4x6 Glossy Color Bestiary With Circles and Arrows And An Eye On The Back

One of the things I like most about Gaming Ballistic's DTRPG bestiaries is the monster reference cards. They're 4x5 inch cards, big enough to be quite visible across a game table, with an illustration of the monster on one side (with a human silhouette for scale) and full monster stats on the back. Players can visualize what they're running into, and the GM doesn't have to keep one more book open on the table to check stats. Very useful.

The concern I've always had, though, is that they come in the form of a deck of cards. That's trivially easy to knock over inadvertently or just drop and scatter all over the floor, so I've needed a storage solution. My first instinct was to work up a design for a box and 3d print it. I did, but it just didn't do it for me.

I recently realized, though, that 4x5 cards would fit nicely in photo albums (I'll tell you kids about photo albums later) designed for 4x6 pictures. Cheap and easy solution, though ironically I'm turning cards made to illustrate the contents of a book back into a book. But cheap photo albums also look boring, so, remembering some similar projects that my lovely and talented spouse had undertaken, I had to take steps. A few bits of leather later, with some thinning, cutting, punching, and otherwise embellishing, I got this:

The plaque in the center is 3d printed in wood filament (that is, PLA with wood particles), then further stained to give it a more natural appearance.

The eye is something I'd made years ago and still had lying around. Basically, the iris and pupil are painted with sparkly nail polish on the back of a cheap glass bezel.

And yes, the cards fit just fine.

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