I have, sitting on a shelf right above my computer, a little product from our friends at Atlas games entitled " once upon a time ". It's a touted as a storytelling card game, designed for several players to cooperatively create a story. The cards consist of a hundred and 12 storytelling cards, 56 ending cards. The storytelling cards have simple concepts for creating a story; " the king ", " a forest ", " star-crossed lovers ", etc.. They are fairly useful as a crutch when I run up against GM's block. On Blue Trolls ' net book web site there is a fairly extensive list of plot ideas, which could probably be put onto the deck of playing cards fairly simply. On 11 Nov 99, at 21:35, Brian Koppi wrote: > I read somewhere that there are some sort of cards included in > the new Star Trek game from Last Unicorn that help the GM direct the plot. > I have no idea what the truth behind this is or how it works, but it did > set me thinking. > > I could see a great benefit to having a deck of 52 plot themes to use > during the course of an adventure. When I GM I tend to focus on what is > before the characters and what I have planned for them. I need to to keep > from losing track of the threads on the table. This isn't necessarily a > bad thing, as it helps form a coherent adventure. However, constantly > focusing in one direction limits the potential scope of the story. That's > where a Plot Deck would be handy. > > A plot deck might be drawn from once or more per game session, > depending on the pace of the action or how much game time has > elapsed. Each card in the deck represents a plot device such as the > introduction of personal tragedy, new ally, new enemy, unforeseen > good fortune, etc. There could be 13 devices (ace through king) and > four applications (one for each suit). I'm not familiar with tarot > cards, but the purpose seems similar. > > The Plot Deck would help to inspire new directions for the story a > busy GM might not otherwise consider. Has anyone encountered something > like this in the market? Does it seem a useful idea? > > Brian Koppi > chikoppi@21stcentury.net > ---------------------------------------------------------------- > GMAST Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gmast/ > Tech support questions go to support@phoenyx.net. > ================================================================ -Coyt "The Internet, billions of electrons with nothing better to do." ---------------------------------------------------------------- GMAST Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gmast/ Tech support questions go to support@phoenyx.net.
