Ways to Enhance Your Tabletop Games Using 3 x 5 Index Cards

Well this is one of those rare posts of mine where I'm not doing a conversion, but instead I'm giving you folks something else to use for your games.  Now some of you may already do this, and if so then this isn't really for you.

Now we've all had some amount of 3x5 inch index cards laying around for one reason or another.  Their versatility is quite extensive.  So lets get into some of the uses you can get out of these cards for your tabletop games.

--Step 1:  Set Up your Word Doc--
In this step we're going to make a template document to use as the base for all of our 3x5 inch index cards.

1. Open your new blank document.  Make sure that spacing is normal, and not double spaced.
2. Go to the layout tab and click the small icon in the bottom right hand corner of the "Page Setup" part of the ribbon.  This will open a new window.
3. Now select the "Paper" tab.  In this tab you will see the Paper Size at the top, and a drop down menu with dozens of paper sizes.  What your looking for is "Index card 3x5in." option.  This will then alter the size of the page to handle creating 3x5 inch documents.

It's that easy.  Now save the document size and your base template is ready to be used.

Created by ceeeKay, found on Reddit.

--Step 2:  Pick Your Project--
There's a lot you can do at this point for projects involving these cards.  Now something I would point out that you could add to help with organization/formating of these is to make use of tables to help keep things looking good.

• Spell/Power Cards:  So it can be tedious to constantly look up spells in the players handbook, or sort through a character sheet to find a specific power (I'm looking at you Hero System).  While there are spell cards you can buy, this is by far the cheapest method of creating them.  However this requires a lot of work on your part.  Now with powers the same applies, but you at least have less work to do.
• Equipment Cards:  Do you got a bunch of special items you want to dull out as the GM?  Well this is the way to do it.  Easy to pass out as loot and you can add a picture to help illustrate what the weapon looks like. 
• Character Sheet:  Well it's not practical, but there are some folks who may not have a lot of room for character sheet, their books, and dice on a small table.  In this case you could punch a hole through the cards and add a ring to hold them all together.
• Character Tokens:  Now using a thick cardstock is typically prefered for this, but you can just as easily use these 3x5 cards for creating these as well.  Of course they won't handle too big of pictures, but but you can easily utilize them for a few 1 inch images for tokens.  Just cut out and past them to something and your in business.

These are of course just a few things you can do.  You may have other thoughts on what you can do with these cards.  But these are pretty much the practical projects that I could come up with.  So what else can you you guys think of?  Do you have some sort of project that people could make use of?

If you have an idea and want to share it, post it below for others to pick up on and use.