To make the cards feel and play like "real" cards, we suggest using standard opaque-backed card sleeves, the kind used to protect gaming cards, and regular poker style playing cards tucked in there for stiffness. Opaque card sleeves keep the decks uniform and shufflable.

The image to the right shows the recommended method for assembling your Fatal Frame cards. Alternately, you could print them out on heavy paper or two-sided paper (white on the printing side and an opaque color on the other), but a bad cut job may "mark" cards, and light paper printouts will make shuffling difficult.

You can even buy card sleeves in multiple colors to differentiate the game's separate card decks. The main playdeck is 85 cards, the Interior Locations deck is 20 cards and the Exterior Locations deck is 9 cards. Add to that 4 Camera Obscura cards, 4 Boss Ghost cards and 2 tip cards... for 124 cards total. We suggest at least using one color of sleeves for the main playdeck, a second for the Locations, and a third for the remaining 10 cards, to avoid shuffling together cards that should not be mixed. Although you could certainly use five or six different colors if you wanted to!

All three PDF files below are required to play. The cardset is split into three for easier downloading. Fatal Frame: the Card Game may receive future updates or changes. If the card set is ever changed, the main PDF files below will be revised receive a new version number to indicate the change. Additionally, "patch" files will be posted if the number of revised cards is small enough to allow v1.0 downloaders to quickly replace the altered cards.

For my personal set, I made some custom player tokens. I used 1 inch wooden disks spray painted black with an Asian-themed sticker on the top. I use a handful of glass beads to track Boss life meters. For dice, I have a pair of black 6-siders and a pair of wooden 6-siders. Plus I have a special 6-sider with Japanese numerals on it; that one is my Boss die! The whole game fits inside an embroidered crimson box that we found at Pier 1. (That bamboo placemat is also from Pier 1.)

Inside the box, I have plenty of room for all the cards plus accessories. We even hot-glued a ribbon of bells to the inside for that extra Chitose goodness.

main playdeck 1, 42 cards (57mb - 7 pages)
v1.0 April 2005
18 Action cards, 24 Camera Upgrade cards
These cards comprise half of the main playdeck.

main playdeck 2, 47 cards (67mb - 8 pages)
v1.0 April 2005
35 Ghosts, 8 Items, 4 Boss Ghosts
These cards comprise half of the main playdeck, plus the Boss Ghosts.

separate deck cards, 35 cards (37mb - 6 pages)
v1.0 April 2005
9 Exterior Locations, 20 Interior Locations, 4 Camera Obscura cards, 2 tip cards
These cards are not shuffled into the main playdeck.