Review: A Trio of Card Decks

Time to take a look at a few bits of Kickstarter loot that have been knocking around in my office:

First off, Crawl Cards: Overland, from BPB Games. I pledged at the $10 level for a POD discount coupon for the physical cards plus pdf. The supplement is a deck of 50 cards, each with six hexes. Hexes are color/graphic coded for terrain, along with features associates with one or more hexes (structures, settlements, monsters, unique terrain, etc.). Each card also has a brief description on the back for one or two unique features found within the six-hex area. The cards are designed for 5e, but are generally system agnostic in their descriptions.

Let's pull one. 

Card GO-07: "Blood Soaked Vale" The six hexes include three mountainous terrain, one swamp, on grassland, and two ruins/settlements (the hexes of interest).

Ooo. A mystery and the grumpy dead. Always a good start. Since the cards are meant to be used in sandbox style adventuring, the designers recommend drawing three cards and picking one that best fits as an adjacent region or continuation of a narration. 

(Draws three...)

The cards are titled "A Darker Path," "Radical Freedom," and "Rasekuhe." Cards 2 and 3 describe dwarven anarchists and a couple of farming and ranching communities, so the themes aren't particularly consistent with the original card. 

However, "A Darker Path" describes a mysterious iron arch and a village occupied by bandit-necromancers (that should make for a fun tourism brochure):

There we go. Possible belligerents, and a point of interest that may have some connection to the bandits' activities or recent raid on Roselake, if they are even the real culprits... Did the bandits slaughter/abduct the residents of Roselake? Is an entity from beyond influencing them through the arch? Did a third party cause the destruction and make the bandits unaware suspects in the deed?

It's recommended that the cards be aligned or rotated to best fit terrain or themes. With the eastward tracks described on the first card, I would placed the second card to its right, perhaps shifted so that the PCs must track across some grasslands to confirm where the footprints from the village lead.

So. These have potential for playing open sandbox or perhaps solo gaming, where a random cue is helpful to make up a narrative. The advice to pick three and choose is helpful, to decrease awkwardly random neighboring hexes and terrain, and to find possible links or themes across a region. 

Will I use them? Perhaps, but likely no, unless I take on an open world campaign or similar where I'm discovering things along with the players - certainly a challenging role. Where these could have use are as writing cues for areas of interest around a starting hex. Draw or select several cards and stat up the areas of interest for a party to choose to explore. Maybe scatter the cards more widely, with other hexes between. Regardless, resources like these are always helpful, in that they use ideas from other peoples' minds, rather than just mine, and I can always use a hand (or brain).

The cards may be purchased via DTRPG. 

Next: Mercs & Masters, by Crumbling Keep. I have a few products, both free and paid, from CK, and I like their style and content. I pledged at the $20 level for physical cards and pdf, delivered via Backerkit. The deck contains 50 cards, including leveled henches and specialists for hire. The supplement is designed for OSE and similar games.

The front of the card contains name, race/class, level, stats, and a character portrait by one of three artists from Ink Potion Studios. The back includes personality, quirks, and special abilities. 

Again, let's draw:

Oh, Markus, that joker... 

Now, a specialist:

Full of useless trivia and a nightowl. Sounds like a perfect sage.

The pack includes 27 0-3rd level NPCs, eleven 4th-7th level NPCs, and twelve specialists. These are a good selection of NPCs and hirelings for the PCs to interact with or hire, and a variation from the usual random generators that I usually click on. The personalities and quirks are good cues for RP-ing them, and can make for some fun interaction.

Will I use them? The cards currently live in my to-go gaming bag. I grabbed them in case I needed a couple of quick and dirty hirelings for my recent convention games, but didn't need them with the full tables. They will remain in the bag for future campaign and one-shot play, as meatshields and randos to foist on the party are always a good thing, and being able to hand a physical card to a player for their reference is a perk. Pulling an appropriately leveled character could even be used to rapidly replace a PC after their demise via skeleton crowdsurfing. Also, the cards could be a good supplement for solo play for similar reasons. I would recommend.

Available from the Crumbling Keep website. I am also currently eagerly awaiting their Techromancer adventure for Mothership.

Deck #3: Hollow Dungeons, by xploringmap.

I pledged 20 Euros (around $22), plus shipping, for the set in physical and pdf format. The box comes with 55 cards and a tri-fold insert with a campaign map ("Aenaon") on one side, and a map key on the opposite side. Contrasting with the prior two decks, which are playing card size, these are oversized 3.5 x 5.75 inch cards. 

The cards depict mini-dungeon spaces of various design, including caverns, stone-walled chambers, and pools. Some of the spaces are standalone, with a single entrance, while others have one or more exits that can be combined with other cards, geomorph-like, for a larger exploration space or multiple levels. The art is all hand-drawn with generic features expected in ye olde dungeons, such as stairs, doors, caskets, and statues. A few show a generic x-marks-the-spot trap location, although no secret doors are depicted. I would expect that something like that would just be interpreted for fit by the user ("Behind the fireplace is a secret passage to the crypt.").

For some reason I couldn't copy images from the reward pdfs, so have a few photos. 

Will I use them? I think so. I can see pulling these cards out for that "random barrow" or rumored lair during a play session. Also, I can see picking and choosing a few cards to link together to make an exploration space ahead of time. The simple graphic design appeals to me, and one of the included pdfs depicts the space in plain black and white, rather than the tinted finish of the cards. The individual cards' spaces tend to be one to three rooms, and rather compact, so don't expect to explore any sprawling subterranean chambers. These are probably best for locating a single item or small number of foes. 

Available from the xploringmap website.