As a game master, you really can't have too many tools to help carry the load, or to help out during those times when the players zig and you prepared for them to zag. Or maybe they cut a blood swath of destruction through everything that you had prepared for the night, and there's still an hour or two to go in the evening. What's a GM to do? Luckily, the people at Inkwell Ideas can help out.
I first found out about the Inkwell Ideas people at Gen Con a few years back. The display of their Dungeonmorph Dice drew me like a moth to a flame. If you haven't seen Dungeonmorph Dice, you should check them out. These oversized six-sided dice come with dungeon, town and other locales printed on the faces. You roll a handful of dice, connect the entry points and draw up a mini-dungeon. They're excellent tools for making up a dungeon on the quick.
The Dungeonmorph Dice also aren't what I'm here for. Since picking up the four or so sets of the dice, I've kept tabs on what the Inkwell Ideas people are doing, even though I don't play a lot of fantasy games, so I recently found out about their new Sidequest Decks. Like with the Dungeonmorph dice, the idea of the decks is to have something that can be quickly prepped by a GM. Where the dice do require a bit of prep, after all you have to transfer the images to paper, connect everything and stock the resulting dungeon, the idea behind these decks is to fill in a couple of hours of gaming with a map, some encounters and a couple of hooks to draw in the characters.
The cards are all system neutral (there aren't any statblocks or write-ups, so a GM will have to come up with their own or dip into their bestiary of choice), which means that you can use them with Runequest, D&D or the OSR retroclone of your choice. Each deck has 54 playing card-sized cards with a map on one side and the information on the other. The cards are semi-glossy and sturdy, and should hold up to a lot of use at the table.
The science fiction deck is particularly cool, having deck plans, planetary charts, world maps and planet-side ruins waiting to be explored by your Away Teams. They have the same information: story hooks to get the characters involved and some encounters for the map. They also have a brief blurb on making it into a fantasy encounter, so that the deck can still be used by those who don't run science fiction games.
Just shuffling through the decks made me want to run things, which is the ultimate litmus test for any gaming product. Draw a card or two, pull down the bestiaries and have a fun-filled few hours worth of gaming.
The SideQuest decks are augmented by the NPC Portrait Deck: Monsters. If you, like me, are not so good at things like coming up with the names of NPCs on the fly, or entire NPCs for that matter, then you might want to check this out. Building off of their popular portrait deck for human NPCs, this new deck gives you 54 montrous NPCs to use in your games. On one side of each card is a full color image, and the back gives you the creature's name, an idea of their personality, strengths, quirks, distinguishing features and a very brief background. Like with the SideQuest decks, the portrait deck is also system neutral, so you will have to write or borrow stat blocks for each of the creatures. If you want more fleshed out monster cards, Inkwell Ideas does also offer Creature Card Decks with popular monsters statted out for Fate, Pathfinder, various retroclones and Dungeon World. Both of these approaches have their strengths, and the reason why I like the portrait deck is because it is nice to be able to have an NPC with some personality to it that you can draw upon for long term use. Where the creature decks feature monsters for PCs to fight, the portrait deck gives you antagonists to let loose upon the characters over time.
The other thing that I like about these decks is their portability. For me there is always an element of travel involved with gaming, whether it is going to a game store, a friend's house or some public place. Being able to travel light when I game is essential, and one thing that these decks afford is portability. Between these decks, some notes and my tablet, I can have everything ready for a night a gaming with my friends.
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