Magic the Gathering cards are great for random encounters!

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#1

Scryfall is a database of all magic the gathering in existence. There is a “random” button on the website that gives you a random card. I have been using this tool for years now as both random encounter generator, or just to help spark ideas. I find it incredibly useful, so I thought I would share:

(The preview always shows a random card, but the address is: scryfall.com/random and you can find the “random” button at the top left of the page)

Also, I just found this little chrome extension which does the same thing but for with Android Netrunner cards, giving you a random card each time you you open a new tab. This is perfect for the cyberpunk game I am ramping up to run:

Any one got something similar that could be used for a Sci Fi game?

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#2

Thanks for this! I’ve been trying to make a narrative game (rpg, story generator…) out of MtG, but no luck so far. I want to use the cards as is, not add or ignore anything, but have the mechanics be different. So Toughness could be HP or AC or the size of a dicepool.

My most recent idea was: Run a game in which the PCs are preparing for a huge battle, recruiting forces. They’d do a quest for a town in Innistrad, for example, and be rewarded with a land and some units, who are now bound tonthe PCs’ master, a planeswalker who will command them in a later battle. The library is built this way, from cards preselected by the GM. The evil opponent’s deck is prebuilt to a theme, and its contents are teased throughout the adventures, using the card as inspiration. Everything is run with a normal RPG ruleset, except for the final battle, which is a normal MtG game. PCs and NPCs are represented by cards in the Library, used normally.

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#3

I mostly just use the cards (and sometimes even just the words on the cards) as inspiration, rather than trying to use the mechanical information for anything. A lot of the time I will only use a part of the card, a part of the background, or a piece of equipment that is featured, rather than putting the whole thing as is into the game.

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#4

Very interesting. I have a pile of MTG cards in the drawer(might use them after lockdown). I could organize them by subject: random dinos, random beasts, random locations, random items. And then pull 3 cards for example: random location, beast and item. I got: Hashep Oasis, Quarry Beetle, Mirage Mirror (using uncommons because they are more interesting). Result: party finds an oasis in the desert. But soon they are easy prey for 2 giant beetles. They find out that one of them is a mirage created by a magical mirror.
Thanks for the idea! It’s so easy to make quick and fun encounter.

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#5

There are a lot of techniques for using MtG cards as a D&D inspiration. I’ve tried to collect the posts/videos I’ve found online about this in a single place, but it seems I’ve managed to lose that document. So here you have my three survivors:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/7bfan3/create_adventures_using_your_magic_the_gathering/

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#6

Very nice example! Very evocative. Grouping the cards you do have into categories is a great idea too.

#7

I really like this idea! Now I know what to do with all my roommate’s cards lol.

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