Software for creating and publishing game cards

Question

I'm looking for a program that can layout and manage custom cards and tokens for tabletop games (eg. Magic the Gathering, Munchkin, Arkham Horror).

I am specifically looking for solutions that support the following:

• Multiple common card sizes
• Customizable card layouts (CSS or similar scripted method as a minimum, drag/drop GUI preferred)
• Collection management and browsing (can handle multiple decks within one project)
• Individual and batch exporting to image (jpg, png or other common image formats) and PDF
• Batch printing

The following features would also be very attractive, but they are not required:

• Support for custom card sizes
• List-style overview of primary card fields
• More advanced set management and browsing (eg. having different expansions within one project and the ability to browse all cards in a deck or only those within a particular expansion of the deck)
• Supports SVG images
• Print/Export with crop guides for manual cutting
• Export to common commercial printer/cutter format(s)

I already know of Magic Set Editor and Strange Eons, and while both fit my needs to a degree I am interested in finding and comparing similar products.

I would prefer open source software, but freeware and commercial software is welcome. Online solutions are acceptable as well.

Answer 1

Adobe InDesign

Cost: ~$800 one off, or ~$20 a month (Renting through the Adobe Cloud)
Free Trial Here

In the professional world you will find that InDesign, is used.
It is not a tool designed specifically for this.
I believe a large portion of this is because InDesign is already being used for settign the rule book, and in other products by the design team.

• Multiple common card sizes: Partial You'll have to add the as custom paper size, but they can be saved and used in multiple documents youself as custom paper size
• Customizable card layouts Yes, Create a master page, and then fill in the rest using XML import, or data merge (also called mail merge), or by creating pages and doing it by hand.
• Collection management and browsing (can handle multiple decks within one project): Yes Yes, many pages in one document, many documents in one book, many books in one library. You can break it down how you want.
• Individual and batch exporting to image and PDF *Individual Yes, Batch Partial, Individually you can convert a document to PDF, JPEG, HTML or a couple of other formats. I can only work out how to convert a book to PDF or Postscript (via the print book option)

• Batch printing ??, I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but it can print a whole book at at time, and you can set it to collate, do multiple copies etc.

• Support for custom card sizes Yes, this is the only way you can get card sizes.

• List-style overview of primary card fields Indirect, Partial if you are managing your fields with data merge or Import XML then you can view them in a list with any CSV/XML viewing tool
• More advanced set management and browsing *No*, beyound the ability to organise documents into books etc I mentioned above no.
• Supports SVG images Yes
• Print/Export with crop guides for manual cutting Yes, When exporting go to marks and bleeds and turn on crop marks.
• Export to common commercial printer/cutter format(s) Yes, Adobe is big enough that it largely defines what commercial printers support.

also, you didn't ask, but it sounded like it would be useful to you:

• Style sheet equivalent so can change style accorss whole deck: Yes, using character (and/or paragraph styles)

Here is a blog post where someone talks about how they set it up. A google will show up that data merge is very popular for making card games.