WIP Wednesday: A Gnomish Dossier

Today we get to feature a fab DnD supplement maker and show off how their great card decks made our DM prep a snap.

Skeleton Key Games is getting a lot of magical buzz lately for their slick oversized spell scroll line but today we’re going to spread the good word about their great line of Dossier Decks and how fun n easy they can make encounter building.

First, let’s start with a brief recap for those who missed our Terrain Tuesday post from yesterday! DM Ben is in the process of building a fun side mission encounter where the party group meanders over to the village square job board and realizes a certain gnome tinkerer needs help obtaining some rather rare spell components for his budding list of inventions. In exchange for these special ingredients, he’s going to provide the group with a portal device that works…well, to be honest…most of the time.

DM Ben then explained that when it comes to NPC town encounters, he often utilizes a simple 3-step approach that allows for a faster, yet meaningful gameboard presentation:

1. Grab an 8×8 piece of terrain for the floor.
2. Select the right scatter terrain piece.
3. Create a memorable NPC.

Smart but simple for all those busy Dungeon Masters out there, right? So now that we have our memorable scatter terrain piece complete, it’s time to develop our gnome NPC!

We’re very pro face cards when it comes to characters in our DnD games. Not sure how it goes for your game groups, but our players have terrible memories so these cards really, really come in handy. Even better, the group can slip a piece of paper for the back of the card sleeve and throw down some quick notes/keywords as the encounter unfolds (which saves silly back-and-forth time and puts less pressure on the DM).

Now you have two tasks here:  (1) pick a mini from your collection or print a new one and (2) find the right face card. The order doesn’t matter. Sometimes you have your heart set on the mini and other times, the face card leaps out of the deck and speaks to you first. What’s cool about these Dossier Decks is they can do a lot of the heavy lifting for you because they include a portrait card, a traits card and even a mission card (which can all be used interchangeably from the deck). Awesome, right?!

Now we already have our side mission set here but the Skeleton Key Games gnome face card was exactly what we needed. For our NPC mini, we went with a classic: the gnome trickster from Wizkids Blood Wars set. Naturally our face card and miniature don’t need to match perfectly…we just want them to complement one another.

Look how slick our new encounter is now though!

1. Dwarven Forge floor tile
2. STL Miniatures scatter terrain piece
3. Skeleton Key Games NPC merchant card
4. Wizkids gnome tricker miniature

DM Ben simply plops down all these wonderful pieces on his game board to kick off the encounter and the party will quickly be immersed in a gnome tinkerer’s clockwork shop…eager to hear about the mission and reward at hand! In a word: “Magnificent.”