Card Goblin
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What is CardGoblin

Stable

A script plus a spreadsheet becomes a print-at-home deck, live as you type.

CardGoblin turns a small script + a spreadsheet into print-at-home cards.

You describe what a card looks like once. Your spreadsheet holds the data — one row per monster, spell, or item. CardGoblin generates the whole deck from those two things and re-renders it live as you type.

   your script            your spreadsheet
  (what a card is)        (what's on them)
         │                        │
         └────────┬───────────────┘
                  ▼
          the whole deck, live
                  │
                  ▼
             print PDF

Why it works this way#

Card design is mostly repetition. Sixty cards that differ only in a name, a number, and an icon are sixty chances to make a copy-paste mistake in a drawing tool. Writing the layout once and the data separately means:

  • Change the layout, every card follows. Move the title, and it moves on all 60.
  • Change one number, only its cards follow. Editing a cell re-renders only the cards generated from that row.
  • Mistakes stay local. A bad cell turns only the cards generated from its row into labelled placeholders — it never blanks the deck. This is a design rule, not an accident: see Errors and diagnostics.

What you get#

  • A language (Goblin script) that reads like an outline: indentation is structure, [brackets] mean "look this up in the data".
  • A spreadsheet whose columns are declared by your code, so every reference is checked as you type — a typo like [helth] squiggles immediately.
  • A live preview of every generated card, and PDF export with cut lines and duplex-mirrored backs.
  • Icons — 888 game glyphs (dice, suits, dominoes, coins) via the Dicier font.

Where your work lives#

The public editor does not upload your Goblin script, spreadsheet rows, or uploaded images. Code and rows autosave to this browser's localStorage; images added through the Assets drawer live in IndexedDB; the current compiled preview is held in memory. See Autosave and Uploaded assets for the details and limits.

Like any web app, your browser may cache CardGoblin's own app code, fonts, and icons so pages load efficiently. That ordinary browser cache is not a project backup or a sync service. Clearing this site's data can erase your local project, so export a project file for anything important.

One exception is artwork you reference by an external https:// URL: the browser fetches that image from its host, which receives an ordinary web request. Upload an image through Assets when you want the artwork itself stored only in this browser.

Who it's for#

Board game designers making print-and-play prototypes, especially decks with structure — rank × suit, one icon per point of health, a cost that changes a banner's color. If your deck is 60 cards of the same shape, this pays off fast. If it's 5 cards of wildly different art, a drawing tool is probably still the better answer.

Where to go next#