Created by Peter Chiykowski, creator of The Story Engine
Create endless story prompts for writers, DMs, RPG players, teachers, and storytellers of all stripes.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
New eco-efficient PDFs distributed + Deck of Worlds preorders open
over 3 years ago
– Mon, Aug 16, 2021 at 06:01:36 AM
Hello backers!
I'm stopping by to let you know that I've updated everybody's Digital Downloads with access to the improved eco-efficient deck I mentioned earlier in the week. The version of the deck that prints 12 cards/page now requires way less ink and is much easier to read, use and sort when printed in black and white. I've also left the old uploaded versions online in case you preferred the the old version of the 12/page print-and-play.
You should have received an email notification from BackerKit about new digital downloads yesterday, but if not, you can gain access to your Digital Downloads by recovering your survey link via this form: https://story-engine.backerkit.com/
Your survey link should take you to your survey confirmation page, which includes the Digital Downloads button.
The Story Engine: Deck of Worlds Preorders Open!
I got some DMs from folks who missed the Deck of Worlds Kickstarter after the recent update, and I'm thrilled to announce that preorders for Deck of Worlds are now open: https://deckofworlds.com/preorders
If you haven't seen yet, I recorded an improvised demo showing how you can combine Deck of Worlds with the original Story Engine Deck to create both high-level worldbuilding prompts as well as more detailed looked at individual characters and story-level hooks. You can see the original just-Deck-of-Worlds demo here.
If you have any trouble accessing your PDFs or you have questions about the new worldbuilding deck, feel free to get in touch!
Peter
PDFs of the original Story Engine Deck have been distributed + new artwork + progress update
over 3 years ago
– Mon, Aug 09, 2021 at 12:40:49 AM
UPDATE: My apologies! I meant to post this update to my new The Story Engine: Deck of Worlds campaign! I will be updating this project again to let you know when I've uploaded the updated "eco-efficient" print-and-play files to this project's BackerKit sometime in the next week, but the rest of this update is focused on the worldbuilding deck.
Hi everyone!
Thank you so much for being so timely in responding to the reward surveys and for being so considerate reading the FAQs and getting in touch for clarifications! This project has been my biggest in scope by far, and it involved some big and challenging changes to how tax and shipping are assessed in the pledge manager. I was expecting the pledge manager to lead to a lot of complications and customer support cases, but so far this has been the smoothest survey process of all the Kickstarter/BackerKit projects I've managed. I put that down to how considerate backers have been in keeping up with updates, communicating their needs clearly when they reach out for assistance, and being flexible with solutions and workarounds. So let me say a big thank you to all of you—it really makes a huge difference on my end!
Also, for those waiting on additional information before filling out the reward survey: take your time, there's no rush. We're at about 83% completion right now, which is enough for me to make informed decisions about production. It's always nice to have finished surveys in hand, but we won't be locking pledges or charging cards in BackerKit until January 2022, so whether you do the survey now and change your mind later, or you wait until January to decide, it's okay. We'll likely distribute the beta through BackerKit this autumn, so that may tip the scales toward filling out the survey sooner, but again, there's no rush.
With that said, I'm excited to share some updates with you! Here are the headlines, with full details below
PDFs of the original Story Engine Deck have been distributed
New artwork for the Lore Fragments Expansion cover and sample micro-settings
Progress update on getting the beta ready
PDFs of the original Story Engine Deck have been distributed
If you backed for any reward tier that includes access to PDFs of the original The Story Engine Deck, or the original 3 expansions or 6 boosters, you now can access those PDFs via BackerKit! These are the reward tiers that include access to this content:
CA$ 80: Deck of Worlds + Original Story Engine
CA$ 80: PDF All Old + New Decks
CA$ 390: All Old + New Decks
CA$ 480: /|\(°,,,°)/|\ DEVOUR ALL THINGS OLD+NEW
Also, anyone who added on the original Story Engine Deck and/or the original expansions/boosters
And here's how you can locate your digital download rewards in BackerKit: https://help.backerkit.com/article/642-digital-downloads
I decided to distribute these files without any restriction on payment being taken or pledges being locked in BackerKit. In other words, if they are part of your rewards, you can access these original Story Engine PDFs any time after finishing your survey, even if you have an amount owing in BackerKit. I overrode the setting that normally forces backers to have paid first so I can distribute some rewards early while leaving surveys open and unlocked until January.
I want to say a big thank you to Zach Schuster (@zmschuster in the Kickstarter comments), who came on board to help with communications when the project took off faster than expected in the first week. He has since taken on a bigger project management role coordinating art production, backing me up on graphic design, and helping set up the pledge manager. Over the past couple of weeks, he's been instrumental in getting set up for PDF distribution. The high-quality PDF print-and-play of The Story Engine Deck has been around since April of 2020, but the original "eco-efficient" version of the print-and-play I designed was still very ink-intensive. Zach helped me re-export the full original run of Story Engine cards in a MUCH more printer-friendly format.
Here's what the high-quality print-and-play looks like:
And here's what the new eco-efficient version looks like:Â
The Agent/Anchor cards are still in full-color (but with simpler text), and the Engine/Conflict/Aspect cards are primarily simple text on white. I think this will especially make a big difference for home-printing decks and teachers on tight printing budgets. And because the icons and card styling stand out more, these cards are easier to read for colorblind users and when using black-and-white printing.Â
This is my first export of the new eco-efficient print-and-play. I checked all the PDFs for errors, but if any mistakes slipped through during our batch-export process, please feel free to DM me and I'll collect changes for a future update.
New artwork
You may recall from the note on the campaign page that the cover artwork I was showing for the Lore Fragments Expansion was a placeholder while the art team behind the EMBERWIND tabletop RPG cooked up a custom cover for us. I'm thrilled to unveil the updated cover artwork, which I'm absolutely in love with. (Also, EMBERWIND just opened the beta of their Hero Creator tool this weekend, which and you can sign up for it here.)
Here's the finalized cover:
Thanks to Nick Ragetli and Derek Chung on the EMBERWIND team for developing this piece for the cover.
I also wanted to show some of the finished artwork from the team of writers and artists creating micro-setting postcards.
This is Frances P's rendering of the First Road leading out from the town of Hraika—a complex micro-setting created by CL Clark using an alpha copy of the deck. You'll get to read the lore writeup and their flash story "In the Gutter of Divinity" set in this area later this year.
And this is Kuutti Terävä's depiction of Jordan Shiveley's original micro-setting Hiphathenaeum, a library of funguses hidden away in a canyon, also created using the alpha deck. Flash fiction to come!
More exciting artwork and writing have been delivered by the setting creation team, but I want to tease it out over the coming updates!
Progress update
I've finished the deck overhaul I described in the previous update, rebalancing all of the Namesake Cards with the 3-after-the-name cues and 1 before-the-name cue, and rebalancing the cues of the Origin, Attribute, and Advent Cards for a better spread of ideas covering different categories of narrow/broad prompts and prompts covering different aspects of worldbuilding. I've done this for the main deck and all 6 expansions that use the same card types: about 600 cards in all.
I've continued flowing in the cues created by the project writers. The utility, creativity, and range of the deck keep getting better and better.Â
Once all project writers' cues have been delivered and integrated, I plan to do one more pass of the Origin, Attribute, and Advent card arrangements with an eye for "master"/"meta" level cues—these are cues that could be promoted from local characteristics and events to global ones that affect your entire world. I'll be adding a section to the guidebook dedicated to exploring this concept, and making sure that most Origin, Attribute, and Advent cards have at least one cue that could conceivably work on a global level. My interview with World Anvil put this idea on my radar, and while I plan to treat the ideas involved a little differently through the lens of prompts, I do recommend checking out this great blog on the different aspects that can go into establishing a world meta.
Once that pass is done, we'll start prepping the deck for a print-and-play of the beta so we can open things up to all of you!
That's all for now!
I'll leave you with another sample prompt: The Holy Savannah, known for its waterfall bird colony, which has started acting strangely of late! Could it be something in the water? Could it be the legacy of war that has seen the area trade hands numerous times over the years? I'll leave it up to you!
Keep in mind this is still the alpha printing (without any of the changes I've been describing).
Thanks so much!
Final week of The Story Engine: Deck of Worlds Kickstarter
over 3 years ago
– Sun, Jun 13, 2021 at 11:47:22 PM
Hi backers! I just wanted to check in with you once more as we head into the final week of the Kickstarter for my new deck of worldbuilding prompts, which also features 3 new expansions and 6 new boosters for The Story Engine Deck!
Thanks to your incredible day 1 support, we hit our funding in the first hour of the campaign and have since unlocked over $600,000 worth of stretch goals. I couldn't be more thrilled!
With 7 days to go, I wanted to share some more glimpses into the campaign along with a reminder that this is your last chance to get in on the Kickstarter!
What is the Deck of Worlds?
Deck of Worlds is a new standalone deck for fast, fun, open-ended worldbuilding. You can create imagined settings, local lore, and story-driven maps for creative writing and tabletop RPGs.
Here's an unscripted demo I shot the other week, where I created 2 linked micro-settings in 7 minutes: The Bayou of Outcasts and The Mountain That Weeps. You can turn on closed captions below or watch a version with hard-coded subtitles on Facebook.
These cards can help you quickly create a dynamic, interesting setting with hooks to develop conflicts and stories.Â
You can even fill your world with characters, encounters, and points of interest prompted by the original Story Engine Deck!
There are also some really interesting expansions! Although my favorite changes frequently, it's currently the Shared Hearths & Common Creeds Culture Keyholes Expansion featuring 60 special Keyhole Cards loaded up with 240 culture-focused worldbuilding questions that act as keyholes for opening larger aspects of your setting.
You can see a demo of the keyhole questions in action in this project update!
What's new with The Story Engine Deck?
We have also unlocked stretch goals for 3 new expansions and 6 new boosters for The Story Engine Deck, as well as some simple and inexpensive storage boxes! I'll show you a few sneak peeks below!
UNLOCKED! Written In Blood & Alibi Mystery Expansion contains 60 all-new cards: 12 Agents, 12 Engines, 12 Anchors, 12 Conflicts, and 12 Aspects.
UNLOCKED!Dropship & War Hawks Military Sci Fi Booster contains 20 all-new cards: 4 Agents, 4 Engines, 4 Anchors, 4 Conflicts, and 4 Aspects.
If you visit the campaign page you'll also find a backstories expansion, unique items expansion, fairy tale booster, western booster, and superhero booster! Oh, and we're releasing some simple storage boxes with dividers for organizing your collection!
Your comments and pledges on day 1 of the campaign mean everything for building campaign momentum and helping me make a real impact with the launch. And there are a lot of reasons to be excited about this new project!
Reason #1: Open-ended worldbuilding
The deck features is a set of 180 cards for creating imagined lands, local lore, and story-driven world maps you can instantly explore through writing or roleplay.
The deck uses 6 simple card types that work together to create complex settings with a meaningful past, present, and future. With trillions of potential combinations and open-ended scalability, you can build anything from a city full of unique districts and landmarks, to a sprawling land of diverse terrain types, ecosystems, cultures, and civilizations.Â
Reason #2: Build collaborative settings
As with the multiplayer options for the original Story Engine, you can use Deck of Worlds to build settings collaboratively and then explore them through writing and tabletop RPGs.
Here's me playing with my new rescue dog, Oban, who had a lot of fun mushing cards around with his nose.
The expansions for Deck of Worlds are already complete and a talented team of international writers is helping me punch-up the core deck and expansion decks with some truly inspired ideas.
My favorite expansion changes every 10 minutes, but currently it's the Heroes' Quests & Fools' Errands Adventure Prompts Expansion, which includes adventure prompts you add to your world as activatable quests.
Cover art by Tiago Sousa.
When you activate an adventure prompt, you can instantly customize it by tucking cards drawn from The Story Engine Deck under the prompt's three customization sockets. You can also just fill in the customizable element with information inspired by the setting the adventure takes place in.Â
Either way, the adventure actually helps further build the details, characters, and conflicts of your world—and basically turns your map into a loosely structured solo RPG that runs on your favorite RPG system.
Reason #4: Even more Story Engine Deck content
3 new expansions and 6 new boosters! Here's a glimpse!
Featuring new and existing art from the EMBERWIND team!
Reason #5: Master boxes coming soon!
Yes, the new master box is in development and will be revealed during the Kickstarter as a stretch goal!Â
I'm a little heartbroken that I don't have the finalized design to show you yet, but I just got off a call from the factory to discuss a new design iteration they wanted to show me that will make the box more functional and durable, so I am going to hold back just a little longer while we explore this new design.Â
I am REALLY excited about what we just discussed, and I've learned it's worth taking an extra beat to look at the factory's recommendations for packaging changes. The unfolding lotus-style booster packaging and magnetic treasurebox for the main deck were both ideas the factory brought me that totally transformed the last project. I can't wait to show you when we have our master box design finalized, priced, and ready for your pledges!
Reason #6: Early bird rewards
I love thanking early backers for taking a risk on the project before it funds, but I don't like leaving out people who happened to miss the announcement or don't have the funds to commit to pledging right away.
To balance this, I'm making every Kickstarter pledge that includes The Story Engine: Deck of Worlds an early bird pledge, with different numbers of bonus promo cards depending on which week you pledge.
 Pledge by 10am EST on May 25 to get all 8 early bird promo cards.
 Pledge by 10am EST on June 1 to get 7 promo cards.
 Pledge by 10am EST on June 8 to get 6 promo cards.
 Pledge by the end of the campaign to get 5 promo cards.
And of course we're pleased to announce regional shipping for Canada, the US, the UK, the EU, Australia, and New Zealand!
If you could join me on day 1, it would mean the world to me! I would love to get this creative tool in the hands of storytellers all over the world.
Or if you aren't planning to pledge but the campaign looks interesting, please help boost the launch announcement!
Doing this also helps the project gain traction! The Kickstarter algorithm, like all robots, FEEDS ON PEOPLE. Real human signups on the prelaunch page + pledges/comments on  Day 1 make or break a project. Your support gives the campaign the one thing the robo-algorithm can never experience: LOVE.
Deck of Worlds will feature a set of 3 genre expansions, plus 3 cartography expansions and 3 creative expansions unlockable via stretch goals!
It's a totally standalone deck that helps you build lore-rich micro-settings in minutes and assemble them into sprawling, connected worlds you can explore through writing, your fav RPG system, or even as a solo RPG!
This time I've brought on a talented international team of writers to help me round out the variety of ideas in the deck. They've already raised the bar from the prompts I wrote for the alpha deck to incredible heights.
I've also tapped some writers and artists to create sample micro-settings to showcase the power of the deck. I'm excited to introduce you to the collaborator list soon!
Yes, the campaign WILL feature a master "hold everything" box for the original Story Engine Deck as a stretch goal!
Confirming a working design for the master box is actually what's taking so long right now. I'm narrowing down designs with the factory and will hopefully have one to share with you soon. I was originally going to launch without a design, but I've been listening to how important the storage issue is to you as end users and I'd like the chance to "measure twice, cut once" this time. Moving too quickly is what created a storage issue in the first place, and the best way to make good on an apology is to change behaviour, so that's been my focus!
The campaign also features 3 new expansions and 6 new boosters as unlockable stretch goals for The Story Engine Deck. Here's a sneak peek at one expansion (mystery) and one booster (fairy tales)!
