOCK
Here is are the original source files from the Noun Project along with legalese for their specific licenses.

You can also find the original Google spreadsheet here, if you're curious. I hope you find this useful as you design your own card games. If you dig it, I can post some more packages with more complex card decks inspired by CCGs.

Vector Game Icon Wishlist?

If you ever need a source of vector icons for your board game prototypes, I highly recommend The Noun Project. They have an extensive crowdsourced collection of vector icons released on public domain or Creative Commons Attribution licenses. You can now also purchase attribution-free licenses for a nominal fee.

There are some gaps in the collection when it comes to common game icons. There is a meeple, but a very limited supply of dice and definitely no "victory points." I just uploaded an icosahedron, better known as a the 20-sided die or d20.

I'd love to upload some more generic game icons, but where to begin? What would you want most? I posed this question to my Twitter friends and got lots of suggestions.

• die faces 1-6, ?
• fan of cards 1-5
• players 1-5
• tiles in various shapes
• victory points in various shapes
• time: 15min, 30min, 45min, 60min…
• ages
• players: 1, 2, 3…
• bid
• most/least

And there were some other suggestions that stretched the boundaries of "noun" into "verb," so may not be allowed on the Noun Project. I'm checking with those in charge to get their say.

• gain/lose points
• gain/lose goods
• draw x cards
• keep x cards
• discard x cards
• steal cards from another player
• flip card
• pass
• flip

And of course, I'd be happy to make a whole bunch of these icons into one big dingbat font for a few bucks. If you know of a good Mac tool for making a font, I'd be glad to try it out. I've already used fontifier, but I wasn't quite satisfied with the results.

So, any other game icons you would want to see in this suite?

Hulk PDF Download for Marvel Heroic Roleplaying

Smashing news, true believers! I laid out the latest What If? download for the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying game, featuring our not-so-jolly green giant HULK! Hulk is so big, he smashed the  traditional datafile template, so we had to scoot Bruce Banner's stats to the facing page. This PDF also includes files on the U-Foes, a fun gang of villains for your rogues' gallery. If you dig the new content, tell the good folks at MWP on their forums!

Minoqaur - Java app download by Ernest Pazera

Ernest Pazera just made this great little Java implementation of Minoqaur. You can see an example of it up at the top of this post and download it from his blog here.

Here is how to run a .jar file on most OSes. Are you on a mac? You can run .jar files with the Jar Launcher under /System/Library/CoreServices and select it as the default app for .jar files. Ernest also shared two interesting findings:

"The sword is so immensely powerful that not picking a nearby starting point seems foolish."

The sword is very powerful, but also farthest from the treasure. It takes twice as many steps to get to the treasure from the sword's entry than from the cloak's or key's entries.

"I learned looking into QR codes, not all QR codes have the "treasure chamber" until they are a minimum size. Additionally, larger QR codes exist with multiple such chambers."

Now that is surprising! If a QR code does not have a treasure chamber, then place it as far in the far right corner as possible. If it has many, place it far from the sword as possible.

Have fun playing and hacking the app!

Classroom Activity Guide for Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple

For all teachers, parents, librarians who want to incorporate Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple into kids' learning: Teacher and education consultant Cassie Krause returns to offer tips and learning opportunities while guiding a whole class through the pilgrims' adventure. Best of all, it's totally free, licensed under Creative Commons from Smart Play Games.

» Download Classroom Activity Guide for Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple
» Also see the Classroom Activity Guide for Happy Birthday, Robot!

Writer's Dice IOU Holiday Card

Many thanks to Chris Schreiber for offering this suggestion. For any backers who wanted to gift Writer's Dice for the holidays, here's a simple IOU stocking stuffer with a print-and-fold paper version of the dice. The card reads:

"We wanted to deliver Writer's Dice before the holidays... BUT the Kickstarter was too successful... AND our workshop won't have enough materials in-stock until January... SO please enjoy these print-and-fold dice for now."

Furthermore, look for a mobile app to come out soon. We're figuring out the logistics of how to get the app to all backers for free.

» Writer's Dice - IOU Holiday Card

Classroom Activity Guide for Happy Birthday, Robot!

Here's a resource for all teachers, parents, librarians, bookstore staff and who want to incorporate Happy Birthday, Robot! into kids' learning. Teacher and education consultant Cassie Krause offers gameplay tips, extension learning advice, and experience guiding a whole class in a single story. Best of all, it's totally free, licensed under Creative Commons from Smart Play Games.

» Download Classroom Activity Guide for Happy Birthday, Robot!

Designing the Bajjutsu Badge and Desktop Wallpaper

Above is the time-lapse making-of video for the Bajjutsu badge. This was when it was a simple bi-fold last week, but I stopped recording during the small revisions that came up over the following days. At the end, you can see a quick pan of the current tri-fold version. Also, here's the opening screen as a Bajjutsu desktop wallpaper if you're so inclined.

» Music: CC-BY-NC-SA Fun Electronics