Imagine an entire set of monster tents made of decent quality cardstock with a monster picture on the player side and all the relevant stats for the monster on the other!
I would buy the **** out of that. Twice.
tent?
i presume you mean a folded piece of cardboard?
uknow a lot of DMs, my group included, use cardboard thingies like that to hang over the edge of their DM screens
to keep track of initiative.
the ideas could be combined by adding an arrow to each side and adding some blanc ones
for PCs.
For a lot of monsters and the basic NPCs that could work. Some of the monsters, expeically those with legendary actions, wouldn't fit on one, unless you made it much longer and wider. You could have some of their stats on such a card, and include another, non-folding card with their extra abilities that didn't fit, which could either then be clipped to the screen or just sit behind the screen. You could also then provide a blank template sheet for copying to make ones for individual NPCs and for the PCs, and provide a pdf version like they have for full character sheets. The PC folded cards could list their personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws instead of attacks for the DM side, as a helpful reminder for when to grant inspiration.
I admit at first I wasn't sure such an idea would be useful, but thinking about it has really changed my mind. Such would be really handy, keeping track of initiative order at the same time as providing stat blocks so you don't have to flip back and forth between bookmarks in the MM if there's more than one monster type in the fight. If such a pack also included some form of tokens (that can be copied so you could print them and get multiple tokens of the same monster type, as well as making them for PCs and custom NPCs), whether they just lie flat or stand up, I'd definitely buy it as well.
If they'd rather not do such because it would copy a lot of the Monstous Manual, even just having blank stat lines but still having the monster pictures would be useful, though at that point it'd likely just be a pdf you can print what you need off of.
I've been doing that for a while now. Been making them myself. I orient, print and fold them such that I can hang them off my DM screen. Big color image (and sometimes "name") on the PC side, the monster's stats and play notes on mine.
Works great. The players have an image (and name) to reference. And I don't have to flip around in the MM or my adveture notes.
Decided to whip up an exmple of some, styled after the stat blocks presented in the MM. For longer monster entries I'd personally want to shorten descriptions of abilities and traits as they take up a lot of space fast, as seen with the stone golem. This is only a preview image, though if people want I can upload the svg file so you can edit it and make what you want. (The page is in landscape mode. Dashed lines are for cutting and folding. Images should be placed upside down so they are rightside up for the players.)
I use miniatures for the D&D games I run... I actually make my own "monster" cards to fit standard Magic Card sleeves. Works really well for me while not completely disclosing info to the players. Likewise, I've also made Magic Item cards (made it way easier for the players to read and understand what the item does) and even spell cards for my character. Not sure if folks would buy them but Monster cards would be helpful, and I've seen other games have NPC cards etc. too. Eh.
Yeup, those are the tents I meant. I love using them but the work I need to do is cumbersome and tiresome. And now I'm starting a sandbox campaign, I can't always predict what monsters I'll need to prepare so I thought it'd be awesome to have a whole MM set just ready to go from a professional outfit.
I realise you couldn't fit everything on the cards, but even a page number would be great as I primarily use them for the core information and initiative order by hanging them over the DM screen with PC cards as well.
Here's the .svg file for the monster tents. Linky link. I created it in Inkscape (which is free, and works in Ubuntu, Windows, and Mac OS X), in case anyone is wondering.
