Cast of Cards
Cast of Cards is a line of playing card accessories for Savage Worlds, published by Warning Label.
By Aaron T. Huss
Learn more about Cast of Cards here
Purchase Cast of Cards here
Find other Savage Worlds products here
Cast of Cards is a collection of (currently fantasy) playing cards used as a quick-play character accessory for Savage Worlds. Each card describes a single NPC, creature, or villain in terms of their full stats and a short description and background. The perimeter of the cards are lined with an icon-style depiction of the Savage Worlds Attributes and Secondary Attributes for easy reading and quick referencing. All skills, Hindrances, Edges, gear, and even names are provided.
Cast of Cards is one of those products that you can’t help being curious about just to see what it is. Given the character- and story-focused design of Savage Worlds, sometimes fleshing out an NPC takes too long or is too distracting from the storyline. Especially when you have a lot of NPCs and flipping back and forth in a notebook becomes quite tedious. Instead, you can set one of the cards down and there you go, a ready-made NPC for the characters to interact with. Additionally, they’re supported by DriveThruCards meaning when you purchase the print-on-demand version, they’ll have a dry-erase coating for tracking the Wounds or making notes. Pretty simple.
I like making Savage Worlds characters, but I’ll admit that a full cast of NPCs can become quite cumbersome for fleshing out. Using these cards, if you’re in a fantasy setting, really removes all that extra work and gives you that much more time to get back to writing the storyline. Additionally, but not having to search for that NPC write-up in a notebook or handheld device, the game can move that much faster and the characters retain their spotlight.
The only issues I have, very slight issues, is the PDF price point and layout. For example, the Typical Tavern set is 18 cards, but costs $4. Granted, the POD cost is extremely low coming in at $4 or $5 for the POD and PDF. To me, there should either be more cards or a lower PDF price for only 18 cards. The second issue I have is that the PDF is laid out as each card being its own page. This means that to print them out, you have to set-up your PDF printer correctly so as not to waste paper. Not everybody knows how to do this. I would prefer to have a PDF where the cards are already set-up for standard printing, but then you wouldn’t be able to view them as easily on a handheld device like you can with the actual-card layout. I guess I’m a bit conflicted on the layout issue. A simple remedy would be to include both styles with the PDF purchase, but again, it’s a very slight issue and definitely not a game-breaker.
I will say this: these cards have an awesome utility use and I can see using them continuously with a fantasy campaign. I personally would use them as NPCs and not encounters as I love to create encounters myself, but you can see how quickly it is to create either one with the simple use of these cards.
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