Roll20 uses cookies to improve your experience on our site. Cookies enable you to enjoy certain features, social sharing functionality, and tailor message and display ads to your interests on our site and others. They also help us understand how our site is being used. By continuing to use our site, you consent to our use of cookies. Update your cookie preferences .
×
Create a free account

Enhanced Card Deck Features

Score + 223
I really love the new card decks feature, and would like to adapt it to support various card games. Unfortunately, either a few required features are missing, or they just haven't been documented in the wiki. These basic additions would really expand my ability to use roll20 as a virtual card game desktop. 1. Piles - As far as I can tell, there is no inherent support for creating card piles on the desktop. I would love the ability to create card piles pulling random cards from several of my imported decks to create a new group of cards that my players can interact with on the tabletop. For example, I would like the ability to create piles on the table on the fly (Possibly choosing a random set of cards from several of my pre-made decks), and the functionality to shuffle those piles. 2. Permanent deck transfers - I love the ability to steal cards that is already implemented. I would like to see an expansion of this feature that allows me to transfer cards between decks permanently, rather than just for the play session. This will be useful for card based RPGs in which characters grow by expanding their deck. You could implement a system in which the card could either be transferred (removed from original deck and no longer available in it) or copied (still available in original) 3. Finally, I would like to see the ability to shuffle discard piles and pull from them randomly.
4. It would also be quite useful to allow us to set a quantity of each card we import into a deck. As it stands, if I want thirty of a specific card in my deck, I have to create thirty copies of that card in the deck, then pull the same art from my library 30 times. Edit: Thank you for that tip, Brian!
1412699003
Lithl
Pro
Sheet Author
API Scripter
You shouldn't need to upload multiple copies of the same image. You should be able to drag existing images from your art library.
I am wholeheartedly behind this suggestion. When I first backed Roll20 I requested a card feature as Savage Worlds is my system of choice. Since that time, I see huge potential for Roll20 continuing to become the virtual tabletop, not just for rpgs, but for tabletop games in general. That, and with the rpg/card hybrid games out there (Simple System as one example but also how Pathfinder and Fantasy Flight's Star Wars lines use of cards to simplify and augment play). I think it's intuitive design makes playing and prototyping hobby tabletop games an 80% reality. The one thing that prevents full realization of that is the use of cards. The new card update was a huge improvement, I'd like to see those final extra features make it in allowing Roll20 to be the one stop show for all of the tabletop community. To echo some of the examples above and add a few more. Simple "right click" interface allowing for quick 90-180 degree card turns Players having persistent decks that stay with them between games An intuitive in-game way to draw from multiple decks, combining them into a new deck, without seeing the value of the cards. Being able to save that newly created deck Support for drafting style play, where you take one card and the deck as a whole is passed to another player I would put all 14 of my votes behind this if I could.
1414693574

Edited 1416751948
Nick H
Sheet Author
Agreed - I would also assign all my votes if possible! Some additional thoughts for enhancements: Virtual Decks - essentially a combination of some elements of the 'piles', 'deck transfers', and 'draw from multiple decks' ideas above. Players should have the ability to combine cards from multiple decks during games. Example 1: Add a card from deck A into deck B's discard pile or place on top of deck B. Example 2: Combined with the 'piles' concept, you could build mini stacks of cards, shuffle them, then stack them to form a new deck. Dual-sided cards - the ability to have a different image on the front and the back of each card in a deck. Draw cards from the bottom of the deck Ability to stack the discard pile on top of the deck instead of shuffling back in Play multiple cards from your hand at once instead of dragging them one by one to the tabletop
1415320594

Edited 1415563692
I'd like to see for each "deck" the following groupings: Draw deck Discard Pile Hand In-play At least 1 virtual "Pile" (displays number of cards in it) with the ability to move an individual card from any to any of the above. with the following options for each (ideally enabled on a per-deck basis): Draw a random card from it Draw the "next" card from it Select a specific card from it And the following options for any card in play: Flip face-up or down "Tap" (indicate "used" via rotation, gray-shade, or icon) Hold (remain in play when the rest are discarded) We have draw deck, hands, in-play and discards now, but each behaves differently with regard to drawing and discarding. It would be much more useful if they were all types of card groups with similar operations available and configurable visibility (e.g., are discards viewable by player? all?, etc.). Edit: it would be convenient if, once we create a card, we could then indicate the number of copies to add to the deck. Also, the ability to delete a deck (can't find the option currently).
On the subject of creating multiple cards at once: I created a 236 card deck using excel macros and InDesign's datamerge feature. Producing images for each card took maybe 10 minutes of setup time (they were mostly text, which the datamerge took care of). I then made a macro that manually moved the mouse to add each card one by one to the deck in Roll20. It still took 2.5 episodes of The Legend of Korra for the thing to complete. My 2 cents here is that you could set things up so that selecting a PDF or zip file for the card image creates a new card for each page/image file . If I hadn't had a script to add those cards for me, I would have just given up. Even without batch creation though, Roll20 is the best way to get a virtual card table going I've can find. You guys are awesome!
Instead of using a PDF or zip file they could just make it so that a whole folder of images can be uploaded at once for cards. They have this already for other things, so why not cards? Cards should also have a field which says "Number of Duplicates" to decrease time spent making the decks; as well as an option to make specific cards have infinite numbers whereby it uses the "Number of Duplicates" field as the probability weight. These should then come stacked in the hand in order to save visual space, making it easier on the players to fumble about their hand.
1418676022
vÍnce
Pro
Sheet Author
+1 for being able to sort decks.
Making piles and drawing from them would be brilliant.
1419881887

Edited 1419881984
Not sure this is the spot, but has anyone attempted to make a deck? What a pain!! I think before we have "dynamic lighting" and other fluff features, we should really think about how clumsy the deck is. A game I'm playing has a deck of cards per player, basically a series of actions that a player places face down and flips as the turn progresses. Add multiple copies of a card to a deck without having that many image assets Make the drag-drop from your hand a little more intuitive as to where it actually lands on the table Ability to recall a deck back to your hand Tag an image of the card while adding them to the deck (I have 100s of untagged items now...)
1420682368

Edited 1420686965
I ran a Roll20 game of the kickstarted stealth card-based RPG Project: Dark, and had trouble with things as simple as putting a card back on top of a deck. Fortunately this game uses standard decks of playing cards (pared down to start with more cards added to them over time), but even that was a pain to create player decks for by slowly deleting unused cards one by one. Knowing top card of discard is important in that system, which was possible (it's the bottom-right-most card in the discard view) but unintuitive. We considered just going to the trust system and having each player grab a physical deck, but playing cards face-down mostly worked. There are many suggestions here, but hopefully this example helps show what is needed in practice.
It would be helpful for GM-free games (like One Night Werewolf) to have players able to recall cards to the deck and shuffle it. Maybe the GM could just toggle the deck to allow that level of player access like the other toggles available? Thanks! :)
1423704491
Nick H
Sheet Author
A way to easily view the number remaining cards in decks would also be very useful.
I agree with both suggestions of having the ability to draft as well as randomly adding cards from decks without seeing the values to create a new deck. In addition, being able to sort the cards alphabetically in the "Cards" section of the deck options or having it happen automatically when you close and re-open the options would be useful.
+1 to sort decks.
I can't actually get Monopoly working because of some of the OP's missing features. You can't draw a card and put it at the bottom of the deck afterwards, for example.
Is it possible to play a card face down? Because it doesn't seem like it and that's pretty annoying in it's own right.
1434468032
The Aaron
Roll20 Production Team
API Scripter
From: <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Card_Decks_and_Rollable_Ta" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Card_Decks_and_Rollable_Ta</a>... Holding the Shift key while you drag the card onto the tabletop will play it to the tabletop face down instead of face up (which is the default). You can also right-click on an already-played card to flip it over and switch between face up or face down.
1438607477
Ziechael
Forum Champion
Sheet Author
API Scripter
I'd like it if the 'choose' option would allow for a resizable window which would scale the cards in the deck so that if you have cards with text on them you can read it better when choosing your card (this should also apply to the view of cards 'in hand'.) I'd also like it if having the deck set to infinite would allow for multiple cards of the same type to be handed out using 'choose' without having to shuffle the deck each time or have multiple versions of the same card in the deck.
For me, deck creation is the biggest sticking point. Any deck with more than five cards is an absolute nightmare, and there's no way to port all that work to any other campaign.&nbsp;
1441045478
The Aaron
Roll20 Production Team
API Scripter
John Doe said: ...and there's no way to port all that work to any other campaign.&nbsp; With a Pro Subscription, you can use the Transmorgrifier to move Decks between Games you have created. &nbsp; See:&nbsp; <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Transmogrifier" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Transmogrifier</a> With a Free Account, you are more limited, but you can use Copy Game to create multiple Games that all feature Decks you have previously created. See:&nbsp; <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Game_Management#Settings" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Game_Management#Settings</a>
Being able to combine decks and then split them again would be amazing. I'm porting Arkham Horror vanilla right now and already I'm thinking ahead to when I want to add expansions. Playing every game with all the expansions would be a nightmare; right now I'm thinking I'll just clone the first campaign and add the new stuff to the clone, but eeeeesh. Adding and subtracting components would solve all my problems.
Regina Phalange said: Being able to combine decks and then split them again would be amazing. I'm porting Arkham Horror vanilla right now and already I'm thinking ahead to when I want to add expansions. Playing every game with all the expansions would be a nightmare; right now I'm thinking I'll just cl one the first campaign and add the new stuff to the clone, but eeeeesh. Adding and subtracting components would solve all my problems. I've not actually played Arkham Horror, but couldn't you just duplicate the original deck, in the same game, and add expansions to the duplicates? Though, I spouse that could lead to a lot of duplicates, depending on how many combinations you actually care about.
Epsilon R. said: I've not actually played Arkham Horror, but couldn't you just duplicate the original deck, in the same game, and add expansions to the duplicates? Though, I spouse that could lead to a lot of duplicates, depending on how many combinations you actually care about. Holy derp, that's such an easy solution. Although the deck list just for the core game is getting crazy long as it is, I don't know if adding to it would be the thing that pushes me over the edge into Crazy Town. Hey, here's another suggestion that's probably easier than the other one - deck grouping! You can group characters/handouts in the journal tab; could that be implemented in the deck list as well? Also, the ability to rearrange/sort the list would be helpful, too. Also, Epsilon, you gotta play Arkham Horror. After my buddies and I bang out the kinks with the setup I'll probably LFG it before too long.
+1. Would really love more enhanced deck options!
1448022654
Phoxounet
Sheet Author
Translator
macro options for decks ! like the ability to deal a number of cards depending on a skill or a characteristic for example. Moreover, the ability to select several cards at once in a player hand, stack them and play them at once.
Having the option to shuffle so you can have upside down cards (especially for tarot decks) and being able to mix decks, have stacks and draw from the bottom/place cards at the bottom again and inserting randomly (for several trading card games) would be a really great thing. Sorting decks (for me that would be alphabetically) would be really really great as well.
I'm just looking into what the card decks can do and wanted the community's help: I'm looking at importing the Pathfinder card game cards into a deck (well, many decks) to try and play remotely with my brother and a military friend who will be moving soon :( &nbsp; One of the core elements is "re-making" the player decks with the new cards once that adventure is done. I know we can steal a card during the playing of the adventure, but i'd have to re-make the player deck after the adventure in order to get that card permanently in that players possession, right?&nbsp; I'm only just learning what the card system can and can't do, but i feel like it could play this entire game IF i spent my life taking pictures and entering in all the cards.
I'd love to see enhanced Card Deck options, especially these: The option to output Card Deck actions to chat (e.g. playing a card to the tabletop emotes "Bob plays 2 of Clubs" along with the image of the card). This will create a game log. Connect the Card Decks to other standard Roll20 mechanics, such as character resource fields in Character Sheets. I like to use Cards to visually track things like Ammo, Spells and Crafting in D&D. Because the GM can see the cards in Player's Hands, Card Decks can function as a kind of GM dashboard, where you can quickly see what resources players have in the game. If Cards can interact with (say) repeating fields in a Character Sheet, we can use them to visually represent objects that we're tracking in our character sheets, or to (say) display the number of available spell slots on the game board by the Player's name. Doing anything to connect Card Decks to other Roll20 mechanics would make everthing more powerful and visual.
After adding 801 Dramacards to my campaign I'm all for anything that speed up deck-creation.
1468609758
Thorin
Sheet Author
This is my #1 most wanted feature.
I made a symillar threat here:&nbsp; <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/3664255/improvem" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/3664255/improvem</a>... Moderator&nbsp;Gold suggested I post my comment here as well.&nbsp; " <a href="https://youtu.be/8dHDfaYES5Y" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/8dHDfaYES5Y</a> I made a video to illustrate my points. It would also be nice to have a HOLD option for turn order. In some role playing games you can choose to instead of taking your turn go on hold so you can later interrupt someone elses action or go later. A way to mark a character who's gone on hold would be great. Maybe a little Lock button you can click that holds them at the top of the turn order list." I hope we get these expanded deck options!
I just wanted to add an idea, in case someone is planning to work to implement random infinite decks. It would be nice to implement the repetition of a card in the deck, without need to create all the identical cards. For instance a deck consisting on 7 green, 3 blue, 1 red may be created by uploading just 3 cards and set the number of repetitions rather than upload 11 images.
Oh yeah. Improvement number 4 would make my life soooo much easier <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/2784254/ability-to-duplicate-cards-in-decks/?pageforid=3907140#post-3907140" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/2784254/ability-to-duplicate-cards-in-decks/?pageforid=3907140#post-3907140</a>&nbsp;
I'd also suggest the ability to "show" a specific card to another player. In a game like Love Letter, players need to secretly show individual cards to other players. You can do this now with the "trade" feature, but it's clunky, and the card icon is small and hard to read. This would be a nice addition to player-to-player interaction. &nbsp;
Things like creating card decks from bulk file uploads, etc.&nbsp; would be a huge improvement for a lot of people.
Some way to mass-upload cards instead of doing them one at a time is a must-have, really. I can't deal with how tedious it is to go one at a time.
1491170251
Mike W.
Pro
Sheet Author
I would also be nice to be ablel to Pin the card so that the full size can be seen at all time and scrolls with your VTT scrolling. This way the card is always up and readable when conducting combat. Just a thought.
Was there any progress toward the aspect, or is there a way to change the card orientation from vertical to horizontal?&nbsp;
The timeline on this will likely come down to licensing. Our hope is to have some games that force this issue in the coming year.
1532739376

Edited 1532739429
It's long term, but ... really +1 this kind of improvement would be really useful o / What would be useful too would be to be able to specify on the deck wich player have access to it ! Like for the character or the Handout o/ And the ability to make pile on the table would be incredible ! (I find all this suggestion too who ask i think for Improvement of deck system but with largely less vote o/)&nbsp; <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1244160/slug%7D" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1244160/slug%7D</a> &nbsp;= (Pile/token Deck on table and more thing) <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/3631455/slug%7D" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/3631455/slug%7D</a> &nbsp;= (Assign Deck to player , Charsheet Work with card and Deck) <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/2270445/slug%7D" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/2270445/slug%7D</a> &nbsp;= (Add Notes &amp; GM Notes to Deck , Market work for Deck) <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1448857/slug%7D" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1448857/slug%7D</a> &nbsp;= (Some ask of organisation Tool from a lonely Knight D': ...)&nbsp; <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/6289678/slug%7D" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/6289678/slug%7D</a> &nbsp;= (Name of the card with a Hover of the mouse and organisation tool for make easier deck creation ~) <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1292722/slug%7D" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1292722/slug%7D</a> &nbsp;= (Texte on card , and name of the card with a Hover of the mouse, this one have a lot of vote but no answer :C)&nbsp; <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/3871809/slug%7D" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/3871809/slug%7D</a> &nbsp;= (Deck of Card on the tabletop ) <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/3599585/slug%7D" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/3599585/slug%7D</a> &nbsp;= (Macro support !) <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/2784254/slug%7D" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/2784254/slug%7D</a> &nbsp;= (Ability to duplicate Card in the Deck)&nbsp; <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/3023440/slug%7D" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/3023440/slug%7D</a> &nbsp;= (A lot of thing who join all that is already asked) A lot of alone suggestion ask for improvement of the card system, they want more tool who will help for organise table top game with card o/&nbsp; I think they are all important and i want that too , Please ~ it's would be so great ( ^ω^)b
We need 'hands' to be assignable to characters rather than just players, and to have those 'hands' accessible if the regular owning player isn't available. This is important in games where cards can be used for tracking things assigned to players.
Has anyone mentioned alphabetic sorting yet?
1583348905
Mino
Marketplace Creator
While we're at it, I'd like for animations to be supported for cards. Aside from that, I'm all in on everything else, bulk uploading cards, splitting decks up, having discard piles, all of that.
Being able to rearrange and order the decks (and macros) would be great. Being able to rearrange the order of multiple decks in the actual playfield would also be keen. And definite +1 to being able to access players hands if they aren't present.
I must say, the Decks feature is barely MVP (Minimum Viable Product).&nbsp; The use cases it supports are extremely limited and narrow.&nbsp; Take a game like Gloomhaven, which is very card based.&nbsp; With COVID, we're having to find a solution to play.&nbsp; Card and Deck management make porting the game practically impossible. 1) Looking at your hand to find the cards you want to play is unusable.&nbsp; You have to scroll through a small interface above your avatar clicking on each one to have a closer look.&nbsp; The time it takes going between cards, especially if you want to compare cards, is quite tedious.&nbsp; The slight workaround is to place the cards onto the table and examine them there, but that requires table space for up to 4 players that is non-deterministic as some players have different hand sizes and each hand changes over the state of the game. 2) Deck management is non-existent for players and tedious for the GM.&nbsp; A player must tell the GM what cards they want at the beginning of the scenario.&nbsp; So too with when they level and add new cards.&nbsp; They will need the GM to modify their ability deck.&nbsp; So too with attack modifier decks, which become very complex with bless and curse, again, requiring the GM to modify decks on the fly. To mitigate, we must use table space to place all cards into and the play manually segments cards into their own "piles".&nbsp; 3) Shuffling is, again, only a GM capability.&nbsp; So if a player wants to short rest, they must send all of the cards they want to the deck discard (by deleting them on the table, which is massively unintuitive itself).&nbsp; The recall feature cannot be used as the only way to have Active and Lost cards are on the table.&nbsp; Then the GM has to shuffle the deck, pull one card, then "deal" the remaining back to the player.&nbsp; Then finally, once the player gets their cards back, they are in a different order and they must order them again, without any automatic lexicographic sort ability.&nbsp; Manual based upon tiny images. 4) The deck on-table display is tiny and fixed.&nbsp; There's a constant shuffle button on decks that have no cards in them.&nbsp; The text display is on mouse over only.&nbsp; The functions are bolted on without any context menu support.&nbsp; If you have multiple decks (4 player Attack Modifier decks, 1 monster Attack Modifier deck, multiple Monster ability decks, 4 player Ability decks) it's nearly impossible to function and not accidentally make a mistake.&nbsp; And mistakes are non-trivial to correct as undo does not work. 5) Ownership is either everyone or just the GM.&nbsp; You can place ownership on a card if you treat it like a token, but that gets removed whenever it is placed into a hand or back into the "deck". 6) You can Zoom view a card in your hand or when it is played to the top of the deck.&nbsp; But not on the table.&nbsp; Two different user flows.&nbsp; One requires clicking, the other zooming (which zooming has never been one of the table's strong suits as the zoom is linear, but zooming is inherently exponential). Some of the good things have been play card face down and the ability to treat the card as either a drawing or token.&nbsp; By treating it as a token, it snaps to the grid and makes pilling much more intuitive.&nbsp; The hex map and all of the token management is awesome (though I would love to have a more intuitive numbering system for each monster). If I boil this down, most of the Deck systems are shallow, not providing a lot of functionality beyond barely basic systems.&nbsp; There are some workarounds, but typically put the entire onus upon the GM, even for many player related tasks.&nbsp; I know there is always a cost and prioritization to development, but the Deck system feels like a barely functional solution that has seen no love in many, many years.
1585956210

Edited 1585956400
I've actually posted one suggestion here:&nbsp; <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/8342656/faster-deck-building" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/8342656/faster-deck-building</a> &nbsp;to do with decks. But it looks like it's included here. Should I shift my vote over? I'm wondering if it's better to split the mods out, or have a "super mod" - or something in between. Some effort will be needed to take the decks away from the very basic MVP - But it will need a lot of time and thinking. Some of the component ideas however, may be smaller and easier deliverables that can be released quicker to improve short term performance / usability. Any thoughts? Edit: Anthony N - agree with your comments too. The most useful thing I've found to do with decks so far is to use them as tokens / counters for when I'm doing games where players need to track several pools on the fly, so basically a load of identical "cards" ! :-)
I think you missed the point?