::A Geek in Korea::

I had reason to go dig out the school’s lamination machine. I had gone to the printer to make D&D Power Cards.These are purely a stat tracking, paperwork avoiding trick players can use to speed up the game. Small cards list out the powers each character have available for each encounter, and as the game moves along you manipulate the cards to keep track of what you’ve done. It was clear from our previous games that anything to speed up our games is something we should look into, and these will help tremendously.

The only problem is that the cards are color coded, and needed to be the same size for easy use. I had the idea of going to the print shop, getting them printed, and then laminating them. Some of the players had theirs done this way, but worked together to complete the task. I needed to work on my own, but they helped me find business card sized lamination sleeves that sped up the process considerably.

All I had to do was get the things printed off, cut, and then laminated. How long could that take? For whatever reason, the printing took a ridiculous 30 minutes for 15 pages! I was very annoyed by that. They printed off 300 pages of black and white papers faster than the color prints I needed. Completely ridiculous. After I got it printed, I was in for another shock. The 15 pages ran nearly 10000 won! I had no idea that it was so expensive, but from now on I’ll be working entirely in black and white for my printing needs.

I tracked down the lamination sheets, and found the perfect size (90×65mm). I went to work and was looking around in an old storage closet when I found a lamination machine. I didn’t know the school even owned one. It hadn’t seen use in all the time I had been working there. The thing was completely covered in dust. Since lamination machines require heat to work, I was nervous that I was going to end up burning down the school when I plugged it in the first time. I asked the director if there was anything I needed to do to prepare the machine. She suggested grabbing some wet tissues and tying to get as much dust as possible off the rollers. I did just that, accidentally sending one of the tissues through the hot rollers. It didn’t do any damage and I was able to get the tissues back out. Luckily they were thick and tough.

It took forever to find the right heat setting for the cards. It turns out the sweet spot was slow rollers, middle/hot temperatures. Anything too hot might cause the cards to curl, and anything too cold didn’t force them together and melt.

I started cutting the cards I needed on my lunch break. I got about six pages of 8 cards each done in an hour. I had all my cut cards laminated by the time the bell rang for my next class. 9 more pages left! I couldn’t get anything else done at work, so put the cards away and waited to go home. When I left work I returned to the print shop, bought a nice, proper pair of scissors, and went home.

At home I spent another hour or so cutting out cards. I’m ready to laminate them all tomorrow if I got to work early enough. I’ll still be the DM for the next set of adventures, but when I actually get a chance to play my character I’ll be set. The other players will be ready, and hopefully eager to try out the new cards next weekend.