The party makes camp, sets their watches, then you as the GM roll a random encounter... what happens? With this deck of encounter ideas, each of the 50+ cards has a detailed encounter idea more interesting than 'you hear 1d4 giant rats in the corner'.
Rolling for a random encounter when the party makes camp or during each night's watch is a staple of fantasy role-playing games. But often when a roll tells the GM there is a random encounter all the GM has is a chart of possible creatures such as "1d4+2 giant rats" or "an orc patrol".
The Restless Encounters deck has over 50 unusual and compelling ideas for a random night-time fantasy encounter. Whether the party is making camp as they travel the countryside or they are risking a long rest in a dungeon, this deck will have many encounter ideas that fit any situation!Â
Each of the 50+ Restless Encounter cards has artwork (an NPC, foe, scene, campsite map, etc.) on one side and an outline of the encounter on the other side: how things start, the foes' likely actions, NPC's agendas, events that may occur, etc. Â
As encounter outlines on cards, they give you just enough information to run the encounter quickly. You won’t be bogged down in unnecessary details and they are easy to twist to fit your setting.
As part of this crowdfunding, we're also including our Encounter Builder decks as a pledge option. Each of the 50 Encounter Builder cards per deck has full color artwork on each side. A GM shuffles them, then lays a few out and looks for a connection between a couple of them to describe a dynamic scene/event to the players. The Encounter Builder deck themes are City, Dungeon, and Wilderness. Â
If you don't want to download the PDF linked above, here are three of the sample cards from the deck:
A traveler possessed by a curious alien has questions for the party.
Two bands of goblin cause mischief.
Because the focus of this crowdfunding project is encounters, we thought it made sense to include our three recent Encounter Builder decks (City, Dungeon, & Wilderness) at other pledge levels. Here is an example of how they work:
A GM shuffles the deck and lays a few out. Then the GM thinks of a scene that will relate a couple of them. For more inspiration, flip the cards over (both sides of each card have full-color art) or draw extra cards. Or discard & start over.
Using the example cards above, one could think PCs are about to open the bars to cross a dwarven bridge they see beyond the bars, but several humanoids are hiding in ambush. Or if that doesn’t fit, perhaps they enter a smithy where a spirit in the forge possesses armor in the room.Â
We're happy to work with a great team of innovative RPG creators:
Quinn Blackwell: Quinn is an up-and-coming writer with two published RPGs (Cosmic Twilight & Wolves at the Lake) under their belt plus other supplements as well.
Matt Bulahao: Matt has been working with Inkwell Ideas for about 10 year now, providing a lot of the great art monster & NPC art you see in our projects.
Aaron Canton: Aaron is a professional writer who specializes in writing fantasy and science-fiction works, and has created content for a variety of literary universes, role-playing games, and works of interactive fiction.
Keith Curtis: Keith has done about half of the Cartography on our prior Sidequest Decks. He has also done work for many other game companies, including work on the Babylon 5 d20 RPG, the Song of Ice and Fire RPG, and the updated 5e Keep on the Borderlands.
Misha Handman: Misha is a professional novelist and gaming writer who lives in the Pacific Northwest. He has contributed to several earlier Sidequest decks, as well as work for White Wolf Publications and UFO Press. He is proud to be the only person with his name on the Internet.
Josh Parry: Josh is a freelance TTRPG author who has worked with Nord Games and LoreSmyth as well as his own self-published titles on Itch.io and the DMs Guild.
Andrew Shields: Andrew has worked on a variety of Inkwell Ideas projects over the last eight years. He has his own publishing imprint called Fictive Fantasies and has worked for a number of other RPG publishers.
Phill Simpson: Another person who has worked with Inkwell Ideas for years, Phill stepped up to do several custom illustrations for this project. He has worked in the tabletop RPG industry for well over 10 years for many clients.
Dean Spencer: Dean Spencer is an industry professional whose artwork has appeared in various projects for companies such as Paizo Publishing, Fantasy Flight Games, and many more!
Joe Wetzel: Owner of Inkwell Ideas, Joe will manage the project, write some of the encounters, make some of the maps, and pick up anything else that needs doing.
Our cards are already written, so we'll be editing and completing the art as the project funds. (We'll be able to assign the remaining art even before pledging completes if we fund early.)Â So you can expect PDFs in late May/early June and printed decks in July.
Shipping is easy & flat (even if you get extras for friends, it is the same rate): US: $6 Canada: $11 Rest of the World: $14 Note: We will need to charge VAT (about 20%, varying by country) for those in the EU & UK. But we do ship with VAT paid by us so you won't be asked to pay it & an admin fee later.
We will charge shipping as we get closer to fulfillment of the printed decks.
