Design Notes: The Deck of Tales
Nathan Rockwood
This is both a preview and a small design diary for an upcoming product I'm currently working on: The Deck of Tales, a set of randomizer cards similar to The GameMaster's Apprentice in general purpose, but quite different in execution.
While I'm still a huge fan of giant walls of text, some of the most consistent feedback I received as to why gamers would avoid the GMA entirely was that the information and visual density was too much to handle. The steep learning curve was clearly a turn-off for many.
As an alternative that will hopefully work better for those gamers (and writers), I put together The Deck of Tales, using some of the systems and ideas from the GMA, but primarily relying on new imagery (specifically, the CC BY 3.0-licensed images available from www.game-icons.net, an amazing resource! I used art by users Delapouite and Lorc, as well as Carl Olsen, sbed, and Lord Berandas; any indie game developers reading this, GO THERE NOW! These are some amazing folks, and their work made The Deck of Tales possible!).
I'm not yet 100% sure this is done, but I've ordered a test print and am hoping to release the cards via DriveThruRPG/DriveThruCards within the next month--so any feedback or thoughts are appreciated, but the window for it to be applied is relatively small!
