A deck of worldbuilding prompts for creating imagined lands, local lore, and story-driven maps for creative writing and tabletop RPGs.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Pledge manager timeline + fixing failed pledges + Lore Fragment Expansion preview + progress check-in
almost 3 years ago
– Fri, Jul 09, 2021 at 12:14:32 AM
Hi backers!
I've been busy at work fine-tuning the deck and prepping the pledge manager, and I wanted to check in with you to give you an update on the progress, as well as a demo of the Lore Fragments deck. Let's get into it!
Pledge manager timeline
In case you missed it during the campaign, we will be using BackerKit as our pledge manager to collect your details for delivering your rewards. This will include things like your mailing address and/or email address, your selected expansions/boosters, your add-ons, etc.
In the pledge manager you'll also be able to:
Purchase additional add-ons
Upgrade pledges
Pay for failed pledges
Review shipping and VAT estimates
The pledge manager reward surveys will likely go out via email in 1-2 weeks (likely closer to 2 weeks). This is a little later than I first anticipated, but there are few production details I wanted to confirm before locking in shipping weights.
There are 2 important details to remember regarding the pledge manager, and I'll be reiterating these when reward surveys go out.
Your credit card will NOT be charged until 2022. I plan to run credit cards for BackerKit payments closer to the shipping date in 2022. I will post a "heads up" update before I do so.
Your shipping + VAT estimate will be for the maximum possible cost. For transparency, I'll be setting BackerKit to show you the upper limit of the estimates shown on the campaign page. The actual amount you pay will likely be less than this, and again, and I'll post a reminder for you to doublecheck the total prior to running cards when the actual values are finalized in 2022.
Once the pledge manager surveys go out, I'll start distributing PDF copies of The Story Engine Deck and its existing expansions and boosters to anyone whose rewards include those items.
Failed pledges
If your pledge to this campaign failed, you will have a chance to make a payment again in BackerKit. You can also DM me to arrange payment via PayPal.
Lore Fragments Expansion
I wanted to give you a look at the Lore Fragments Expansion, which you can use to prompt the creation of in-world lore, from written documents to songs, oral traditions, cultural symbols, slice-of-life conversations, quotes, laws, and more.
The Expansion contains 30 Opus Cards and 30 Flourish Cards.
The Opus Cards provide different lore formats to create in (sea shanties, ghost stories, building plaques, restaurant menus, etc.). Each Opus Card contains 4 cues you can choose between by rotating the card so your chosen cue is facing you. Note that all 4 cues are relevant to writers, but each card has 1 cue that doubles as a prompt for visual art, and 1 cue that doubles as a prompt for roleplay/dramatic performances.
The Flourish Cards provide an optional quirk, stylistic flair, or creative challenge to make your piece of lore more interesting. If you wish, you can deal multiple of these to stack creative challenges, or even pursue multiple cues from the same card. Think of them as creative goals rather than strict requirements of the piece you'll create.
Let's build on the Mapless Desert, which I used to demo the Culture Keyholes Expansion in update #5.
Here's the random Lore Fragment draw I pulled for the Mapless Desert.
WRITE A TRICKSTER STORY, BUT MOTIVATED BY PETTINESS
A few notes on the combination I chose:
I was tempted to sketch an artisan's toolbag in the Steadfast Workshop (making them magical), but I'm such a sucker for trickster stories. Still, I think this could have been a really fun choice.
I also really got into the idea of a love ballad about someone planting flowers on their late lover's grave becayse I was really attached to the death rituals we came up with in the Culture Keyholes update.
But like I said, I LOVE a good trickster story and Loki has been all over my social media feeds lately, so I thought I'd dive into the spirit of petty chaos and sibling rivalry. I particularly like trickster stories that explain natural phenomena, and I thought it might be fun to come up with a story that explains the "LONG GROWING SEASON" cue from the Attributes Deck. I also had an inkling I could pull the death ritual of planting desert flowers on graves in mourning into the same story.
Here's what I came up with after one draft, doing a bit of editing as I went:
This is the story of the first long summer.
In the time before maps, there was no desert. There was only the vast and verdant Green, and it was ruled by three sisters: Shrew, the forager; Wildcat, the hunter; and Jackal, the scavenger.
Each sister had her season. In spring, Shrew would nibble the roots of trees, bushes, and flowers to awake them from winter slumber! In summer, Wildcat would hunt the creatures that scampered through the underbrush, relishing the rush of the chase. In autumn, Jackal would pick clean the bones and grumble about her lot. And in winter, the three sisters would retreat to their dens and rest.
But as seasons came and went, Jackal grew jealous. She did not know the ways of root, stem, and petal the way that Shrew did. She could not safely tell which berries would fortify you and which would sap your strength and boil your bowels. But she also did not know the way of tooth and claw as well as Wildcat. She was tired of waiting all through spring and summer for her chance to pick spoiling meat from the bones left to her. So she devised a plan.
One winter she left her den and slinked through the snowy woods to the home of Shrew.
"Sister Shrew, our dear Sister Wildcat is complaining of an empty belly," she lied. "She lazed in her hunt all summer and begs me now to bring her food to gnaw on until winter ends. I will bring her all the winter roots and berries I can find, but you must tell me how to tell the bitter from the sweet, the poisonous from the preserving."
Shrew's knowledge of foraging was sacred to her, but so was the life of her sister, so she told Jackal all she knew—how to tell Baneberry from Bucksweet, or toxic Redroot from the sweet coils of Earthmallow that grow deep in the soil, even in winter.
"Very good," said Jackal. "I will gather all the food I can carry and bring it to our poor Sister Wildcat. And I will tell her that it all comes from you, so she knows who to thank for the trouble." And she vanished into the cold forest with a swish of her tail.
Out in the woods, breath misting in the cold, Jackal used her new knowledge to gather every poison that grows from the earth. These she brought to the den of Wildcat.
"Sister Wildcat, our dear Sister Shrew sends a gift. She has been bragging that she is the hardest-working of us, and that she gathered enough food for winter to feed us, her lazy siblings. She insisted I bring these roots and berries to you."
"Hmmm..." said Sister Wildcat, raising a bushy eyebrow. "That doesn't sound like our Sister Shrew. She is indeed hard-working, but also humble. Still, only she knows which roots and berries to pick, so surely this is her gift, and I will gratefully accept it."
And with those words, Wildcat gobbled up all the poisons Jackal had gathered. Soon she began to sweat and ache, her belly churning with distress.
"What has our dear sister done to me?" she asked, mewling pitifully.
"Poison! It must be poison!" Jackal declared.
"Then I will find her, and I will crush her with the last of my strength!" And with that Wildcat lept up and bounded to Shrew's den. With one massive paw, she struck the ground and collapsed Shrew's home atop her poor head, burying her forever in the earth.
Jackal smiled a toothy grin.
"Why are you smiling?" growled Wildcat.
"Because you've killed your own sister, and now you will die, and I alone will rule the Green."
Wildcat roared with grief, but she felt herself growing weak. She knew she could not overpower her treacherous sister now, so instead she put all her strength into a uttering a curse.
"I curse you, Sister Jackal, with all the power of summer. May the noon sun shine hot and long. May it wear down the proud and tall-standing trees so that the shadows you hide in are burnt up. May it hammer the Green so that the only thing to grow are the hardy flowers our sister loved. May it coax blossoms from the earth year after year so that the land remembers her and your treachery."
And then, with a gasp, she died, leaving Jackal to rule over a land of bones and sand and flowers and ruin.
The Cult of the Shrew say that the story reminds us to always look for flowers, for it is only by finding Shrew's buried wisdom that we can find our way back to the Green. The Cult of the Wildcat say the story teaches us that we must think carefully before we unleash our strength and fury. And the Cult of the Jackal say that the story is about atonement, for it was Jackal who passed on knowledge of herbs and roots to us. But that is a story for another time.
It's got some rough edges here and there, but overall it was a lot of fun and I think it connected a lot of the cues from the micro-setting using the cues of the Lore Fragments Expansion. It also did exactly what I designed the Lore Fragments Expansion to do: create lore that broadens and deepens the world. The three animal cults in the second-last paragraph are ones I've love to explore more.
And a bonus lore fragment
In the course of writing the story, I had the idea to also use the mnemoic device + pottymouth cues as inspiration to write a crude poem for remembering Shrew's herb lore:
Redroot willgive you toots,
Bucksweet gets you high
But be most wary of Baneberry
Or you'll shit until you die
(This is some high-brow stuff!)
Progress check-In
This is just to let you know what I've been up to since the campaign wrapped up! I've been splitting my time between four primary areas, with help from Zach.
Prepping the pledge manager surveys
Processing DM requests for help with failed pledges
Working with the micro-setting artists to get illustrations started (or in some cases, finished!)
Rebalancing and reflowing cards
I've been working on weaving the writers' cues into the decks and expansions, and rebalancing the cards based on some conceptual categories that are emerging from working with the cues and continuing to playtest the deck. This helps ensure that every card has a variety of prompts for both open-ended and narrow interpretations, as well as populated and unpopulated areas.
I've also been adjusting the deck to support a more consistent text orientation, which a few people raised as a point of concern during the campaign. The Landmark Cards have been adjusted so that they have mirror orientation with all text facing outward (like the Advent Cards). The Namesake Cards are being increased from 2 to 3 cues styled to come after the name of the Region/Landmark they tuck under (for example, "THE LAKE + OF SORROWS" or "THE CITY + THAT DOES NOT KNEEL"). The Namesake cues that come before the name interrupt the normal visual flow of card orientation on Landmark Cards—see the Steadfast Workshop above as an example. Depending on how you organize your cues and your thoughts, the text orientation issue may seem like just a cosmetic problem, or an outright consistency problem that impedes use. Either way, enough people raised the concern that it made sense to decrease from 2 pre-Namesake cues to 1 to make it easier to keep the text consistent without losing functionality. This also makes the Namesake Cards more symmetrical to look at.
You won't see these changes reflected in the coming demos as I'm still using the alpha decks from the project launch, but eventually I'll show you some prompts made from the reconfiguration.
That's all for now!
As always, feel free to reach out with questions in the comments and in my DMs.
I'll be back soon to update you when the pledge manager opens, so standby for more!
I'll leave you with a prompt I drew when I wanted to create a compact prompt I could easily photograph to remember for later. I thought I'd leave you with a challenge to brainstorm how you might interpret it!
Thank you + a little look at how it all started
almost 3 years ago
– Mon, Jun 21, 2021 at 05:25:15 AM
Hey everyone!
As the campaign wraps up, I just wanted to take a moment to say a huge thank you! The past month has been incredible, and I'm so excited to show you all the deck has to offer.
We just passed the $800,000 stretch goal, officially unlocking the Deck of Worlds Card Creator Webapp! I'll keep any remaining locked goals on my list for future projects and explore bringing them about in simpler forms once the project wraps up.
I also wanted to share a fun "how it started"/"how it's going" moment with you!
How it started:
How it's going:
I remember making the post in the Instagram screenshot. All summer I had been doing secret early concepting of The Story Engine: Deck of Worlds that was starting to show promise. A lot of promise. And after writing the first hundred cards and wrestling with how to break the vast possibilities of worldbuilding down into discrete concept types, I thought I had cracked the code.
And when I sat down for extensive playtesting, I found out I was wrong. The categories felt right, but the pacing was all wrong. The prompts were too narrow to interpret properly, and the deck was trying to throw too many decisions at the player (with multiple sub-cues attached to every cue).
I took the whole concept back to the drawing board.
The big difference between WHATEVER THAT WAS in 2020 and the working alpha Deck of Worlds is the open-endedness. I tried to be too narrow in early versions, while also offering too many prefabricated choices. I was over-writing a lot of the prompts and robbing the player of the chance to freely interpret the cards and find their own connections.
The secret sauce of the original Story Engine Deck is the open-ended nature of the prompts. They get you to the starting line for creation, but you still run the race yourself.
So I scrapped months of work and ideas *I* thought were brilliant and went back to what made The Story Engine Deck work: setting the writer/player up to be the brilliant one.
The two big questions I asked myself when finalizing the prompts for the alpha deck (and that I ask myself when I'm adding the writing team's prompts to the decks) are these:
Can the player use it?
Does it leave room for the player's ideas?
I'm so glad I returned to those principles and started again, and equally glad I didn't give up on the concept.
Whatever creative project you're working on, I just wanted to show you a little glimpse into the failed concepts and creative misfires I experienced on my journey. Every development cycle has highs and lows, including moments where it feels like you're starting over from absolute zero.
But you're never truly starting over from zero. You won't see until you're further along in the journey just how many lessons you extracted from your mistakes, and how much further along your path you are because of them.
When you have an idea that you believe in, it's worth the time and effort to bring it to fruition—even it means starting over again and again. (I can tell you about my other failed prototypes another time!)
It always helps to return to your mission statement and creative philosophy and ask yourself if the decisions you're making are aligned with those. It's a good way to orient yourself while navigating any project that's big enough to get lost in.
But let's get back to the project!
What happens next?
When the project ends, Kickstarter is going to confirm your pledges and charge your credit cards. If it runs into any issues with your credit card, it will let you know and give you a time window to fix it.
It's usually best to contact Kickstarter directly regarding payment issues, but I will also be around to help you troubleshoot.
I will be working on getting the pledge manager and reward surveys ready, as well as preparing the Deck of Worlds beta to send to you, likely in the autumn but possibly earlier. I will also be finalizing plans for how to distribute early PDF copies of the existing Story Engine Deck, expansions, and boosters.
I always keep a close eye on the comments and DMs, and Zach Schuster (@ZMSchuster) will also be backing me up on communications.
And of course I'll be keeping you in the loop with everything through regular updates. You can expect more demos, sneak peeks, and technical updates to come!
Thanks so much for your support!
Final 24 hours + new demos + FAQ update + friends of the campaign
almost 3 years ago
– Mon, Jun 21, 2021 at 05:00:56 AM
Hi backers,
As we head into the final 24 hours of the campaign, I wanted to share some more sneak peeks and news!
I also wanted to ask, if you have a moment, to consider sharing the campaign link one more time so we can bring as many people in during the final hours as possible! We also have a media page with pictures and demo videos if you'd rather share those!
If you're on Twitter, here's a mega-thread of some of the features of the campaign that I'm proudest of, and I'd love for you to retweet it!
But on to the updates! Here are the headlines:
New demos + interview about the deck in Interstellar Flight Magazine
FAQ updated with info on mix-and-match 3-packs and storage boxes
Another reminder that shipping and VAT will be charged after the campaign
$700,000 and $750,000 stretch goals passed
Let's get into it!
New interview and demos
Project writer JD Harlock also writes for Interstellar Flight Magazine, and I was happy to be interviewed by him about The Story Engine and Deck of Worlds!
Also, my occasional comic collaborator Aaron Lenk (aka big Simple) was one of the people who gave crucial feedback on the alpha of the original Story Engine Deck. He recently unboxed his copy of the final Story Engine Deck, and I sent him an alpha copy of the Deck of Worlds alpha to try out with it. You can watch him unbox The Story Engine Deck, build a prompt, and then create a setting for his story using the alpha Deck of Worlds.
I also came across another video of the original Story Engine Deck on YouTube that absolutely stunned me with the quality and depth of the review! If you want to get a closer look at the main deck and original run of expansions and boosters, theGMwitch does an excellent job of showing how to use it.
I also wanted to share a prompt I drew a couple of weeks ago that's stayed with me, and which I mentioned in the 3-hour demo livestream from the last update.
Usually, when I draw a prompt, I pull together all of the cards I draw and weave their cues into a larger interconnected narrative.
But every now and then there will be a combination of 2-3 cards that totally captivates my attention and causes me to ignore the rest of them. In this prompt I drew the "ARENA" Landmark Card and the "OF CHIMES" Namesake Cards (pictured right). I became instantly obsessed with this pairing.
The moment I read the "Arena of Chimes," I started picturing a massive gladiatorial arena hung all around its rafters with chimes of bone from the bodies of the fallen. I could see and hear the hot, dry wind blowing across the nearby barrens, causing the entire space to clink and rattle with otherworldly menace.
The Origin Card I drew next gave me another key creative prompt: the arena was the site of a famous performance. I pictured a section of the massive circle of bone chimes that were all harvested from a single gruesome combat spectacle fight. Perhaps a battle royale, or a bitter grudge match. I spent so much time thinking about this that I basically forgot to interpret the rest of the cards I'd drawn.
I bring this up because it's the reason I developed the deck's two formal guidelines:
1) Don’t put the deck away until you create something. It can just be a word in a notebook or an idea in your head.
2) Ignore any card, rule, or guideline that doesn’t help you create.
The reason I call the accompanying booklet a "guidebook" and not a "rulebook" is that I believe everyone's creative process and creative goals are different. I want to encourage every storyteller who picks up the deck to start with the guidelines, but learn what works best for them and how to adapt (and occasionally ignore) the guidelines to serve their creative goals.
If I was following "rules" strictly on this prompt, I wouldn't have the freedom to pivot mid-prompt and focus on the 2-3 cards that were really speaking to me and ignore the other cards.
The point of the deck isn't to use every card. It's to jumpstart the creative process so you can create something rewarding or interesting for you. So I gave myself permission to focus where I was finding the richest material. I don't yet know if the Arena of Chimes is going to be a short story setting, or an RPG setting, or just an ingredient in my worldbuilding cupboard that I save for a future project, but I'm glad it's now rattling around my brain.
FAQ updated
I've been updating the FAQs as questions come in throughout the campaign, and I wanted to update you on two particular changes that were recently asked about!
For the "Deck + 3 Expansions" reward tier, can I choose expansions from different sets?
For the "Deck + 3 Expansion" reward tiers (both PDF and physical), yes, you will be able to mix and match any 3 expansions you want. (Previously we weren't sure!)
For add-ons, you will be able add-on either single expansions or complete sets, but the pledge manager will only offer you the discounted bundle price on complete sets of 3 expansions. If you individually add-on 3 separate expansions to your pledge and would like to claim a bundle discount, please send a DM when the pledge manager reward surveys are sent out and I will manually apply a credit to your BackerKit profile to offset the pricing difference.
Can the playmats fit in the storage box add-ons?
In update #6, I erroneously stated that if you had a spare storage box, you could use it to hold playmats.
The storage boxes will not be quite big enough to hold a playmat. I don't want to shrink the playmats smaller than 12" x 18", and I don't want to go much larger on the storage boxes or they will become prohibitively oversized to mail flat.
That said, an emptied-out main deck box for either the Deck of Worlds OR The Story Engine Deck will be able to old storage mats.
Friends of the campaign: Knock!
Knock! is a gorgeously off-the-wall magazine collecting a fascinating miscellany of resources for old-school tabletop gaming!
Featuring 224 pages of old-school gaming bric-a-brac, Knock is Kickstarting their second issue full of thoughts about system and substance, useful rules and procedures, random tables and lists, pages of maps, six new classes, nine new monsters, and four complete adventures.
Definitely consider giving the campaign a look before they wrap up in 4 days!
Your recurring reminder that shipping and VAT will be charged after the campaign
As a reminder, shipping and EU/UK VAT will be charged in BackerKit after the Kickstarter concludes. You can find estimates for these values on the main campaign page.
$700,000 and $750,000 stretch goals passed!
We've unlocked more lesson plans and educator decks—and you can now find more info about deck allocations in the FAQ!
Next up is the Card Creator Webapp! You can check out the Card Creator for the original Story Engine Deck that writer and hacktivist Paweł Ngei developed. He'll be coming back to develop a parallel tool for creating custom Deck of Worlds cards.
I shuffled the order of the stretch goals a bit to reflect the increased viability of building a Deck of Worlds Card Creator. This has been shifted up to the $800,000 goal, moving the micro-settings PDF down to $900,000 and the mini-campaign down to $1,000,000.
I'm so excited to see how far we can take the campaign in the final hours!
Please share the link if you have a moment, and thanks so much for your enthusiasm throughout the campaign!
Collection calculator + Deck of Worlds/Story Engine combo demo + VOD + meet the artists
almost 3 years ago
– Fri, Jun 18, 2021 at 04:22:18 PM
Hi everybody!
We're heading into the final week of the campaign and we continue to make progress, unlock stretch goals, and bring newcomers to the project!
Here's what's covered in today's update!
A tool for calculating the size and storage needs of your card collection + shipping estimates for the DEVOUR tiers
A new unscripted demo video showing how to combine Deck of Worlds and The Story Engine Deck on the fly
Video on demand of the 3-hour livestream demo with Brendon Alekseii
Meet the artists bringing our prompted micro-settings to life
I mentioned in the last update that I was working on a simple calculator for determining the card count in your collection, along with sleeved/unsleeved size of your collection and how many storage boxes you'll need to contain it.
That tool is ready! Check it out here. If you're on mobile, note that the results appear to the right of the deck checklist, and you may need to sidescroll to view it.
Also in the last update, we revealed the storage box design, artwork, details, and pricing! Now we also have the shipping estimates for the two "DEVOUR" all-in tiers we opened with the last update.
As a reminder, shipping and EU/UK VAT will be charged in BackerKit after the Kickstarter concludes. Below are the estimates for the shipping charges for every reward tier and region!
New demo showing how to combine Deck of Worlds + Story Engine Deck
I received a few questions about how to combine the worldbuilding prompts of Deck of Worlds with the storytelling prompts of The Story Engine Deck, so I thought I'd record another unscripted demo!
Note that this video assumes a basic working knowledge of the five card types in The Story Engine Deck. You can learn more about those here.
This demo was shot on the fly, but either the guidebook or a dedicated supplemental PDF will have structured guidelines for reviewing your worldbuilding prompts for Story Engine connections and choosing the best prompt format to connect with.
In this video I created the Lake That Remembers, a large lake area with a puzzle-poem-carved monolith called the Poet's Stone. It neighbors the Desert of Branches (a petrified forest), which contains a trade school where students learn to manufacture curses. We also filled in some details of local figures and artifacts using improvised draws from The Story Engine Deck. (Also, my apologies: it's salmonberry season here in British Columbia and I've been romping through brambles picking berries, so my hands have a few distracting scratches!)
Video on demand of the 3-hour livestream
Last week I joined contributing writer Brendon Alekseii and his wife and fellow writer Brendon Keir Alekseii for a 3-hour livestream discussing The Story Engine and, Deck of Worlds and doing a livestreamed demo of the deck along with some freewriting.
It was such a rewarding experience, and we covered a lot of topics, so I created a little table of contents for those curious to learn more about particular topics. You can watch it here and the demo starts at 1:42:25!
Note that we used a couple of swear words here and there, so Brendon has marked the video as containing adult content.
I wanted to take a moment to introduce you to the artists who will be bringing the sample prompted micro-settings to life. Some of them have been paired with the micro-setting authors from update #3 to bring those authors' settings and stories to life, and others will be trying the micro-setting creation process themselves so we can see what happens when the art leads and the lore follows!
I'll probably be posting a few extra updates this week as we approach the end of the campaign on Sunday, so stay tuned for more demos on the way!
Storage box details + stretch goals + friends of the project
almost 3 years ago
– Wed, Jun 09, 2021 at 02:10:02 PM
Hey everyone!
There are so many exciting developments to unpack, from another set of stretch goals smashed to final details for the storage boxes!
Thank you so much for continuing to share the project link! Remember that if you’re looking for promotional images or videos, we’ve got a little media kit for you!
As per usual, I’ll give you the headlines and then the details!
The wait is over and I have confirmed pricing and design details of the storage boxes
Watch a livestreamed demo of micro-setting creation with me and contributing writer Brendon Alekseii this Wednesday, June 9th at 2pm PST / 5pm EST
Let’s dig in!
Revealing storage box designs and details
As you’ll recall from update 4, after receiving backer feedback on the original plan for the master box, I put the big collector box design on hold to explore a simpler single-lane storage box that would offer backers the utility and flexibility they were looking for when it comes to storage and organization.
I’m thrilled to report that the utility box designs came back significantly less expensive for backers (and even less expensive to ship because they can be mailed flat and assembled through a simple folding process). And for those who fell in love with the idea of a massive collector box, please know that those plans may yet come to fruition on a future project.
I also think my preliminary designs are giving the simple utility storage more of the collector vibe I wanted from the master box. Because the storage boxes are meant to hold a blend of expansions, genres, and inspirations, I really got to swing for the fences with the range of image choices.
Design A: Deck of Worlds + Towers
Design B: Deck of Worlds + Tree
Design C: Story Engine + Book
Design D: Story Engine + Mask
Details:
Each box costs $CA 8 (~$US 6.50) and you can get all four for $CA 24 (~$US 20). For context, the two combined master boxes would cost 2-3x this amount.
All 4 boxes are uniform size: 8.2cm x 9.2cm x 23cm
Each box comes with 5 index dividers (featuring art, but no labels, so you can decide on your own indexing system)
Each box features 5 unique panels of artwork on the sides (except bottom) and a matte black interior
1 box is big enough to fit the entire first run of The Story Engine Deck unsleeved with a little room to spare.
3 boxes are enough to store all the old and new decks from this Kickstarter and the last one without sleeves.
Depending on if you want to sleeve your cards and/or store your tuck boxes, you may need 4 boxes. I know you're all completionists, so I decided to price the 4-pack discount to be the same as buying 3 singles so you can just get the full set with peace of mind that you'll have enough room for sleeves now or futureproofing later without paying any extra. You can also store playmats in the spare box.
I feel confident that the combination of the beautiful matching designs and the modular utility will make these storage boxes fit each user's individual needs while still providing a beautiful collector feel on a much backer-friendlier budget.
Before the end of the campaign I will release a simple calculator for estimating how many boxes you need for your particular combination of decks and sleeves.
I have added two reward tiers:
/|\(°,,,°)/|\ DEVOUR ALL THINGS NEW ($CA 370 / $US ~306) includes all new decks, as well as both playmats, the complete postcard set, and all 4 storage box designs.
/|\(°,,,°)/|\ DEVOUR ALL THINGS OLD+NEW ($CA 480 / $US ~397) includes all new decks, all the original decks, as well as both playmats, the complete postcard set, and all 4 storage box designs.
I don't yet have the shipping and VAT estimates for these, but I hope to have them up on the campaign page VERY soon.
And while we're talking about shipping, here is your regular reminder that shipping and VAT (for EU/UK backers) will be charged separately in the pledge manager (BackerKit) after the campaign. Estimates are provided on the main campaign page.
New stretch goals announced
You smashed through the remainder of the Round 2 stretch goals, adding oodles of bonus content like lesson plans, blank card PDF print sheets, prompt-recording worksheets, additional decks donated to schools, libraries and community programs, and the free PDF-only Oddballs & Outtakes expansion of bonus material.
If you came here via tabletop RPGs, this campaign is an embarrassment of riches, and I see it pairing extremely well with Deck of Worlds.
Heliana’s Guide to Monster Hunting is a 300-page book packed with exciting new content to enhance your 5th edition game. Discover lethally thrilling adventures, rules for tracking, harvesting, and crafting, and a humongous hoard of fully-illustrated items, monsters, spells, and player options. Battle lethal, multi-stage boss monsters and forge fantastic new items and familiars from their remains.
As a storyteller and tabletop RPG player, I'm especially excited about the epic monster hunt storylines they've developed, as well as the storytelling potential for their harvesting and crafting mechanics. Items you make yourself from the remains of unforgettable adversaries are inherently steeped both world lore and character backstory, and these are such rich opportunities for storytelling that embeds itself in the living tissue of the setting.
I'm joining contributing writer Brendon Alekseii on his writing livestream this Wednesday, June 9th at 2pm PST / 5pm EST to talk about The Story Engine: Deck of Worlds and then do a live demo of a micro-setting prompt! Brendon will be freewriting from the prompt to show you how quickly you can go from concept to the process of actually creating a bit of story or lore.
Upcoming in future updates are more video demos, a deeper dive into the orientability of card text, a sneak peek at the Lore Fragments expansion, a sneak peek at the Unique Items expansion, and of course, more stretch goals to leave shattered in the wreckage of your juggernaut enthusiasm!
