Die vielfältig einsetzbaren Karten zeigen die vier bekannten Spielkartenfarben ♣ ♦ ♠ ♥. Dabei steht ♣ beispielsweise für den sozialen Stand oder die Verbindungen eines Charakters. Die Wünsche und Begierden des Charakters repräsentiert ♥, etc.
Bis 17. Mai benötigt das Projekt 900 £.
„A deck of playing cards that double as a set of instant NPCs for your roleplaying game.
What are Character Cards?
Character Cards are a tool for creating fantasy stories, whether you’re writing a piece of fiction or running a roleplaying game.
Each card details an individual who can be readily slotted into your story. Or, if you want more variety, they’re designed to be easily combined to create truly unique characters.
Character Cards are geeky playing cards.
A standard 52 card deck, with 2 jokers.
Character Cards are a self-contained game
Designed for its own trick-taking game in addition to its other uses.
Who are we?
We’re two Manchester roleplayers, Laurence Hensel and Stephen Coffey, who had a cool idea and decided we should make it a reality.
Why are we making Character Cards?
Every GM has their own strengths and weaknesses and every game presents its own challenges. Sometimes it can be difficult to improvise an NPC under pressure.
Character Cards solve this problem. We long ago realised that having a set of pregenerated NPCs helped: but the more we had the harder it became to pick one. Drawing a card is fast and the information is all right there in one place.
The structure of a card
Each Character Card has a rank and suit, like any playing card, but it also has a character description, which is composed of several sections: one for each suit ♣ ♦ ♠ ♥, and a fifth for its secret.
The ♣ section describes the characters connections with others, their social standing, or something similar.
The ♦ section describes their main physical trait, something that is obvious when you look at them.
The ♠ section details their profession, what it is they do to earn a living.
The ♥ section describes their hearts desire, whether it be the person they love, or simply a hunger for power.
The secret is, well, just that, something that most people don’t know about the character or even something they don’t know about themselves, such as their true ancestry.
Generating Characters
The simplest way to use your deck of Character Cards is to shuffle it and draw a card whenever you need a new NPC or side character within your game
If you desire something more individual than that, the modular nature of the cards (with five cleanly separated traits) becomes significant. By drawing a card for each of the five traits you can instantly generate a completely unique character (with over 300 million possibilities you’ll never get the same result twice).
Or, if you know one thing about the character before you draw, you can simply ignore that section, while still using the rest of the card. For instance, if you know your character is a popular socialite in the town, you would ignore their ♣ description while using the rest of the card to fill out their other aspects.
Playing Games
In addition to all the other games you can play with a deck of cards, Character Cards have an extra one built in.
We’ve given each card a value for all 4 suits, creating a trick-taking game where everyone can participate in every trick.
In addition, each cards secret has a modifier value, allowing the card to be discarded to alter the value of a card, and thereby change the outcome of the round.“
– Character Cards – Instant NPCs, just add water product description
