Elements of Inspiration Box Set

Elements of Inspiration is a set of system-neutral, card-based random encounter generators for tabletop roleplaying games. It exists to make overland travel exciting and varied, and to let you run it with no preparation at all.

Nine Decks, 420 Cards

One tarot-sized deck for each environment your party might cross: Deserts, Forests, Mountains, Plains, Swamps, Tundra, Underground, Urban, and Waterways. Deck sizes vary by environment, thirty cards in some and sixty in others, for 420 cards in total.

How to Use It

Pick the deck matching the terrain your characters are travelling through. If you want a particular kind of scene, pull out just the combat, exploration, or roleplaying cards, shuffle, and draw. If you have no preference, shuffle the whole deck together.

Each card gives a title and a short general description, then four specific options beneath it. Roll a d4 or simply choose the one you like. So a Desert draw might be Ambushing Monster, and the four options turn that into an ankheg spraying acid, a sandworm collapsing the dunes, a bulette erupting from rock, or a dune mimic with adhesive skin. Draw a second or third card and think about how they interact, and the encounter gets more eventful still.

Written to Be Read Aloud

The cards deliberately shift tense and tone to suit the encounter, so an ambush reads in the present tense to convey surprise and urgency. Change them freely: move an encounter into the future so it lands at the next rest, or into the past so the party deals with the aftermath.

Why the Box Set

Drawing a card is faster than rolling and cross-referencing, and passing a card to a player is a table moment a table of tables cannot match. The nine decks stay sorted in the box, so you bring only the terrain you need. Being system-neutral, it works with 5E D&D, Pathfinder, Shadowdark, Daggerheart, Draw Steel, Tales of the Valiant, or anything else.