The Story Engine Deck

 I know that I said I would answer questions in this post, but I'm so excited by this that I just had to switch things up.

The Story Engine Deck (available for purchase here) is an amazing tool for writers, teachers, and dungeon masters. It helps create writing prompts, spark ideas, create Dungeons & Dragons campaign ideas, character ideas, magical items, character relations, and even settings, all of which can help defeat writer's block. The creator is also working on a new deck, The Deck of Worlds, which is focused on world-building locations and can be learned about here.

They also have a book, The Story Engine Deck Anthology, which contains postcard-sized short stories that were inspired by the deck. Some of these stories are written by the creator of the deck himself, Peter Chiykowski, but there are other authors, including one written by Jonathan Sims of The Magnus Archives fame. You can also hear the stories narrated by Jonathan Sims, Lydia Nicholas (of Rusty Quill Gaming), and the voice of Night Vale himself, Cecil Baldwin (from, of course, Welcome to Night Vale) here.

Naturally, I couldn't help but buy this. So, in this post, I'm going to draw cards from the deck (or one of the expansion decks or booster decks) and share a picture of the cards below, then below that, write whatever the cards have inspired or talk about some of the different ways the cards could be interpreted to change around the prompt. 

The picture above is the Everything Bundle with the anthology. 

So, here are the cards I drew and the prompt that was generated. 

The prompt reads as follows: A strange millionaire wants to enact a secret plan revolving around a harvest in a remote field but they will develop a dangerous addiction. 

All the cards except the purple Engine card came from the horror expansion, as you can see from the little skull icon in the corners of the cards. All cards from expansions and boosters have a little icon on them to represent which pack they came from. 

Initially, I laid down the Agent card so that the character would be a cannibal, but then, when I got the Conflict card of "but it will cause a dangerous addiction," I switched it to a millionaire as a story idea began forming. Perhaps the dangerous addiction that is caused is an addiction to human meat.

Originally, the prompt was more streamlined: A strange millionaire wants to enact a secret plan revolving around a harvest but they will develop a dangerous addiction. 

I read through the 8 page guidebook that came with the main deck and tucked another Anchor card under "a harvest" after I drew the green Aspect card that had "remote" on it. This gave me an idea for the location. 

The "strange" Aspect was drawn and I decided to apply it to the millionaire. Now, "strange" is open-ended and could mean a variety of different things. Maybe this millionaire looks or talks strangely. Maybe he's got some unusual mannerisms that are dismissed as an eccentricity due to his wealth. 

Next up is the secret plan he's going to enact in the remote field during the harvest. What's the plan? How does it connect to the dangerous addiction? Does it happen every harvest or just this one specifically? This led to me doing a little research about harvests and traditional names for full moons, which is how I learned that October's Hunter's Moon is the Harvest Moon every three years. 

Below is just something quick I wrote to accompany this prompt. 

Every three years in October, he comes to our community. 

Dressed in city finery, he's out of place and yet, belongs here completely. He stays with a different family every visit and this year, he has chosen my family. 

He tells us the harvest this year will be a good one. As I look out over our barren fields, I think he's a fool. Nothing grows in the field and the very little we managed to grow in our gardens is barely enough to support us through the winter.

Of course, the harvest is a good one when you're harvesting blood.

So, there you have it. Breaking writer's block with The Story Engine Deck is fun, simple as that. I cannot recommend this enough. Not only is the deck useful for a variety of different creative needs, the artwork on the cards and the boxes they come in is amazing. If you're able to, this is worth the money.