Card manufacturing
David G. Durand
I was looking at this a bit because I liked the idea of a better card
deck for myself than I would hand write.
I found a few traditional printers that print playing cards on demand
-- the expense was significant, even for a 52 card deck, and the
minimum run size was 100 decks.
I was thinking that perhaps we could use the "fun business card"
service of moo.com to create card decks that could be printed on
demand. They'll print 100 different color cards for a pretty
reasonable rate. I've seen the cards. Nice stock, good color, easy to
create.
We'd have a design challenge in terms of the cards and backs, because
they are a small format but we could get out of the problem of having
to print, store and ship (and collate?), a hundred or more packs of
cards. They also have a "postcard format" that may be too large.
They are based in London, but they are opening their US office in
Providence, so I will ask them about playing cards when I meet them,
which is sure to happen. ... but don't count on anything special --
even if they wanted to start some new products, it would take a while.
We need to decide if their current products meet our needs.
With card fronts and backs in the mix, we could create multiple decks
for the game: a phoneme deck, a rules deck, etc. Could perhaps ease
the first couple of hands in making sure the minimum is in the mix. We
could have a spinner for picking which kind of card you get next when
any types is good (a postcard and a paper arrow -- easy to print). You
could also deal a few cards by type on the table to get a base going,
and then start play with the whole thing shuffled.
-- David
On Apr 9, 2009, at 11:29 AM, Sai Emrys wrote:
On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 2:01 AM, Brian Henry <jati....@gmail.com>
wrote:
From what I've seen play testing with groups of Non-conlangers, I'd
say the best bet may be to have the deck ship with the 'basic deck'
and a set of additional cards you could shuffle in, and alternate
rules to add the "conlanger spark". Having it be fun for "lay-people"
who happen to enjoy language and games and having it have enough "out-
there-ness" to satisfy hard-core conlangers just seems, if not
mutually exclusive, at least harder than it needs to be, if you are
willing to "split the deck", so to speak.
I see no problem with having alternate ('advanced') rules. Having
extra cards is just a pragmatic question: how many? I.e. would it mean
having to make another deckfull, or just a handful of cards that can
be set aside normally?
Unfortunately, deck size is pretty important for keeping costs
reasonable.
- Sai
Jim Henry
> I found a few traditional printers that print playing cards on demand
> -- the expense was significant, even for a 52 card deck, and the
> minimum run size was 100 decks.
About how much per deck for a print run of that size?
> I was thinking that perhaps we could use the "fun business card"
> service of moo.com to create card decks that could be printed on
> demand. They'll print 100 different color cards for a pretty
> reasonable rate. I've seen the cards. Nice stock, good color, easy to
> create.
> We'd have a design challenge in terms of the cards and backs, because
> they are a small format but we could get out of the problem of having
> to print, store and ship (and collate?), a hundred or more packs of
> cards. They also have a "postcard format" that may be too large.
So a business card format that may be too small, and a postcard
format that may be too large...? Exactly what dimensions are we
talking about?
The more verbose cards in the Glossotechnia deck at present are
around 40-50 words of text. For comparison, Chrononauts from
Looney Labs has around 60 words (in 10-point
type on standard playing card size cards)
on its Mission cards.
> With card fronts and backs in the mix, we could create multiple decks
> for the game: a phoneme deck, a rules deck, etc.
I'm not sure what the benefit in terms of gameplay
would be from having different types of cards in
different decks, instead of all in one deck. And
by "rules deck" do you mean the syntax and
typology cards (specifying word order, amount
of affixation, etc) or do you mean to add new
cards that would specify what optional rules
are in effect, a la Fluxx or 1000 Blank White
Cards...? Can you give some more specific
examples of how your mode of Glossotechnia
would work?
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
Dhokarena56
print on blank index cards.
On Apr 17, 3:06 pm, Jim Henry <jimhenry1...@gmail.com> wrote:
Alex Fink
deck printed (55 cards, http://www.mathpuzzle.com/facecards.jpg). He
tells me that an outfit he found on Google by searching for "custom
playing cards" (but not which one) printed the lot for $2000.
Alex
Dhokarena56
On Apr 19, 12:37 pm, Alex Fink <000...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ed Pegg of mathpuzzle.com once had 500 copies of his Hoffman-Singleton
Jim Henry
A priori, $2000 for 500 decks of 55 cards doesn't
seem too much at all -- it's $4 per deck manufacturing
cost, which leaves plenty of room for storage,
marketing, shipping etc. expenses and some profit
with a sale price of $10 (that's what Mr. Pegg
seems to be selling his Hoffman-Singleton cards for).
Glossotechnia is more likely to be around
110-130 cards once we get it reduced some more
and then re-playtested to make sure it still works
in this stripped-down form, so I'm guessing $8-10
manufacturing cost per deck, and hopefully less
than $8 misc. other costs, so it can be sold for
< $20. ($10-20 seems to be the typical
price range for card games like this; Chrononauts,
at 136 cards, is $20, and the latest version of
Fluxx, 100 cards, $16.)
On the other hand, if there are others out there
who will print the same cards in the same quantity
for $2 or $3 per deck, then $4 per deck is
indeed too much... do you have a lead on any
such less expensive printing service?
Actually, I'm not sure it wouldn't make sense
(once we've pruned the deck down to a smaller
size and playtested further) to offer the game to
existing card-game publishers, and only go
the self-publishing route after it's been rejected
by several of them.
Meanwhile, I've asked Parker Bohn to post
to the list about how he uses a laser printer
to print onto index cards. Basically he
uses Excel spreadsheet, calibrates it for
a particular nonstandard paper size by
printing a sheet with numbers in each cell
to see what part of the spreadsheet
winds up on the card, and then uses that
portion of the sheet for the card text.
Hopefully he will post soon with more
details.
Dhokarena56
On Apr 20, 3:24 pm, Jim Henry <jimhenry1...@gmail.com> wrote: