The Deck30

The Deck 30

What is it?

A way of generating events and encounters on the fly using a standard 52 card deck and a joker, inspired by blog posts made by Necropraxis and Prismatic Wasteland.

Here's a Deck30 for reference.

What is it for?

Helping the GM fill out the nooks and crannies of the world either on the fly or as part of prep.

How does it work?

Each in game day/week/month (whichever makes the most sense), draw 3 cards from the deck and sum any cards with matching suits (Aces are 1's, Faces are 10's), generating 1-3 events. Then reference the suits drawn and the total of each to figure out what happens.

An Example Drawing

K♠️: A fresh corpse

J♥️: An encounter rolled with a D8 and another adventuring party involved (I rolled 2d6 Robber Flies hunting Killer Bees on my encounter table. Here is a link to Necrotic Gnomes adventuring party generator)

3♣️: A Burial mound

So, there are a few ways this can shake out, but I think that this is all one encounter.

Killer bees have turned an ancient burial mound some distance off the path into a hive, it isn't visible, though humming may be heard (2in6 chance).

The mound was a burial place for ancient warriors, it is long forgotten and swallowed by the forest. The bees have used the corpses there as building materials, rendering their honey strange (acts as a potion of heroism, eating it imparts the memories of a battle, and an ancient warlord with a bearskin cloak and a burning sword)

An adventuring party found the hive, but were fought off by the bees which killed their magic user. Now they are on a nearby trail stripping the magic users swollen corpse of valuables, the fighter and thief are arguing over who gets to keep the spell book.

The robber flies are hunting the bees in the area and are on their way to the hive, they look just like bees from a distance so there is a chance of mistaken identity or, party members who know about nature might know about their connection to killer bees.

Now to be fair, I wasn't running a game when I drew this encounter, but the basic shape of it didn't take long for me to come up with, and I think I probably could have done something similar in game (though probably with a few less details).

In Conclusion

So that's the Deck30. It's an idea I came up with it a while ago that I'm excited about an thought it would be good to share it. I think the basic structure could be used for a variety of purposes (it is just a handful of tables after all), and I have been working on a version for use in town. Thanks for reading, and if you have any thoughts on the structure or the execution of the Deck30 I would love to hear them.

Comments

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