We are almost there. Just a quick update. Approved the hardcopy proofs today of the 69 new cards, the box and the RPG rulebook and Tarot guidebook.
Yes the box!
As you can see in the picture above, the box proof looks pretty rad and it is in corrugated cardboard all folded and glued. I didn’t think they would have done the folding just for the proofs but they did. I guess I really did learn how to make a dieline in art school that actually functions. There are no graphics on the interior of the box but I think that is okay for now. It is really the outside that is important. Even got a barcode for it.
You can see the cover of the RPG rulebook as well under the box proof. Just a little teaser until everything is done.
Update on Play Testing
If we get the game sets in 24 hours then shipping will start next week to the play testers. The RPG side of the game is going to be tested by two different people, a gamer and a mathematician. The Tarot side of the game will be tested by two Tarot readers and one psychic who will use the interpretations from the Tarot guidebook and check my meanings against their knowledge. I will be very interested in how that specifically goes. Play testing will go on for 2 weeks. At this point we are in the final stage. We have already done some initial play testing which was required to finalize the rules in the RPG rulebook, determine the card stats and the final hack/raid combined requirements scores. We did have three iterations of the rulebook before we got to the final rule set.
What’s in the Box
So what do you get if you obtain a copy of the grydscaen RPG Trading Card game? Well, let me tell you:
78 game cards (22 Major Arcana and 56 Suit cards – Wands, Swords, Cups, Coins)
1 RPG rulebook (20 pages)
1 Tarot guidebook (20 pages)
25 black reputation tokens
25 red virus tokens
25 gold credit tokens
2 dice
When will the game be Available?
Well, we need 2 weeks for play testing and then there is the ComicCon signing so around mid February 2017. Initially the game will be available from the grydscaen website and from the grydscaen Facebook page. This will be the initial run. We are planning at this point to also make it available for wide distribution, so look for more updates in the future on places to get the game.
Making the game a Reality
So even though I only started creating cards 4 months ago for the RPG, the idea for a grydscaen Tarot deck initially came to me 7 years ago. I had read Tarot cards in college for students in the dorms and always wanted to create my own set with my own graphics. It was the middle of 2016 when I was talking to a few friends that the RPG game part became an idea. My friends are hardcore gamers and online or RPG cards were something they really enjoyed. So we talked about it and I bought some game manuals and game strategy books and started reading like crazy. I researched YouTube for game designers as well and learned a lot.
So here we are finally four months later. One dream down, more to go. I hope you enjoyed this update. We are almost there. 24 more hours until grydscaen RPG is reality!
DIY: How to Make a Game Box
So lets talk about box design a little. I went to a full function printer so they were able to work with me. This is my box created from an Adobe Illustrator flat dieline with graphics added in Adobe Photoshop. Before I started work on the Illustrator dieline I needed to get the dimensions for the box straight. So what did I do, go to the neighborhood office supply store, buy glue, clear tape and posterboard like a 5th grade project. I already had 5 sets of 12 cards printed for the game from the Major Arcana so I used those to determine how I would put the cards in the box. Then using the posterboard I used a ruler and drew the dimensions. The rulebooks which go in the box were 8.5″H x 5.5″W so that meant if I wanted both rulebooks in the box that the box at least needed to be that size. Then I had to determine the depth, which is based on the stacks of cards. Three stacks making 78 cards total would fit in a 2″ depth. So that meant that dimension had to be added. Once I had the dimensions and the measurements I went about using a pencil and ruler and drawing the box outline on the posterboard. This was the manual dieline
Once the lines were drawn I marked the fold marks and glue marks. The box is one solid piece that folds over so there is no top and bottom separate pieces. This made it easier to deal with. I then cut the dieline out of the posterboard and folded it along the folds. After folding I taped it, to see if it worked. Once taped and I could successfully put an example copy of the rulebook in it and cards, I took it apart again and measured it writing the dimensions on the outside of the box then glued it.
This was the manual test stage which gave me the dimensions. Once I had that then I moved to Illustrator and recreated the dieline in vector with the proper dimensions. This created an illustrator file. Initially I did not have the extra front flaps for the top and needed to add them so they were taped to the manual test first to see if it folded and closed. I needed to add the extra flaps so the cards didn’t fall out.
Once the Illustrator dieline was created I moved it into Photoshop with the dieline layer still in tact and just added graphics over top of it. Now, you could have possibly done that in Illustrator but I am not a big fan of Illustrator even though I have taken 3 art school classes in the program. I knew enough to create the dieline but I wanted into a different program for the graphics.
I needed a tag line, barcode and graphics as well as a box colour. All this was based on card design and the feel I wanted for the game. The game is about hacking the Elite government mainframe so I used that for the tag line. I didn’t want a lot of words on the front of the box so I went with minimal and some of the more colourful cards to give a feel for what you are getting.
Since the graphics had to be designed for a wrap around box, they were actually upside down on the coloured dieline since the box had to wrap. I had to get that straight as well to make sure things were not upside down.
With the graphics added, the file was converted to PDF both from Illustrator to create the clean dieline and from Photoshop to create the PDF with graphics.
When the printer got a hold of the file they recreated the dieline for their cut/fold box machine which they were able to do using my files. Because I had the dieline files which I emailed to them there was no extra cost in design services.
The printer provided a digital proof and then I had to wait 48 hours to see the actual hard copy proof of the box which you see above.
So I guess I actually learned something in art school.