A new tool from One Shot Podcast Networks’ James D’Amato hopes to bring players into the process of creating the world at their fantasy TTRPG with a new deck-based supplement for your tabletop roleplaying game.
The Ultimate RPG Worldbuilding Deck is a new tool published by Simon & Schuster that’s designed to help “add more depth to the world” or add extra backstory. The deck is made up of 75 unique prompts that can be drawn by a player or GM to inspire a new part of the world.
For example, a player could draw “A Union,” which would prompt the player/GM to imagine a fictional union within the world. What are its strengths? What are its weaknesses? What industry might this union represent? How important is it in the world?
It’s a series of unique questions that can help prompt imagining a new and unique function of the world that could spark a side quest, a rival, or even an entire campaign.
While worldbuilding prompts aren’t new to TTRPG fans, D’Amato’s approach is particularly useful since it draws on a design approach from Powered by the Apocalypse games. PBTA games, for those unfamiliar, have players choose a playbook for character creation, which often guides their choices. Certain parts of this include elements of their backstory. For example, Monster of the Week (a Buffy/X-Files game focused on hunting monsters) has the Professional as a playbook, a government official. The playbook asks the player to identify the agent and attach a series of traits to it. Perhaps the agency is heavily bureaucratic. Or perhaps it is morally corrupt. These tags help form the story through player decisions.
D’Amato told TTRPG Insider that the same tools were used in the cards. By focusing on prompts or fill-in-the-blanks, players have options available to them for whatever approach they decide that they’d like to use.
The tools are clear and crisp with cultural or circumstantial details that feel fantasy-oriented but could be used in most stories if a DM or player desired. The cards are larger than the average playing card, which makes them easy to read. They’re also color-coded in five categories: People, Places, Rumors, History, and Institutions. Each card provides two or three “options” to help flavor the concept or get the conceptual gears turning. The tool is meant for players and GMs, D’Amato told The Fandomentals.
D’Amato has previously covered worldbuilding in past Ultimate RPG volumes, but this deck, in particular, provides clear guidance that is quick to use at a table and offers a hint of randomness that might even lead to more improvised storytelling. The decks are particularly useful because they allow a player to draw a card and inspire an idea, rather than flip through dozens of pages to find something interesting. Both are viable approaches to storytelling, but decks can often act like ‘prompts’, something that can be drawn and used without the need for extensive planning.
The concepts did feel a bit too generic, which some DMs might appreciate. I might not use the deck to prompt new details for my Vampire the Masquerade game, for example. But I suspect that such games are in the minority and not as pertinent.
If I had one bit of feedback to give, I would love to have a digital form of this tool available. As someone who uses VTTs and Discord servers to play TTRPGs, being able to draw a card or even go to a random entry in a PDF would be nice in certain circumstances.
But if DMs are looking for new tools that could inspire expansions of their worlds at TTRPG tables, the Ultimate Worldbuilding Deck is an option worth considering in times of need. It helps players and DMs to build a setting together and to flesh things out with a few moments.
The Deck is currently available at your favorite bookstore.
Images via Simon & Schuster