Another 12 seeds using the Story Engine Deck. Tonight I’m combining the Fantasy expansion with the Eldritch Horror and Fairy Tale boosters. I had planned to use the Gothic booster with the Fairy Tale booster, but it turned out when I packed up the other night I put stored the cards with the wrong legends (i.e. what I thought was the Gothic booster was actually the Eldritch Horror booster), and I didn’t realize until I’d shuffled them together. Feeling a bit lazy, rather than sifting them out and fixing the problem, I’m going to just roll with it.
Let’s see how it goes.
- An iron elemental wants to find the path home and their only lead is an occult amulet, but they will live the rest of their life with false memories.
- A monarch wants to obtain a rare spell component from a seaside grove, but one way or another, it will be their last adventure.
- A merfolk cultist wants to navigate a maze, at the heart of which sites an eldritch shipwreck, but they must forsake that which they worship.
- A mage wants to reclaim their home from an infernal wonderland, but they will suffer an injury that does not heal.
- A blasphemous apothecary wants to break a curse involving a labyrinthine woodland, but they will burn out the last of their power.
- A dragon wants to sabotage a fairy-touched enemy’s castle, but an ancient evil will be released.
- An undead noble wants to seal the magic realm in a spellbound summit, but they must make a sacrifice no one will ever know about.
- A valiant ranger wants to prevent a war from being started by a crystalline skull, but it will mean shattering an old truce.
- A half-elven devil wants to claim a birthright involving a sundered realm, but their homeland will be put to the torch.
- An ambitious tactician wants to foil a schema involving an elemental sanctuary, but it will mean giving up an important heirloom.
- A fungal paladin wants to be healed by a grimoire, but they will have to act against their religion.
- An unsleeping warrior wants to open an ancient door that can only be unlocked by a draconian bell, but in a year and a day, it will be reversed.
In the last four days I’ve generated almost 50 seeds (24 fantasy, 12 horror, 12 sci-fi). This is the second time I’ve used the Fantasy expansion and the second time I’ve used the Eldritch Horror and Fairy Tale boosters (though first time with those two together). The expansion (60 cards) plus two boosters (18 cards each) gives me a total of 76 cards. I use five or six cards per seed (one agent, one engine, one anchor, one conflict, one or two aspects). This accounts for 50-60 of the 76 cards. I started to recognize cards as they came up.
I feel like I’d do well to add more cards to the mix. This might mean adding another expansion (this one could have been Fantasy+Horror expansions), but I think I might do better to incorporate the base set. Then the expansion and boosters add genre-appropriate flavor.
Still, I’m pretty happy with how these have been turning out. It wouldn’t be as noticeable if I weren’t doing so many in short succession. I’ll see how the variation increases with the base set.
I really like how the cards work, in a tactile sense and in applying the process manually. I suspect that were I to write software to do this I would collect the strings into lists, choose which lists (i.e. which expansions and boosters) to use, then ‘synthesize’ cards as needed. That is, in creating a seed I might need to draw an agent card. Instead of drawing a defined card, I would draw four agents from the lists and then manually pick one of the four for my seed.
Not tonight, though. Perhaps another night.