Encounter Deck 2: The Two Powers (of cards)

Spent more time thinking on this one, so I'll expand it. This is a sequel to the Encounter Deck I wrote last time, but I'll likely include writing points from that here too. I'll add that I still don't have this entirely thought through, this is just a stream of ideas I'm still processing into something more specific.

Note: I don't have anything specific on mind for "The Two Powers", I just wanted to do a riff on The Two Towers instead of Electric Boogaloo this time.

While I largely focus on encounters of creatures in this article, this could be done with events and maybe even buildings too. I just tried to keep it within some theme for this article.
Screenshot from Hand of Fate 2. The article doesn't have anything to do with the game, I just wanted a cool fantasy card dealer on the article's cover.

Card Themes

Give each suit a vague theme to follow. You don't have to follow it all the way through, of course. For a start, I suggest that the red suits could be friendly and black suits could be unfriendly encounters.

Card Structure

Get a cheap deck of cards and a permanent marker. Find a way to fit all of this onto each card:

• Foreshadowing
• Encounter
• Environment
• Consequences

Instead of a single card, you're drawing two cards for every random encounter: one just for the environment, one for everything else. Why a combination of two? Because if you will be forced to repeat encounters, a different environment could freshen things up hopefully. Mark each card that's supposed to be in the starting Encounter Deck somehow (maybe a dot in the corner?). Try to make each Foreshadowing, Encounter, and Environment unique. As for what the stand for...

Foreshadowing

This is something you tell the players before they arrive to the random encounter's location (from now on just called hex seeing how this could work in a hex crawl). Perhaps in a neighboring hex. Something along the lines of "you see large footprints with claws on the ground, headed North".

Encounter

This is where the interesting thing happens. For the foreshadowing above, it could be "a group of owlbears". Ideally it would be adjustable for different tiers, but I don't know how much could you fit onto a single card.

Environment

This is the environment in which the encounter happens. I feel like this would be the biggest hurdle, seeing how there are 52 cards and ideally you'd avoid copies. Something like "a rope bridge over a ravine", "a narrow crevace between two boulders", or "three big trees". Ideally something that would make the encounter interesting in case it's a fight, or maybe even not.

Consequences

This makes the biggest difference, and it's also the thing I mentioned last time. It's the consequences of dealing or not dealing with an encounter. Something like "add [card] to the encounter deck if they were killed", "add [card] to the encounter deck if you made a trade", all depends on what kind of encounter it is.

Alright, but now onto some more new ideas.

Randomly Added Specific Encounters

The title is clumsy, the point is simple. Remember how we assigned specific meanings to the card suits? Let's actually do it to a color instead of a suits. Let's say, for example, that the clubs (mostly) represent the bandits. And now, imagine that as long as there are bandits in the forest, more will come once every three days, or some other regular time interval. You have all the clubs cards representing bandits on a separate pile, and add one randomly into the encounter deck regularly.

But remember, we want every encounter to be unique! These aren't just different with the numbers of bandits or what ranks they are. Let's make their fighting styles different. This group uses tamed wolves. This group has pyromaniacs with bottles of alcohol that will spray fire at you. That group has a powerful warlock serving the Asmodeus. And this group of bandits is gonna rob the city if they aren't dealt with in a week (more on this later).

What if we want to have multiple decks like this behind the screen, though? Won't it become confusing? Not necessarily, let's just make a quick adjustment - let's take the Ace out, flip it over, and place it underneath the deck as a label. If you need to draw a card but the deck is empty, it's time for the Ace to be added into the deck. The Ace is the most powerful or influential of random encounters of its type. In the case of the club bandits, their leader.

Let's move away from the bandits, how about traveling merchants? Diamonds are suitable for them (pun intended). But instead of just your average regular merchants, how about making them all weird? A man who sold his face to a fey, and how he has access to an infinite supply of magical masks. A woman who has no shadow, selling light sources in a dark forest. A man with no name selling magic rings. And their leader? How about a tradesman with no wares? He'll sell you any kind of information you seek, for a mere price of a precious memory.

Change the World

How about we look at the ways in which we manipulate the deck next? Let's establish a base procedure.

1. Previous Foreshadowing cards are put back into the Encounter Deck (or discarded if the card's Consequence says so), except for the one in the players' chosen direction. The kept card is used as an Encounter.
2. The GM draws a card for the Environment used and uses it with the Encounter.
3. When the players investigate what's in a specific direction, the GM draws a Foreshadowing card for it. This can be done once for each direction (6 on a hex grid).

Seeing how this means there are 7 cards drawn for every step of the procedure, this is quite inefficient. This would mean you spend the entire deck of cards in less than 8 moves, and that's not considering the fact you don't start with a complete deck! You could in theory keep all the Foreshadowed cards that neighbor the chosen hex, but that would still use up a lot of cards. Maybe instead, you could only foreshadow like two or so directions, and if the players pick a different direction you draw a completely random encounter that's unforeshadowed.

Here's the important part though: The composition of the deck informs you about the current state of this region! Imagine for a moment that the Club bandits make up the majority of the encounter deck. That tells you straight up that they hold a lot of influence over this place. Maybe there's a cap on how many Clubs bandits and Diamonds merchants can be in the forest? Maybe defeating a group of bandits lets you draw from the Merchants deck automatically? And so on, and so forth. Players' actions and inactions shape the world.

But now comes the fun part: Let's expand this procedure with some extra rules. I'm not sure yet if these would be special Consequences, player abilities, or "GM moves", so I'll leave that space blank for now.

• Eventful. Instead of a single encounter card, draw two cards. These two creatures (or groups) encountered each other before the players arrived.
• Curious Place. Draw two environment cards instead of one.
• Territorial. This encounter won't leave until something gets rid of it.
• Show Me Your Best! I'm imagining this is a barbarian ability. After defeating an encounter that belongs to some faction, use this ability to instantly force the most powerful of them (the Ace) to appear somewhere.
• Silence before the Storm. Nothing happens. Shuffle all discarded cards back into the deck.
• Not Today. Pick one card from a hex the players are not on and shuffle it back into the encounter deck.
• Wait It Out. Draw another card. The GM decides which of these wins the encounter and ends up occupying that hex.
• Growing Influence. Every X days, draw another card for this faction and add it to the encounter deck.

No Dice

Why am I so hung up on this idea? If you've read my previous post (can't blame you if you didn't), I mention that cards remember stuff. A random encounter table sounds good on the paper, but the dice make for a cruel mistresses. In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, the two eponymous characters start Act 1 by betting on flipped coins. They get heads 92 times in a row. Supernatural forces or not, a chance of 1 in 5 octillion isn't zero. There's also an encounter of this in the Bioshock Infinite that never fails to make me smile. Dice don't remember a thing, you could in theory get a natural 20 ten times in a row, that's a chance of 1 in 10 trillion. Cards remember, and they won't repeat themselves, unless you either shuffle the drawn cards back, or have copies in the deck.

Of course, you could avoid repetitions by using a bigger deck. It'd be hard for me to draw stuff on it, but you could always resort to listing the things in a table instead if you want the deck to be reusable. That's why I recommended a cheap deck. Oh, you could also just combine multiple decks into one and find a way of distinguishing them.

Anyway, that's all I have to say on the topic for now. I hope you enjoyed this read, and wish you a great day!