For the person running the table · out now
Learn the 5e rules with FlashBoss
The rules a game master needs in their head — not on the page they are turning to.
Listen · read · repeat · rate · fight
Every card is one thing you should know cold rather than stop to look up: what a condition does, which die a check calls for, what a DC of 15 is meant to mean, what a stat block is telling you, what a party can actually do at level 5. 5E compatible, built from the System Reference Document 5.2.
Looking it up is the thing that breaks the table
A game master's real skill is adjudicating at speed. Everyone at the table can feel the difference between a ruling that arrives in two seconds and one that arrives after ninety seconds of page-turning — and the second one costs you the scene, not just the time.
The fix is not a better index. It is knowing the thing: the fifteen conditions, the thirteen damage types, the ability and proficiency tables, challenge rating and the experience it is worth. The numbers you currently flip pages for.
So this is a vocabulary course whose vocabulary happens to be a rules set. Same machine as every other FlashBoss pack — spaced repetition, a boss fight at the end of every cluster — pointed at the things you are expected to have in your head when someone asks whether they can shove the ogre off the bridge.
What a card holds
A real card from tier 1, quoted as it ships. The scene is the point: the rule arrives as something you could narrate, not as an index entry.
usually the outer band of a light source · SRD p. 11
- The termWhat the table will actually say out loud. This is the answer you are drilled to produce.
- The sceneThat rule happening at a table. You remember a picture, and the picture carries the rule with it.
- The definitionThe meaning you are tested on — short enough to hold, complete enough to rule with.
- The rule lineThe rule as you would say it to a player, in one breath.
- The numbersThe category, the figures underneath, and the page of the reference document it comes from.
A key turns that notes line into a map of all 24 card categories, and a second converts every distance and weight on the cards. Both ship inside the game, as do the English and German reference documents.
Which edition you get
This pack is more honest about its languages than most, because they are genuinely not all the same thing. Three kinds:
A full German edition. Everything in German — headword, definition, rule line, scene and notes on all 1,205 cards, and all 62 reference lessons. It uses the established German rules vocabulary, Rüstungsklasse, Trefferpunkte, Rettungswurf, rather than invented calques, and it cites the German rules edition page by page, so a card sends you to the right page of the book you actually own.
The question and the scene are in your language; the headword you answer with, and the word you hear, are English. A toggle on the card shows the translation whenever you want it, and the 62 reference lessons are written in your language too.
That is deliberate, not a shortcut. You meet each rule in words you already think in, and you leave holding the term the table will actually use. It is the step you need before you sit down at an English-speaking game.
If you would rather have the whole card in Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Russian or Spanish, that edition is there as well. It comes with compromises, stated plainly: the spoken word stays English, there is no audio beyond it, and it carries no revision drills. A bonus, not a course in its own right — you already speak your own language.
Five tiers, each ending in something you can do
- Adjudicate a checkThe die, the DC, what the number is meant to mean, and the conditions that change it.
- Run a fightThe turn, the actions in it, the damage types, and what a condition does to whoever is carrying it.
- Run a caster and read a stat blockSlots, concentration, ranges — and a block of numbers you can look at and know what it will do.
- Know what the options bringThe twelve classes, the nine species, and what the feats actually give a character.
- Build encounters, hazards and treasureChallenge rating against experience, what a party survives, and what to hand out afterwards.
62 reference lessons, 82 pages, one waiting at the head of every cluster — in every language the pack ships.
Flashcards as an integrated system
- Cards
- 1,205 cards in 62 themed clusters across five tiers, every one carrying its term, its scene, its definition, its rule line and its numbers.
- Boss fights
- Three kinds, not one: name the creature, spell or term from its definition; give your ruling on a scene; read the number off a table. No cluster is cleared until its definitions are mastered.
- Lessons
- 62 reference lessons, 82 pages — one at the head of every cluster, in every language the pack ships.
- Fibonacci SRS
- Rate each card 0–5. The better you know a rule, the longer before it comes back.
- Audio
- The Guide reads aloud in its own bundled voice. Samples are on the voices page.
- The ruleset
- The 2024 revision as it now stands — the terms, the numbers and the procedures expected today. If your rules knowledge is a decade old, you relearn what changed by drilling what is, rather than reading a list of differences.
Before you buy
Which edition of the rules is this?
The 2024 revision, built from the System Reference Document 5.2. Conditions, spells, species and stat blocks were revised between the 2014 rules and these, so if your table runs the older edition some of these cards will drill you on numbers you do not use. Check which one your table plays before you buy.
Do I need the base game?
Yes. The Guide is DLC for FlashBoss, so you need the base game as well. On Windows 10 you also need Windows Terminal, a free download from the Microsoft Store.
I am a player, not a game master. Is it for me?
It is built for the person running the table, and that is where it pays most. A player who wants to stop asking what a condition does, or who is about to run their first game, gets the same cards — the tiers just matter less in that order.
Is my language a full edition or a mixed one?
German is the full edition. Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Russian and Spanish play in your language and answer in English, with a toggle to the translation on the card and the lessons written in your language — and each also carries an all-in-your-language bonus edition in beta, with English audio and no drills. The languages section above says exactly what each one gives you.
Can I see the cards before I buy?
The card lists and reference lessons for FlashBoss packs are on this site, free and printable, and there is a playable boss fight if you want to see the mechanic before anything else.
Know it, don't look it up.
1,205 cards, 62 clusters, and a boss fight at every one of them.
The Guide on Steam →