TL;DR Use the custom card feature in Tabletop Simulator and tools like Dextrous or NanDeck for design and integration.
Using Tabletop Simulator's Custom Card Feature
Creating custom decks in Tabletop Simulator is straightforward. You can start by navigating to Items > Components > Custom, and selecting "Card." This allows you to place a card template on the table where you can upload images for the front and back of the cards. Images can be uploaded directly to the Steam cloud or linked via Imgur [1:1]. For those struggling with image formats, using the built-in deck editor found in the modding folder of your local Steam files can help convert and manage images correctly
[2:1].
Design Tools for Custom Cards
While Tabletop Simulator is excellent for playtesting, designing cards often requires external tools. Many creators use programs like Paint Shop Pro or free alternatives like MS Paint for initial designs [4:1]. For more advanced features, Affinity Suite offers a comprehensive package for vector graphics and publishing without subscription fees
[4:5]
[4:9]. Additionally, Dextrous is highly recommended for linking card designs from Google Sheets and exporting them as .JSON files for easy integration into TTS
[4:2].
Importing and Managing Decks
Once your card designs are ready, importing them into Tabletop Simulator can be done using various online platforms. Gundams.dev provides a deck builder that supports direct import into TTS through community mods [5]. Alternatively, Deckplanet is another platform being considered for integration
[5:1]. Discord communities also offer support and updates for managing custom decks and finding players
[5:4].
Programming and Advanced Customization
For those interested in further customization beyond basic card creation, programming in Lua can enhance the functionality of your tabletop experience. While it may seem daunting, many users have successfully implemented character sheets and other interactive elements without prior experience [3:2]. Exploring existing mods and community resources can provide valuable guidance and templates for advanced customization.
I use them printed and I just found out how easy they are to create in Table Top Simulator (which I sometimes use to play with people who live far away)
Is there a guide for how to do this? I'm kinda new to TTS but I've made PDF cards for a homebrew Kill Team that I'd like to put in :)
It's surprisingly easy. Go to Items - Components - Custom and select "Card." Then, click to position the card template on the table. Next, you can choose an image for the front and back. You can upload the image to the Steam cloud or use an Imgur link. I just created a few more. It's very quick and easy.
The images are your own creation though right? Are you creating any of these for community use by any chance? The designs and compactness look great!
Awesome, thank you!
This is awesome. Would love to print some for my local group
im trying to make a deck and all the front of the cards are jpg or png but the front of the cards wont load when i try to make a custom deck. it says that its using unsupported pictures ive been trying ages to do this
How are you doing this?
The way I do it if its a series of cards I will use the deck makers which converts to the correct form and then I upload to imgur.
I then link the image front and back which then makes it, if you dont use the correct number of cards it will turn out incorrect like youre tying to summon the one card from yugioh.
I use the deck builder in local files of tts on steam and I download images on Google that are all jpgs and pngs and wont import
so you're downloading the images and throwing them into the deadk builder and exporting as a PNG then uploading toooooo where?
from what my friend told me you just save the deck and upload it as a custom deck with the front and back of the cards
Hopefully you figured this out by now. I’ve had the best success by using the built in deck editor. Browse your local steam files for tabletop simulator, right click the steam icon. Go into the modding folder and open the deck editor you can pull your images in from there. Set the card back image as the last slot using the default layout in the deck editor. Save the deck and export the image as a PNG. Then create a custom deck within tabletop simulator set the exported image as the front of the card and set the back as your back image. Set the cards to the number of images you have and that’s it.
I figured out by this comment thank you so much for the help
No problem, happy to help.
eu to querendo fazer uma mesa de 3D&T victory, mas eu queria que tivesse alguma forma de importar as fichas em PDF pro programa e que desse pra personalizar, pelo que eu vi pra personalizar precisa programar em Lua, eu nunca programei em Lua mas pouco que vi ele me lembra HTML5 então talvez eu aprenderia rapido
mas eu não quero perder tempo estudando lua só pra ficar emburrando com a barriga esse RPG que quero tanto mestrar, tem outra forma? uma que mesmo não sendo boa, que ajude o básico ou o suficiente pra minha ideia ser realizada
Até onde eu sei, não. O único jeito é programando, mesmo.
Mas não precisa temer. Mestrei uma one-shot de um sistema baseado em Fear & Hunger e consegui montar a ficha sem nunca ter mexido com Lua. Demorou no máximo um dia, porque tinha bastante informação. Ele te deixa pôr contadores de valor e campos pra preencher, basta mudar o tamanho e a posição deles.
Pesquisa por "character sheet" na oficina do TTS e filtra pelos mais inscritos, é o primeiro resultado. Se entender inglês, vai conseguir se virar com o resto. O próprio mod te ajuda com isso. O corpo do código já vem pronto, e o código em si é cheio de comentários e bem mastigado.
Boa sorte, OP! :)
Talvez se você usar o tablet pra abrir um google docs? Nunca usei assim, mas talvez dê certo.
Transforma a ficha em imagem e importa para o tabletop, apos isso onde tem numeros você usa algum contador (busca na oficina) para os numeros. Onde tem texto ou você usa o texto do Tabletop ou usa caixa de texto (na oficina tambem) que combina mulher, para habilidades eu recomendo usar cartas customizadas (oficina).
Bem se quiser uma ajuda me cutuca.
Hi everyone ! I'm new to this sub, and to tabletop design in general. I wanted to know what are the tools / apps / website that I should use to design cards ? I've heard of tabletop simulator, is it good ?
Also, how can you print a custom deck of cards ?
Thanks everyone !
Affinity and Dextrous. Dextrous exports to TTS. I used Print and Play Games for physical components.
+1 for Dextrous. Write out all cards in a Google sheet, link it to the card design in Dextrous, export as a .JSON to playtest in TTS. Literally the best tool I've seen in this sub
Affinity publisher + data merge has been my whole existence for a few years now. I worked as an animator/illustrator for almost 2 decades and never thought I'd be spending my free time using spreadsheets and calculators. But .. That's the life if you want to make a card game.
If you are even a bit familiar with html and excel NanDeck is a great card/tile maker with lots of features for quick prototyping and making changes.
Affinity Suite has been working great for me. It’s a one time purchase instead of a subscription, and you get Design, Photo and Publisher. I’m able to use the same license on multiple devices and there’s also iOS apps for it.
Also, The Game Crafter has many templates that you can use for designing cards and boards.
The Affinity Suite has replaced Adobe software for me. Does what I need for a fair price, no subscription.
I use Affinity designer to do Vector graphic work and am about to make the jump into the full Affinity V2 license. The Perpetual license is the biggest draw for me because of all the nightmares you read about trying to get out of the Adobe subscriptions.
its worth having V2, huge saving compared to the Adobe subs if you don't mind not having some of the fancier tools and actions that Adobe implements to make things quicker for designers
Tabletop Simulator isn’t for designing cards. It’s for Playtesting. It’s literally a digital tabletop.
I design my cards using Paint Shop Pro but there are free programs like msPaint that work just fine for prototypes. Prototypes don’t have to be pretty.
If you’re an artist you probably already have the tools you need. Just use whatever art program you’re used to.
I’m you’re not an artist, just use msPaint and then either hire an artist and graphic designer for publishing or pitch to publishers.
Good luck!
someone has already built a mod for tabletop simulator that supports importing custom decks from gundams(dot)dev
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3367590649
the workshop hasn't been updated to include the newest card reveals. That's its one flaw
This one does (it’s what everyone on the discord is using)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3453905730
thanks for this i had no idea i would edit the main post with this updated link but i cant
Yep, there is also a related discord server as well to help find people to play against
Wat discord?
It’s been good for finding people to practice with!
I'm so ready for this game
I'd love to reach out to the dev to see if we can import via Deckplanet as well
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3499464644
I made a scripted workshop for everyone to enjoy.
8 Custom Boards and 44 Custom Decks
Decks: 38 by Krosuna, 5 by MegariusX and 1 by Alonecapon.
Boards: 3 by Andsushi, 3 by Taytertots, 1 by wandering__caretaker and 1 by Krosuna
Character Buttons are scripted to setup characters on the player mats.
Leave a like on the workshop if possible, thanks.
As someone new to TTS, how do I add this to TTS?
Subscribe to the workshop, then in-game in a lobby, on the games' tab, the third row, colored blue, is the workshop section were your subscribed items are. Find the workshop there and load it. You can also search workshops by name on the search bar at the top of the tab.
This looks incredible! I can’t wait to check it out! The quality looks so good from the photos, very well done
Thanks, I did spend multiple month's learning Lua from scratch and scripting to get this to it's current state, hope you enjoy :3
I actually used your bosrd to introduce some friends to unmatched. As it really nailed the atmosphere and thematics for non unmatchers!
Great work! And love all the little details like the 3d objects on old maps and the music player!
That's great to hear, I hope you all enjoyed it! And thanks, sadly those maps that I spent quite some time decorating had to be removed due to being official content but I'm glad you got to enjoy them :3
im looking the heroes and some of the cards have no effects. For example gojo reversal red and overflow of cursed energy have no text. Giratina and Corviknight are very strong at least as a first look ( Great work ), is there a way to look all the decks outside of the TTS ?
Edit: About Alucard's attack swarming strike i think it should say that you can play it face up and target 2 spaces more, same with Masamune or don't with masamune because its a double attack and you dont want it to be canceled.
why does it include underage anime girls
I’ve been working on a card-driven board game and I’m building a small version of it in Tabletop Simulator for blind playtesting. Paper tests with friends have gone fine, but I need brutal blind feedback — and this is my first attempt at getting something playable on TTS.
The variant I’m starting with is a dueling game: players fight and race over a central board while using cards for attacks, movement, and abilities. The cards drive the action, but the board adds a layer of positioning and tactics.
Since this is just a condensed version for testing mechanics and feel, I want to make sure it’s not just functional but actually enjoyable to play. For those of you who’ve put prototypes on TTS before: what pitfalls should I watch out for, and how can I make the experience smooth for playtesters?
Also card design, I'm still not finalised on a design 100%, but I have tried to make it "pretty" for TTS, is this a good move or a bad move?
(Attached is a very early screenshot — still rough, but gives a sense of the direction.)
Also, I’m open to any feedback beyond TTS advice.
With prototypes, the most smoothness of the experience can be achieved by making sure there's no unnecessary friction - make sure objects are laid out in a way that helps game setup, makes for easy access and doesn't get in the way.
Without knowing more about the specific pain points of playing your table layout of the game, it's difficult to give anything better than "try to have good decisions and avoid bad ones".
Doing early design of the cards can be bad if you put in a lot of time into something you'll have to throw out later for something better, but in general it is a good idea to test out the entire process of creating a card and putting it in the game. Now you know what can be done, maybe you even ran into some misconceptions in your head and had to correct them.
Have your players play the game, watch them, note down what takes them a long time or causes a lot of complaining. Those are the things you'll want to fix.
I guess, at least in my mind, there's a balance to strike between my intention of having core mechanics blind play tested and not having people focus on something I didn't plan on (aka basic / poor design / card look).
I am trying to be cognisant of the fact that people will gravitate towards things that appear really 'under done'. Hence the card designs being a bit more than just basic
Also a question I meant to ask in the post, What is the best way to make a moveable counter?
I am using the dice as in the image, but sometimes they need to move to another square (retaining their current value), and when they move at the moment they tend to be rolled and change value.
Better solutions?
The two simplest ways to reduce accidental rolls are:
Set the physics to locked. (under Options->Physics in the top menu). This will give around 25% less accidental rolls.
The other, better, but more complex way is to use snap points. Ideally tagged snap points. Dice that snap to these points when placed are much less likely to roll.
If your dice are only used as numbers, then as Plat251 said, replacing them with something more suitable to counting is the better choice. If you wanted to go the extreme over-engineered route, you could make a fake die object with 6 states, so players can select the state to set the face, but will never be able to roll it.
There's a dedicated electronic-style counter object under Objects -> Tools. It can be moved around, and its number can be incremented or decremented, or inputted directly.
Put the rules in the in-game notebook.
Make sure all of your custom 3D models and image files are hosted on a reliable server.
Is there any concerns with just using the steam cloud storage for this?
No idea. I've had to ditch several games from my Workshop subscription this year because of broken asset file links. People delete their Imgur posts or GDrive folders to free up space, which makes their modules break.
It's happened to me too -- purged out a bunch of old stuff, accidentally took out the texture for a pog I'd published.
For me personally, its been using scripting to automated the sections that would otherwise be time-consuming or tedious in a virtual tabletop.it makes the game feel a lot more professional AND most importantly, reduces the barrier between learning and playing the game :)
Ok your in my head, I am working on implementing player movement by button click. It's not going to be fancy just forward or back 1 space per click.
Im in your head? As in we're thinking the same thing?
If you want to implement automatic movements then yeah whatsapp meta is great for that.
One tip is when you give it all ur GUIDs, name each object really simply so then as you talk to meta you can use basic terminology easily and it knows what you mean. For example:
Blue GUID = "282h38" Red GUID = "d6dh3j" Blue Button GUID = "hdudbd"
Then you can say things like "I want a script so that when I push the Blue Button I want Blue to move forward a number of pixels.
Hope that makes sense.
If you need any help I'd be happy to try and help if u invite me into ur TTS game or I can show you mine. Ive got some great scripts that you could actually just steal for your game. One of which is a simple sound cube thats scripted so whenever a player moves their pawn a sfx plays of footsteps which is really cool
For scripting get yourself setup with ttslua in visual studio (i recently put a fix on a post to get it working on the latest visual studio release if needed) and then pay for a month of claude ai code if you're not confident with lua scripting.. even when you have a good grasp of scripting I've found claude to really take the pain out of repetetive stuff.. prompt it with the tts documentation and then tell it what you have in mind and then push it to the game to test it, report back to Claude if there are any errors or its not doing what you thought.. I've found that its been great with working out scripting but not so good at ui (but i think that comes down to tts ui is really weird and just doesn't behave how you expect)
I've been working on a set of cards for the game and wanted to load them into TTS in order to playtest. For anyone who's made custom content for the game whats the best way to take my cards from something like Strange Eons, and port it over to TTS?
It's pretty easy, but there's slightly different steps depending on if you're wanting to import one card or several.
I've not used Strange Eons, but I assume it generates an image of a card. If you have multiple cards you want to import that have the same back, then the fastest way is to import them as a "custom deck".
First go through your computer files: inside the steam folder under steamapps, you should find your Tabletop Simulator folder (easiest way is once you're in your Steam folder, search for Tabletop Simulator). Inside that folder are a few folders for the modding tools. You're looking for the deck tool.
Once you open up this program, you'll be presented with a grid for the deck. If you open a new deck, you'll stipulate how many cards in a row, and how many rows of cards. Then select and drag your cards into the screen. It should populate with all your cards, but just check that one of them didn't open in a separate window. Then save this as an image locally.
Open Tabletop Simulator and just get to some empty table space. On the top bar, you can select objects, and select custom objects. Look for the custom deck, and drag it to the table. A popup will appear asking for the dimensions of the image (so how many cards per row and how many rows of cards) and how many cards are you bringing in. Fill these two out, and then for the front of the card, click the blank spot to be able to navigate and find your image on your computer. Steam will then prompt you to upload it to its cloud. Once that's done, it'll have a url that's listed in the space. For the back, do the same thing but just of one image of the card back. Now, if you want this card back to perfectly match the ones already in whatever mod you're using, the easiest way is to right click one of the existing cards, and copy the url (make sure it is the full url) of whatever is listed in the card backs. That way TTS will use the same image. And voila, you're done.
However, if what you want to do is just a couple of investigator cards, the easiest way is to import a custom card rather than a custom deck. Drag and drop the custom card, and just fill out the prompts. Select the orientate horizontally button, that way when you are examining the image holding ALT, it is on its side.
A few extra tips to complement what Knot_I said, the player and encounter backs used in the TTS mod are https://i.imgur.com/EcbhVuh.jpg (Player) and https://i.imgur.com/sRsWiSG.jpg (Encounter) - that way the cards will match and you won't be able to tell from the card backs :)
Thank you both so much, was able to get a much better image in. Was really annoying that you could tell which cards were “real” and which weren’t.
Thanks for posting this, I had the same question. Glad I did a search before asking!
Hello everyone, looking for someone to show me the ropes to Tabletop Simulator. I'm willing to pay for this service and we can discuss payment and how many sessions. I'm not the most tech savvy person, but feel learning the program to design my own games would be a huge help.
Thanks.
I might be willing to spend a little time on this. Examples of my work are here. I am in the US, EST timezone. Feel free to pm me.
I'd be willing to show you for free one day, you cna learn most everything you need (outside scripting which requires a programming background and will take months if not years).
It's pretty easy to get a game up and running!
Don't be a dick.
how is providing information being a dick?
i could've just said look up youtube videos for helpful tutorials instead of paying someone, but instead i made it easier
Hey gang, I got tired of manually creating decks for my playtesters inside Tabletop Simulator, so I built deckie.net.
Upload your cards
It creates a public deckbuilder for you
It extracts the name of the card from the image
Anyone with the link can build a deck.
Export the deck image for TTS.
I can't share links, but the url is visible in the first image. Please give it a try and let me know what you think.
Well done, it's wonderful for where it's at.
It's ability to find the card name is great.
The upload interface doesn't allow me to select all at once in a folder on android.
Creator needs the ability to rename cards.
It doesn't look like you can add or remove cards yet.
Later the ability to have a second deck would be good. Games like Magic use a sideboard and some games like L5R and WWE Raw Deal have a second deck always.
Great work, I look forward to seeing where it goes!
Hey, thanks man.
For the text reading, eventually you will be able to indicate what each piece of text on your card is, like name, type, attack, etc. The text reader will read your cards and know which each piece of text is. Then you'll be able to search and filter by all those categories.
And yeah, there's no adding or removing yet. This was kind of a test to gauge if there was any interest in this tool. And since there is some, I'll be making a more enhanced version where you make an account, can have multiple games associated with your account, can edit, add, and remove individual cards, etc.
As for your cards being split between two folders... I'm not sure what happened there. My recommendation is uploading from a computer, and putting all the cards in one folder first, then uploading them all at once. And there is a 250 max card limit for now.
Thanks again for the comment and the feedback.
Hi,
I love this, it's my favourite content since I have been on this sub, and I am staggered I am the first to comment.
However, "http:/ /deckie.net/" gets an advert for a domain seller.
Hey, thanks for the nice words. You're right about that bad domain - OOPS. Maybe that's why you're the first person to comment.
If you put www.deckie.net, it should take you there.
Awesome!
Some notes of things I would like to see:
Let me delete my deck builder when I update my cards.
Let me upload and delete individual cards.
Let me rename and move cards around.
As is, it is very much fantastic, good work.
I made a discord server so I can get feedback from people using it. Please consider joining:
This looks like it'll be helpful for the images I've made from there
You are a gift to the world sir
xD I'm just glad you like it!
Dextrous is also an amazing card designer, I use it all the time and while it does have paid options, there is a lot you can do with the free version.
how to create custom decks in tabletop simulator
Creating Custom Decks in Tabletop Simulator: Key Steps
Prepare Your Assets:
Open Tabletop Simulator:
Access the Deck Builder:
Upload Your Images:
Set Deck Properties:
Save Your Deck:
Testing Your Deck:
Tips:
Creating custom decks can enhance your gaming experience and allow for personalized gameplay! Enjoy your time in Tabletop Simulator!
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