I just printed out all hundred cards from the first volume, and my head is already buzzing with ideas!
I’ve watched Hank’s video on using the Index Cards, and I think both applications are great. I’ll definitely be using these at the table to supplement my usual ToTM style. His adventure generation method was also neat, but I can already see dozens of variations. LOGS, T.T.T, draw 6 and make them the focal points, etc.
How have y’all used the Index Cards?
It is one thing I’ve mentioned that I wish more of the core book dealt with integrating the index card method into games. It’s the name on the cover of the book! Especially after the big video rant about tying all the concepts in your product back to the name of your product. Yeah. Frustrating. The cards are such a great concept–there really need to be more resources for using them in games.
But the video is really helpful. I feel like rather than picking them at random that I would want to use a process more like Hank’s Casting Call video:
Y’know how ordinarily you plan an adventure and then sift through your pile of miniatures, terrain bits, maps and whatnot in order to figure out how you’re going to sell your ideas to your players? That’d be my advice with the cards. Right now my players are making their way through the jungle to a dungeon called the Maw of Kavernak, so I’ll use that as an example.
So I take my game notes, basically a few days overland travel with a few encounters (some hostile centaur roadwardens, some harpies squatting in ruins, a dinosaur hunting them in the jungle, the dungeon itself built into a ravine, some floating magic platforms leading across to a fortified entrance level, a pit trap dumping them into some caves filled with squidgy monsters and fungus, and finally a temple level with a summoning circle where they are calling forth a dark serpent god of yore). Go through the cards looking for standees for all the monsters, nice jungle and ruins themed cards for the travel part, some dungeon/castle/temple cards for the first and last parts and some cavern looking cards, mushrooms and slime for the middle part. Then I make a pass back through each encounter and see if there’s a few other cards I can put in to give the PCs some things to interact with. Maybe some bushes to hide from the centaurs, or a grave to represent some other poor folks they killed and mass buried–maybe with their loot? Maybe some of the ruins have some treasure chests still unlooted? Maybe there’s an old church in the ruin where the harpies are camped out–maybe with an altar the PCs can use, loot or pray at? Just different cards of interactable stuff for each part of the adventure to let characters spread out at each stage and explore.
That’d be my approach anyway.
I’ve used them by basically randomly selecting and laying them out according to the Adventure Outline diagrammed in CORE. I’ve also used Story Cubes to do the same thing.
Oh man, StoryCubes are so good! I’ve got a ton of them, all different sets and I’ll draw 9 random dice out and roll them…3 become LOG. 3 become the 3Ds, and the other three the 3Ts…I just sculpt them to the genre (fantasy, sci-fi, Ghost Mountain, whatever) and it makes for some really rad ideas.
For me the best use was when I was mobile. We had a smattering of mini’s, some dice, about 25 cards.
We created some heroes, got a funny conversation going, and let the cards ‘build the world.’
Then I took on the villain role and the magic started unfolding.
They make great terrain, imho. That was my original intent.
Agreed, I recently used them in a tropical adventure. They really have a table-presence, and make the distances between places concrete while remaining abstract.
Hi I’m new to the community and would love to download these were can I find them hope it’s ok to ask.
