Author Topic: Carcassonne Player Aids  (Read 10039 times)

Offline coleman07

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Carcassonne Player Aids
« on: July 20, 2014, 07:11:24 PM »
I was looking on the geek for some player aids and didn't find what I was looking for so I have decided to embark on a project. Instead of a single player aid for all expansions, I thought it would be nice to have individual aids for each expansion so people are not overwhelmed with information not pertinent to that particular gaming experience.

My first question - has someone done this and I am not looking hard enough?

Second question - I would like to put miniature pictures of some tiles so people have a gist of what scores. If I scan in the the tile index, what software would allow me to cut out pieces and put them into my player aid? I have Office Complete and photoshop.

Thank you,

Sean Coleman

Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=895.0

Offline asparagus

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Re: Carcassonne Player Aids
« Reply #1 on: July 20, 2014, 10:48:05 PM »
Instead of a single player aid for all expansions, I thought it would be nice to have individual aids for each expansion so people are not overwhelmed with information not pertinent to that particular gaming experience.
I find this a really confusing idea. If you just take one expansion on its own there is not a lot to be confused about  the problems come when lot's of expansions are combined. So if you have lots of expansions you will have lots of aids and it has not helped.

If you are thinking of software,  then maybe you mean that someone can set checkboxes to state what expansions are in play.

Second question - I would like to put miniature pictures of some tiles so people have a gist of what scores. If I scan in the the tile index, what software would allow me to cut out pieces and put them into my player aid? I have Office Complete and photoshop.
I am unclear if you mean aids to help people get the rules right or help them to play better. The latter might be considered cheating.

For helping people to get the rules right I think the two biggest issues are:
1. Keeping score
2. a summary of the turn order

For 1. a spreadsheet could be created. At least if you play Messengers or Robbers you cannot replace the scoring with a spread sheet as the scoring becomes part of the game.
For 2. there is a turn order summary in the reference section of the complete annotated rules, but that is overwhelming unless you have studied the rules.

Offline coleman07

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Re: Carcassonne Player Aids
« Reply #2 on: July 21, 2014, 12:04:15 AM »
I have seen some player aids on the Geek with pictures of the tiles and the score they would get if completed. I can't find pictures online of different tiles so I was thinking maybe I would scan the tile sheet that comes with the game and cut out the tile I want to put in to my player aid using photoshop or publisher. So, I was asking what software would allow me to get images of single tiles for my player aid.

When I play Carcassonne, I don't use all the expansions. I might use 2 - 3. If I have a single sheet with all 9 + expansions and we have players who are not experts at the game, it seems to me it would be more helpful to have a little card for expansion #x with the scoring methods, card for expansion y with its scoring rules, etc. I might be wrong. There is a lot to this game and so I want to make it as easy as possible for the less experienced players.

Offline Paul

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Re: Carcassonne Player Aids
« Reply #3 on: July 21, 2014, 12:43:44 AM »
This was actually an old project of mine, which was unfortunately abandoned due to other projects I'm trying to finish.

It's was interactive CAR whereas you tick in the boxes for which expansions you would use and then it generates a CAR for those only along with their footnotes etc. with table of content.
  Made for tablets in mind. Rest assure, it's a daunting task. I also felt that this aid was far too much work than worth, compared to loading up the CAR (see below).

As for a slimmed rule book: The CAR comes with bookmarks. The PDF viewer has a button to open these up and you simply click on an expansion it jumps to it in an instant.
  My bookmarks button was the middle of three, topleft in Adobe Reader.

Hope this helps!
World record holder for a single game of Carcassonne using 10 007 tiles!

Offline danisthirty

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Re: Carcassonne Player Aids
« Reply #4 on: July 21, 2014, 05:31:51 AM »
Hi coleman, welcome to the forums!  :)

I prefer to use just 2 or 3 expansions when I play Carcassonne too as I find it to be far more enjoyable trying to use my resources intelligently rather than just legally as tends to be the struggle if I'm playing with 200 tiles or more!

With regard to your player aids, I'm not really sure I can help as I don't fully understand the question. I've not seen many "player aids" as you've described but I'd be very interested to see what you come up with and it sounds like a very worthwhile project. I certainly don't think this would be cheating any more than someone could be a cheat for having played more than the others and familiarised themselves with the rules from experience! It would just help to level out the playing field a bit which would lead to a more enjoyable game for everyone in my opinion.

The second question depends on what you're using to put the aids together with I suppose. Would it be something in Word or... what? You can "cut out" (crop?) the tile images in pretty much anything. You can even do it in MS Paint if you've got a bit of time to spare!

I hope this helps to some extent. Good luck!

Dan

Offline obervet

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Re: Carcassonne Player Aids
« Reply #5 on: July 21, 2014, 05:47:14 AM »
For cutting out bits of images (such as individual tiles from a sheet of tiles), Photoshop works quite well -- it's one of the things I use for making the CAR and for editing images for my job.  It does have a bit of a learning curve, however.
« Last Edit: July 21, 2014, 05:50:04 AM by obervet »

Offline joshgambit

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Re: Carcassonne Player Aids
« Reply #6 on: July 26, 2014, 07:02:46 AM »
I would be very interested in this when you have it finished!

Offline Bixby

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Re: Carcassonne Player Aids
« Reply #7 on: July 26, 2014, 03:57:28 PM »
I HIGHLY recommend this file that is hosted on BoardGameGeek.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/68071/carcassonne-expansion-selector-cards

We printed all of these cards and use them to select which expansions (or parts of expansions) are in play. It is a great visual summary. They can be used to randomly generate expansion sets for play too if you want. Very handy.
My KARMA ran over your DOGMA


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