Getting Started

## Introduction

This page is for getting started with Smash Up custom factions and adding pages to this wiki. Whether you're a veteran custom maker new to the site or someone interested in making your own factions, this page has something for you.

Read this page in full before adding your own pages - even if you know what you're doing, you might learn a thing or two!

## Making a Faction

Making your own Smash Up faction can be a very fun and rewarding experience. Smash Up is a game system, not just a game, and it invites you to sink your teeth in and play with it yourself. This section will give general tips for how to approach custom creation, from writing ideas down on the page to creating your own cards to tips for printing the cards out yourself, should you want to. It's only the very basics, though; there will be links here to other pages with more in-depth discussion of specific topics.

If you're having trouble getting started, or this is one of your first forays into custom-making, the Hello World faction template is a great way to get your feet wet or challenge yourself to work with constraints. This custom faction designer panel and the Faction Factory series on Crank it Up also have plenty of tips and examples to work off of.

### Forming Ideas

Every custom faction needs to start with an idea. This could be a theme you want to base it on, like a fantasy race, a profession, or your favorite video game. It could be a mechanic, like creating something that focuses on Burying or +1 Power Counters. Whatever your starting idea is, it should be something you can build off of and flesh out into a full 20-card deck.

### Pencil to Paper

The first thing you should do for any faction is write down some abilities. If you don't have a clear direction for what your faction should do yet, that's okay; just jot stuff down, even if you end up changing it later. You don't need to put down a draft for all 20 cards, and you don't even necessarily need names for your cards yet if you don't have ideas for them. You can write your ideas down anywhere you want, although with how frequently your cards may change using physical paper may not be the best medium.

Once you've written down an initial draft (partial or complete), check it with other people to get initial feedback. Are some abilities way too strong or weak? Is your idea clear and cohesive? Answering these questions is a crucial step in making a good faction, but it's very hard to do so without insight from other perspectives. Don't be afraid to change some or even all of your draft if initial feedback makes you think you should, but also remember to be assertive and stick up for your ideas you think the feedback is undercutting your core idea.

### Card Art

After making a complete initial draft and getting initial feedback, it's time to make art for your cards. There are numerous free image-editing programs you can use to do this, some web-based and some downloadable. Some programs authors on the wiki use include Gimp, Krita, Pixlr, Photopea, Inkscape, and Paint.net. Get familiar with your chosen program's tools; make sure you know how to load in images and move them around, create and edit text, and manipulate layers. After that, you're ready to get started!

The aspect ratio for normal cards is 5:7, or a real size of 2.5" by 3.5" (6.25 cm by 8.89 cm). Typical cards are split into two halves: A top half, which contains unique art, the card name, and the power (if applicable); and a bottom half, which contains everything else: the card's ability, its type identifier, the faction icon, and an image under all of them which stays consistent across all of the card designs in a faction. Usually, the size ratio between the bottom half and the top half is 3:4, with 1.5" (1.83 cm) for the bottom and 2" (5.08 cm) for the top. Abilities are always in Curse Casual JVE and are usually in black type, but the type label, power, and name use whatever font and color you want (typically with a black or white outline).

### Testing

One of the best parts of custom faction design is getting to play it yourself. There are typically two ways to do this: By proxy (which does not require card art), where you substitute an unused faction's cards for your custom cards and play like normal; or on the Steam game Tabletop Simulator using one of the many user-made Smash Up mods (a partial list of which can be found in the Smash Up discord server). In either case, you can play with other people or by yourself playing multiple hands. Make sure you play multiple games with your faction using a variety of both partners and opponents. Take notes about how your faction performs in these games: Is it too strong or weak? Does it play the way you want it to? Are there potentially dangerous interactions that crop up? Take some time to reflect on your faction, and don't be afraid to make tweaks if you think you need to.

Although testing a faction never really ends (vanilla content goes through hundreds of games before being published), you can certainly get to a point where you feel good about your faction. At that point, feel free to upload it to this wiki, the procedure for which can be found below.

## Adding to the Wiki

If you have a faction you want to add to the wiki, this section is for you! Follow these steps to fully integrate your faction (or yourself!) with the wiki.

### Adding a Faction

Much of the instructions for adding a faction can be found in the faction template page and on the factions page. After you make your faction's page and add it to the list, there are several other places you'll want to add links to it:

* Your author page
* The applicable Mechanic pages of any custom mechanics you use
* If applicable, the faction's expansion page

Make sure you have your faction icon handy to add to each of the tables on these pages (you should have it when you add your faction to the larger factions page).

### Making an Author page

There currently exists no template for an author page, so it's best to copy an existing author page and remake it for your own purposes. When such a template is made, it will be linked here.

Now that you've read our Getting Started page, feel free to explore more of the wiki or add your own content!