I’m generally fine with reasonable AI usage. I’m not overly married to making the best reference cards for Scrapjacks and the rulebook itself uses AI, so… I figured I’d give this a shot and see how bad the process would be.

They came out pretty decent, honestly, but on test print the font is quite small. I sized them for 3.5×2.5″ cards (TCG sized) but it might be wise to size them up to more tarot sized.

The AI did fine to start out. There’s a bit of repetition on the cards that really isn’t necessary. Here, it tells you the Tier I enemies get one action dice, but it also tells you they get a Free Move +1D6. Accurate, but repetitive. The cards appear otherwise fine… but I found it hard to keep the AI focused in its execution.

Here, I fed the AI a table that included one model with an additional rule. It started applying that little box to every card. I don’t fully mind it and I’m honestly somewhat lazy here, so I didn’t correct. It also named the weapon. This monster has no particular weapon (just the default) but the AI decided here it would flavor the attack as “Rending Claws.”

By the time I got all the way up to the Apex enemies, a few things had changed. It modified the stat line (again, repetitive) and layered the Apex trait over the monster portrait. Acceptable, but odd. I also had to repeatedly re-teach it the statlines. Around the time I got to the first Tier III enemies, it started making up traits altogether. I repasted the trait tables in and set it back on course. I had to do the same, once again, by the time I got to the Apex tier.

That’s the other catch. I couldn’t just feed it the rules and ask it to make the cards. I had to convert everything into Excel tables and feed it those tables. I was only a few steps removed from just making Excel unit cards, which probably would have taken me less time overall and produced a more easily controlled and clean product.

Would I do it again?

We’ll see. I can somewhat see it working. These aren’t terrible. There’s issues, but I could have fixed them by adding more to my manual tables. All the lore blurbs? Totally made up by the AI. I could have included the single sentence descriptions from the book… but I actually liked these. The game barely has any lore to begin with, so it’s fine.

Another thing worth noting, this time in regards to the ruleset: it has… oddities. I’ve come to expect this from this writer, but it has the occasional annoying rule that’s noncommittal. Here’s an example:

The Maghook will knock prone or pull an enemy to you. This makes sense in your hands, but when an enemy has it, you have to select which option the enemy would choose. It’s nothing dire, just a touch odd.

Note that the Adaptive Mutation switches out its traits. Honestly, I’d find this annoying in practice and just not execute it.

I’m still excited to get to the rules… eventually. They’ve fallen down my priority list against my current set of games I’m working on. I’m hoping to run it at least as a solo campaign at some point. These cards will come in handy, though, as having to reference all the special rules would have driven me batty. They’re in two different parts of the rulebook, and I believe I found at least one that is only listed on the monster’s profile, not on the master lists of traits and apex traits.

For anyone else looking to play, I’m not holding these close to my chest. Here’s a link to both the PowerPoint and PDF versions. They should print as standard TCG sized cards. If printing the PowerPoint, make sure to do so in full scale (and in PowerPoint–I’m unsure how Google sheets will work). If in PDF, again, make sure you select to print in the actual size/scale in your print dialogue.

EDIT: I have updated this to include small and large cards. The large cards should print at 4×5″, with the small ones being 2.5×3.5″.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1tzPmDAL4aKdh3JlFWJDoJ6k9GzI-pZ-H?usp=drive_link

Hopefully someone gets use out of these. Enjoy!