Story, Please! An Adventure-Building Deck for No Thank You, Evil!

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5 out of 5 rating for Story, Please! An Adventure-Building Deck for No Thank You, Evil!

I was skeptical about how useful this would be, but bought it on impulse when I saw it at a game store I frequent. I've never found adventure-building decks and charts that useful in D&D and other RPGs. I was very pleased, however, with this deck. It contains cards for stories, places, twists, persons, maps, and stuff (special loot or macguffins, basically). The quality of the artwork and the card material is excellent. You basically build an adventure by choosing or randomly drawing a from the story deck, choosing two to three places, putting in a twist or to, a person or two, selecting some monsters from the main set or the separate monster deck, and if you want a something form the stuff deck and a map. It even provides 10 handout cards to give to players as handouts (invites, wanted posters, tickets, letters, etc.)


An adventure-building deck like this works well with the No Thank You, Evil! system. It is designed for playing with children so the stories should not be complex and play sessions are generally 30 minutes to an hour. If you don't have an interest in, or the time for, creating adventures, than this card deck will allow for many more hours of play after you complete the four adventures that come with the core box set of NTYE. It also allows older kids to run games without them having to write up an adventure and create a map. I think it would be easier for kids to run an adventure from these cards than it would be for them to read through an printed adventure.


I appreciate the stuff cards. Much easier to give a young player a card to show they have something, than have them manage a written inventory and to write down the details of the items special powers. This is especially true if they get the item in the middle or at the beginning of the adventure. You don't want to stop the game and help the young player write down the details. I wish Monte Cook published "stuff" cards for the basic beginning stuff characters get in the basic game.


If you love the basic boxed set of NTYE and want to have a way to create a quick adventure on the fly, or want a game aid to help younger players build and run an adventure, this is a must have.

My only complaint is that the box the cards come in is a pain to open and seems unlikely to stand up to much use--especially by kids. I would rather they would have a box sized for a single stack rather than a double stack, especially as there is no real advantage to organizing the deck in two stacks of 50. Whereas the NTYE box set is beautiful and of high quality, the box for these cards is not. I will likely toss the box and find a way to fit them into the boxed set.