Pick a Card, Any Card

Last Friday, we shared our DM Prep for our ongoing DnD Family Campaign, and one aspect of that organization went extremely well, so we thought we would share some helpful tips and tricks regarding our favorite homebrewed gaming aid.

Our family game took a summer hiatus because our young adult kiddos are such busy, dire bees these days. We had two long months off, and when we recently gathered around our glorious Wyrmwood game table, we had to do a pretty big recap to clear out all the storyline cobwebs.

DM Ben crafted some really slick NPC cards to help reset the group’s current missions and give them some handy visual reminders. He has the NPC’s face card on one side and their corresponding storefront on the other side. We love to create mini one-shots related to our Waterdeep street vendors because (1) why not, (2) this improves story immersion, and (3) trading one service for another would be super common in these medieval times.

Since the cards were strictly for home use, he utilized Google Gemini’s AI image generator to make some humorous storefront graphics. For the opposite side, we utilize a variety of Face Card options from talented creators like Paizo and Inkwell Ideas.

In the example above, this is the complete card for Rishardo Montalwand, the proprietor of Waterdeep’s premier arcane components supplier. Everything is here: the fun mini, his distinct likeness, and the name of the store he resides in. A card like that provides an easy reminder of any open missions from him. Pretty cool, right?!

Well, we got to put this memory game aid to the test over the weekend, and it worked swimmingly! DM Ben did a brief recap of the previous session and laid down the corresponding cards as he called out any open missions. Our home game players actually take pretty decent journals, mostly because they got fancy DnD notebooks for Christmas one year. Even so, several lightbulbs went off over their heads as DM Ben plopped these cards down on the table. Things like “Oh yeah! I totally forgot about that guy!” were uttered aloud.

Here are the new and improved Facecards we finished. We’ve made ten of them so far, including:

• Keanu Leaves of One, Two, Tree.
• Tink Urbelle of Gismos and Gadgets.
• Rishardo Montalwand of Castco.
• Ewan McHook of The Mermaid Cafe (and master carpenter).
• Krufer Prometory of the Hammered Horse.
• Brindle Spindle of All By My Shelf.
• Killian Scar of The Pointy End.
• Elara and Lorcan Silversong of The Loan Rangers.
• M. Knight Holyman of The Church of Consequences.
• Chip Carver of The Busted Boulder.

Hopefully, these humorous homebrewed NPCs might eventually find the perfect spot in your own TTRPG campaigns. 😉

Now, these cards were so helpful for the players (and the dungeon master) that we still need to make a several more, including Terry the Troll (a mainstay in our game now), some additional mission cards (for easy tracking), and even some place cards like The Fissure and Night Hag’s underground cavern (for dramatic effect).

We also created a handy template in our favorite design program (Figma) and a cutting template (MS Word) to quickly produce new cards for upcoming sessions whenever the situation calls for it.

Until next time!