Index Card RPG is HERE! 

"Put the figure on the card"....boom! the best solution is often the simplest one. Good show buddy, perfect all around.

You could only lay down one card and my group would still find a way to split the party.

Been playing D&D in the "theatre of the mind's eye" for 20 years and this sold me on playing with minis in less than 20 mins.

Dude I wanted to tell you that without you all my friends would still be playing stupid stuff because when I first decided to learn how to play d and d I was 100% overwhelmed by all the numbers and stats I almost gave up, but I found your channel and how much of a bad ass you are and you taught me that the numbers do matter but people play d and d for the adventure not for the stats, I started my campaign almost two weeks ago and all my friends didn't know how to play and now they all love it, thx man:)

Id be down for a modern super hero take with city scapes and various locations like villain lairs, labs, cryo tanks...anything like that.

Bought these this weekend and took them into Photoshop and added scroll like backgrounds and colored them all in...looks amazing and will be perfect for my roll20 DW game. More monsters please.

This is a fantastic idea and a perfect match for the way I prefer to GM. Players always want a bit more visual context and this provides it beautifully. It reminds me a bit of Everway, but the way you've implemented the concept is more consistent visually and a more complete system. I'll get these printed ASAP! I also want to say thank you for the inspiration to draw more. I look forward to ICRPG vol. 3.

Woah! Love the concept! I just realized that I can use of my tons of magic the gathering cards in a similar manner.

I must find a way to incorporate the phrase, "a sackful of Umberhulks" in my future conversations.

I'd love to see a Lovecraft themed set. And a Norse myths set. I love the Cthulhu statue art. Very cool work, man!

To be honest, this really isn't new. Its just very similar to theatre of the mind, only you use pictures. I can see that it would help clarify it and clarify where characters are but we got by just fine with the theatre in the 80's :) I do much prefer the room designs you did. Absolute inspiration, which I am using now. Ive got more cash these days, so don't mind spending on minis and stuff. But fair play to you for your efforts and I hope enough folk buy the stuff to make it worth your while. Thanks for a great channel.

Dude! I just downloaded this! I cannot wait to drop these during our upcoming game of Dungeon World. Great stuff, Sir! Keep up the good work. Looking forward to volume 2!

I did not watch the entire video but I'd like to share something I remember Matt on afistfullofdice (on youtube) made a video on. His games are very narrative and one way he can structure combat and movement is by using segments and meassureing them instead. You have a river, a house, a mill, a bit of rocky and jagged area, garden flowers etc. You lay out the index cards next to each other and as a base you can move over... 2 areas in a turn (depending on if its difficult terrain or not) So lets say it is layed out as this: River - jagged stone area - grassland - Mill - Grassland - garden - House - grassland -> Instead of measuring feet you divide it up into little segments, if you are at the mill, well you can attack all the enemies on that mill square. Very simply explained, you use huge squares and everything within that square can attack anything in there.

It reminds me of pitching concepts to clients at that ad agency job I quit.

What I like about your index cards they've got a old school visual feel to them.Reminds me of Erol Otis stuff.

i could see these being used to decide encounters in a random dungeon.a random group of cards could be the elements of the next encounter.then build it all wobbly bobbly style!

I bought my copy as soon as I saw it on facebook. This is my favorite rpg purchase ever.

Even just for the brainstorming aspect for preparing an adventure, these are totally worth it. I don't see myself using these at the table (maybe) but they look great for planning out encounters.

Obtained ICRPG second edition Pdf. A week away from my birthday. Couldn't be happier.

This has come a long way, and holds up extremely well.

0:39 "Aaah, a good sip of urine will make the day starts better"

Have you considered combining this with the Expedition RPG card game? The app gives an option to create an adventure that you can visualize with your cards and minis, or you can primarily use the cards for player choice in navigation, and use the single encounter portion of the expedition app to resolve any battles.

Those cards are perfect for Fate 😁

and I thought I was the only one that used the "15 umber hulks fall out of a paper sack" trick....

These cards are Freakin' awesome! I'm going to do a review/how I use these vid very soon.

Nice! Think I'm a convert. Bet that fire picture on the wall makes the room feel warmer

10:33 definitely going to use that trap on the next session

OK, totally using this concept for my cyberpunk/noir Digital Shades game. Time to embrace rules simplicity and narration complexity! I think a few locations, vehicles, terminals, thugs and mecha should work out well for a starting game. Thanks for such awesome ideas! GMs need all the help we can get!

Awesome idea! Purchased and preparing to test these bad boys out on my unsuspecting players. Keep the Runehammer Games products rollin'!

your corridor cards remind me of the car wars roads

I understand what you're saying,and for bare bones game play this would be great,but...don't try and say this will ever be the new way of the future for gaming because what makes D&D so awesome is all the little intricate details.

Man I love your videos- I LOVE p'n'p rpg's and this is so cool to watch and keep up on!!

I just love your concept thank you very much for this brilliant idea. Just bought volume 1&2 on drivethru...they are just awesome and the drawings do have a nice osr feeling to them. Kind Regards from Germany

Very cool! What a great concept. Sure you could find artwork on the internet and make your own, but they probably wouldn't all be the same style. Brilliant idea. Looking forward to seeing expansion sets in the future!

Fantastic. Just bought this....looking forward to expansions, and possibly a mechanism for custom requests (hint hint).

Amazing concept my friend. I have been casually following you, thanks for all you do!

If you are going to play a Fate-ish game, this seems to be a decent system. I am old school though and I like my miniature based D&D

Nice! Good stuff, as always.

Just watched the video. Great concept! I really like the "getting back to the basics" and "stop worrying about the minutiae" mentaility! I'm going to spring for the $6.50. Also, LOVE that game plate! Hoping you have a video on making that piece of coolness.

"or everyone is going to give me the eye poke" LOL.

This is excellent Perfect for so many games looking forward to picking this up.

what a powerful tool even just for idea generation. I will definitely get this. I would love to see you do some actual play games with these though to show how it works in actual play.

dude this is such a cool idea

a great idea for playing in person around a table, but not for the vtt. But if I did play around a table, I would def use this method.

Very inspirational! Think I'm going to pick up a copy. Thanks for putting up all this content

I wish I knew about your channel a long time ago. Awesome idea and a great explanation.

Okay, now this looks super fun. Bought the game, and cant wait to try it!

Hey - Love these! Printed and ready to use this weekend in my Castles & Crusades game. Hope to see more Sets. Dark Forest, Ruined + Regular Guard Tower, Statues, Pillars, Fire Place are a few cards I like to see in Set 2. I like the Dungeon Tiles the most. Maybe some stairs and other features in Set 2 as well. Keep up the great work. Thanks!!!

Okay, player engages goblins. But how does it actually make the combat simpler? How does it actually unfold?

I can 100% see the usefulness of this in non encounter aspects of d&d sometimes its hard for people to visual the creepy monastery on the hill and these cards would be super useful for that. Maybe its my war gaming background that makes me think this, but I LOVE the tactical aspect of D&D encounters. This kinda just reduces it to dice rolls, which is what I find the least interesting about combat.

Have my hardcover copy!

Hank, I hadn't given these notice initially until your recent Patreon intro. While I doubt I will get much use from them as you intend. I would like to suggest more wilderness themes as I intend to use them to illustrate overland movement, and effectively illustrate the random encounters therein.

Maybe not for playing, but to plan how your dungeon its a good tool.

This is crazy good. You have yet to publish a product I didn't buy.

Quite simply awesome innovation.

This sounds awesome! I've been trying to get my girls into D&D, and this seems to be a great way to do it. ^_^

I'll probably use them like Black Magic Craft as well as visuals for role playing parts of games. I'm not giving up terrain for encounters just yet. I use paper craft terrain, both 2-d and 3-d, with some DM Scotty crafted bits here and there. I do like the hybrid approach and these cards will give me some additional flexibility. When is the next book review vid? You never told us what you liked about Elminster's Forgotten Realms some time ago.

Great, yet more things to spend my Christmas money on. Thanks, you're making me a poor man, I already bought like $200 of 40K stuff, so $10 is a drop in the bucket, but still man, you releasing this fantastic-ness at this time of year is just low. Still buying it though.

it wouldnt let me do a link card to the store!

Why you puttin Zymer in danger all 'de time, I like him...stop dat...!

I want to know what that cool light up art is on the wall.

I do this with towns..I have some pics of villages,cities,hold's and whatever but on the other side i have some standard info:Name,location,description,culture,economy,religion-gods and natural enemies..sometimes i give them to my players to fill them in as the hometowns of their heroes (never ever throw even one of them there are pure gold and if you want to revisit them BAM here is the fckng card)

This is great. Full stop. Since I first saw this months and months ago I have wondered if there’s a way to make cards for a super hero setting. Yknow, like Gotham or something like that. The issue I keep running into is that cities are much more bland than dungeons. Plus, there’s usually only one opponent in a super hero setting, rather than a creature in every other room.

Hi Hank, i have been watching your videos for a year now, and i always like the crafting shit, but these idea of the index cards is totally awesome, i think is a great tool to submerge into the dungeons using your imagination, you can do more epic adventures in this way than crafting colossus environments that could take months. its like a reading a good book the words are on the table but depends on your imagination the meaning. Very good work :), greetings from mexico (sorry for the bad english :P).

Very clever, would fit in perfectly with Aspecting in FATE or PbtA games. And D&D, for those brave souls and non-traditionalists ;)

bought it and I'm gonna use it for tomorrow night. can't wait!

This game is sexual chocolate. It is probably the best GM Manual on the market even if you don't play the game.

interesting idea, Hank! Interesting enough ima runnin' out to buy me them there cards!

One quick question though, how have you gone about using AoE spells, and other mechanics of that nature, when you are no longer using exact distances and battlefield movement?

This is a pretty awesome idea! I likes it!

This is cool. I can use this in some either fantasy, modern or sci-fi genre RPG.

Those look dope! I'll have to pick some up once the funds replenish after this holiday season. Also, way to represent Shinobi in the background at the start of the vid.

ok ... back... Sam Adam's boston lager in hand... roll the tape.

Very video gamey, looks like a nice tool.

Can't wait to watch this!

found you by accident. Sub'd @ "vertical tentacle".

Caveat Emptor! When you go to print this stuff up at a printer be absolutely sure you and the salesperson understand the transaction. I asked to have Volumes 1-3 and the Core printed simultaneously. I was quoted 10 cents per page. When I went to check out they tried to charge me 80 bucks, about 4 times what it should have cost. They had not informed me there would be an up-charge for card-stock. Well I started heading for the door and they quickly changed their tune. I only got charged for the printing job. Moral of the story be sure you know all the details up front before doing a print job!

I love it!

Designer Music, i saw what you did there.

You sir are amazing.

I love simulation. If anything I think RPGs need more of it, everywhere. And I'm not talking only about die, there should be surface integrals and tensors in the rulebook. But, obviously, computers should do all the calculations, we are not cavemen. So while I believe you that theater-of-the-mind would benefit from dropping much of the simulation, I think truly computerized D&D is finally coming to pick up all that back up.

I purchased the whole upper tier package (2nd Edition) and cannot find these grid corridor cards and others I'm seeing here. . . Am I still missing something Mr. Hankerin?

Very cool idea man!

Mad cool man! great stuff 👍

I’m reading the ICRPG Master Edition and THIS CONCEPT does not seem to be outlined very well in the book. It’s also what I primarily wanted to read about. It talks about “close” “near” and “far” but doesn’t explain how that translates to actually using index cards. Would it be possible to make a new, video explaining this from the ground up? It took be a bit of searching before I finally found it.

Damnit, Hank. Was that a Hammertime reference at 16:26 ?

Hank, I really would have appreciated if you’d put a note up on the v1 page that v2 was coming out. I ordered the hardcover of v1, now I’m like “No!!!!!” because it’s obsolete already.

Did you make the fire artwork in the background? It's pretty awesome.

So what do we do with all our monster minis and terrain I've made. How do I determine combat advantage and the like? I can see using the cards to help design encounters and even introduce ideas during the game. But once the heroes engage the goblins then replace the card with the minis.

Dungeon Master- *places index card on table* "This is the pack of Goblins..." Player- *flips table, walks away* "Buy some Mini's, NOOB!" I'm sorry, but this is *exactly* what will happen at some tables. Newer players may not care to much, and new DMs may want to run a game without investing much in Mini's, and the index cards may be a good jumping off point for them. But I worry about DMs and Players becoming to lax and not fully investing (personally, not financially) into the hobby. More to the point- Okay, it's a pack of Goblins. How do you represent a dead Goblin on the index card? How do you represent a single Goblin detaching from the "group", and climbing up a tree, to gain higher ground? The pre-printed grids may be *very* useful, for quick'n'dirty dungeons, which is really all you need in a game that is all about 'theater of the mind'. I wouldn't mind having an entire pack of *just* grid pieces; long halls, short halls, corners, doors, ledges, etc. The second use, story boarding, is what I would probably use them for the most. There are percentile tables and dice with images on them (rather than numbers) that accomplish the same thing, but the cards will probably be easier for a younger group or DM to comprehend- a great way to get the youngin's into gaming.

Great vid as always! BTW your map on the chessex vinyl map. It's been there for weeks. Means your screwed. It will be imprinted for life now even if you try to wash it.

Oh, mighty Lord Hank'rin - I praise you!!! THIS IS AN AWESOME IDEA is there something on the back of the cards, like descriptions or conceptual ideas?

This is SO AWESOME!

Oh hell yeah!

Interesting

One of these for World Of Darkness would be amazing

It sounds like this was very influenced by Dungeon World. I wonder if there's a way to combine this with some basic mechanics. You could create a super simple RPG based on the mechanics you describe in your Fluid Fundamentals video. I mean, an index card is perfect for recording statistics if you want to encourage simplicity. Off-topic: I'd like to request a video on social mechanics. If you role-play all the way, how do you keep Charisma from being a "dump stat"? If you "roll-play" it to the max, does that take away from the interactivity?

This. is. amazing.

This could of been exciting mid 1990s or earlier.