First Impressions - Deck of Worlds - Worlds of Chrome and Starlight (SF)

I picked up the Deck of Worlds during the recent promos (you know, Black Friday, nearly Christmas etc.) as it's been something that intrigued me. Now, although I've put it away until later in the month, I decided to experiment with the SF expansion as that wasn't shrink wrapped and I was pretty curious.

Deck of Worlds is a GM/writing aide designed to get the creative juices going either by building a location randomly or by making choices having looked at the cards that you've drawn. It's a follow on from the Story Engine Deck(*) which did something similar for creating plots and stories.

(*) The Story Engine Deck always confuses me as the logo looks like the Story Engine RPG logo but it's completely unrelated)

 

There are six different types of card, each of which serves a different purpose. Using the example above, I'll talk through the differences.

1. Regions - these define the broad brush scope of the area you're looking at. In the case above, fallout is the region type, implying that there is some form of contamination in play.
2. Landmarks are found within regions. It's worth saying that I've nested these all together, but the example given in the box set is to generate a region, and then landmarks to go within it. Anyway, we have a colony with cisterns which is close to an anomaly. Three landmarks in a region of fallout.
3. Origins cards define significant events in the past. In this case the fallout region is the site of terraforming incident, and the colony was founded by a political splinter group.
4. Attribute cards add present day relevant features, in this case the anomaly is a source of precious fuel and a valuable industrial material.
5. Namesakes are ways of adding nicknames or more details. In this case, the colony is a place without privacy and the anomaly is fractal and self-sustaining.
6. Advent cards drive events that could change the area's future. In this case the colony has an important power source running out. Drawing a namesake card indicates that this is nuclear. A second advent card indicates that there has been a shocking data breach that exposed private secrets. In a colony without privacy, what could that be?!

I did a mix of random draws and selections to build the colony above, and I'm pleased with how it came out. I think I could build out a scenario or two from those inputs for Traveller or Star Trek Adventures. 

Let's try a second one.

This time, we have two adjacent regions - some craters with floes nearby. In my head, these are linked. The craters are the location that the first shot of the Great War was fired, an orbital strike. They're visible from space, and recent drilling at the location has broken into something shocking, and a silo of something dangerous is starting to leak fumes. There is a solar observatory at the craters, the hiding spot of world ending tech (perhaps linked to the orbital strike and silo?) and the landscape is irradiated and blasted. The observatory is infamous as the site of a terrible experiment involving plasma technology.

The floes have an unusual geothermal vent, and something about the floe region has resulted in a signal dead zone. However, a mysterious signal is now being received from the area - is it an energy pulse showing pre-war technologies reactivating, a message or a distress signal.

Again, I think that this would be really easy to extend into Traveller or Star Trek Adventures scenario.

So my first impression of these cards from the Deck of Worlds is that they will be really useful.

It's available here.

14 December 2025

(3rd attempt due to Blogger issues).