Welcome to Mutation, a series of articles where we want to spotlight the “extras” that you can bring to Dice Masters. Why Mutation? Well, it represents a fundamental change in something. An evolution of sorts. Also, there is that nice Basic Action Card that shares the name. It seemed to make sense to connect these together to represent what this series is meant to be about.
We are always working on growing our collection of tutorials to help bring your game to the next level. Want to learn how to make your own cards? How about customizing your own play-mat? Looking for come cool dice tower projects? This is where you want to be.
If you have something you want to share with the Dice Masters community, drop us an email at mailbag@dm-north.com and let us know. We look forward to sharing these projects with you. As always, please feel free to leave your comments below and let us know what you think.
Now, on to today’s project…
How to Make a Custom Dice Masters Card
You know that feeling. You look at the latest card and think to yourself: “I could do better than that.” Or maybe you wish you could have that sweet, sweet “Spider-Ham” card but it does not exist. With this tutorial, you should have the basic skills to make these a reality.
Today, I am going to teach you how to make your own cards that you can use in your Dice Masters games. This article is going to assume that you have some basic Photoshop skills. If you don’t, you may want to brush up on these and come back. Don’t worry, we will wait for you.
Everything good now? Great! So, obviously, the first part of this project assumes you have Photoshop (or at least a program that will open up Photoshop files). If you have got that, then you are good to start.
The one thing you will need to have is an understanding of layers. If you visualize Photoshop layers like a stack of papers, it will help. The papers on the top of the stack are visible over the papers on the bottom of the stack. By adjusting the transparency of each sheet of paper, you will be able to see the underlying papers and change the look of the overall image. Does that make sense? I hope so.
Assuming you have this knowledge under your belt, you are ready to grab some more tools. Here is everything you will need to make this project come to life:
- Photoshop (or equivalent software that can read .PSD files).
- The Dice Masters Photoshop Template File (see below).
- Fonts (see below)
- Dice Images (This will depend on what project you want to create)
- Card Images (This too will vary depending on what project you want to create)
Google Images is a great source for finding something to use for your project. Just start looking. For dice images, your best source to use existing dice is to scan the card image yourself or “borrow” a copy of the card image from somewhere like here or CoolStuffInc.
Download Links
Now, the hard part… walking you through the project. Honestly, I debated writing this up but came to the conclusion that this is better as a visual teaching project. So, I decided to put together this YouTube video. Please be gentle as it is my first. Hopefully, it covers the basics of this project fairly well. If not, please feel free to ask your questions in the comments below and I will do my best to answer them.
I really hope you found this helpful and look forward to seeing what you come up with. Take a look below at some of the cards I have created with these tools:
Thank you for reading!
– jourdo
Without digging into it too much, it appears that this free online editor will work with the PSD template:
https://pixlr.com/editor/
Sweet! Just discovered this site today via reddit.
Very excited to see some custom equipment coverage!
That flash is… really very cool actually. Thematic, Good, not too OP. Nice design!
Any chance of a D&D template in this style, what with D&D getting a set very soon.
I have been working on updating this Template, but have yet to finish the D&D version. It is a little more work to make it look right. Hopefully, I have something to upload soon.
Hey Jourdo, did anything come of this D&D template?
It is actually done. Just need to find some time to record the new tutorial video.
Hello! I have a problem with the font. Switch to Times New Roman (At least not Comic Sans)
That is a strange one. I haven’t had issues installing on multiple machines. Is the font in your font folder? Just want to make sure it installed correctly.
Did a D&D template ever get uploaded?
Not yet. We are currently working on something to get it up, but there are a few background things holding us up. Hopefully soon.
Ok cool. I’m working on converting the yugioh set to be compatible with DnD (Adding alignments, monster flags and adjusting text so monster/character aren’t confusing)
Having templates to make them with will be 100% better than the paper cutouts of flags I am using currently. Hope you find time to finish them up soon ;D
I already have some ideas I want to make into cards, but I’m having lots of problems to balance things. Trying to not make powerful things cheat or weak expensive. Is there a way to learn how to balance things when creating?
Honestly? Creating brand new cards is a lot of trial and error. I have created many cards that I thought that I had balanced well but found out just didn’t work how I wanted them to in a play setting. Best way is to make it and get people to try and break them for you. Then you will know what to tweak. Hope that helps.