I made an open-source app to create physical unidentified cards for magic items my players find
Last month my rogue lifted an unmarked vial off a dead cultist. Instead of reading her a description, I slid a card across the table but the card had a fat black bar covering whatever it actually did.
She carried that mystery for three sessions until the party paid to identify it and I removed the inner card sleeve to reveal the text underneath.
That "unidentified item" trick is a huge hit with my players and I haven't seen it in other card builders (I'm interested to see other implementations if anyone knows of this feature in other card builders).
It's a browser app that turns an item into a print-ready card sized to a standard Magic The Gathering card, so it sleeves up and lives in a standard mtg card binders. You can write the front and back card info in Markdown, pick a border color, hit download, cut it out and glue it to a junk MTG card. Use some black painter's tape and a perfect fit card sleeve to create the inner blackout layer, so you can hide a secret and reveal it later without redoing the card.
Cardsworth runs entirely in your browser and works offline. No account, and it can't vanish on me halfway through a campaign. Every card saves to a YAML file you own, so you can reprint or revise it forever.
Free and open source, with an optional API if you'd rather batch-print a whole hoard at once. (Note: API only works in self-host mode)
Try it live: https://thebigs.github.io/cardsworth/
How it works (supplies + step-by-step): https://thebigs.github.io/cardsworth/how-it-works
Repo: https://github.com/TheBigS/cardsworth Please report any issues you find.
