All Decked Out: Introducing Cards Into Your Adventures

The other day my husband brought two sites to my attention. These sites are based around creating personalized card decks. For instance, Go Deck Yourself, is a terrific site that allows you to create customized decks you can print.

playing cards Go Deck Yourself also has pregenerated decks that fit with certain settings and adventures, such as Keep on the Shadowfell. The cards for the adventure contained quests that could be found in the module.

Another terrific site for creating power cards is DnD Italia. This one allows you to create the cards and has a spot on them where you can include all of your bonuses so that you don’t have to reference other resources while you are playing and keeps you from possibly missing something. This site also has a forum as well as a gallery of images.

So, now that you have these cards what do you do with them? Here are my suggestions…

Try incorporating randomized decks into your adventures. The GM would be in charge of the decks but even they wouldn’t know what was necessarily coming next.

For instance you could have decks labeled as following:

Major Quests: This would be the main reason your party was heading out to do something heroic. It would still be the GM’s responsibility to help lay out the path and create some of the story but it also allows for a sense of really not knowing what was coming next.

Minor Quests: This deck would give those small tasks such as helping to find a lost dog or child but while still in the middle of following through with the Major Quest. It could also be used to help flesh out the Major Quest and provide ‘clues’ along the way.

Random Encounters: Is exactly what it says. “Your party is camping by the fireside in a dark forest. You hear rustling in the leaves. One member of your party spots a large bear wandering nearby.” The players then have to choose whether or not to pursue the bear, try to hide, etc.

Treasure: Once an encounter is finished the players can begin to search the area then the GM can use these cards randomly determine what is found. And depending on the difficulty of the encounter it may be worth more than 1 Treasure card.

The great part about incorporating decks is that they can be used and adapted by multiple game systems. While looking into these sites I found it very easy to imagine their use from Savage Worlds to D&D to Star Wars to d20 Modern and even games like Serenity and Stargate.

The possibilities are endless. Next time you are looking for something new to add to your game, whatever it may be, try some cards… you never know what you may get