The Sleeper’s Decks · No. 1
Encounter Complications
A deck of 36 cards for the middle of a fight, once everyone can tell how it ends. Print and cut it, then draw one when things go quiet.
Printable PDF · instant download from Etsy
- 14 pages
- 36 cards
- Screen and print editions
- Plain text for VTTs
- US Letter
- System-agnostic, No rules text
Six of the 36 cards are here to draw. The rest come with the deck.
Mid-Fight Twist Cards for Any RPG
Somewhere in the middle of most fights, the dice stop deciding anything. Draw a card then.
The deck is six suits of six. The ground shifts, somebody new shows up, loyalties move, the room offers something to grab, the weather gets inside, or something that was there all along decides it wants attention. One card sends in a second crew on the same job with cleaner tools, sighing and setting up around the fight like it's furniture.
Each card has a line that stays true for as long as it's face-up, plus severity dots showing how hard it pushes. If the scissors never come out, the whole deck plays straight off the page as a d66 table. The cards carry no mechanics of their own, so they slide into whatever game is already running.
WHAT'S INSIDE
- 36 complication cards across 6 suits.
- 2 blank House cards for complications that only happen at your table.
- Severity dots on every card. One dot changes the scene, two change the fight, and three may take it over.
- Screen edition plus a plain-white print edition, US Letter, with cut lines.
- Every card as plain text, ready for VTT decks and house tools.
- Bookmarked, DRM-free PDF. System-agnostic. No rules text.
For a chase, pair it with Pursuit Complications. The Sleeper's Tables Vol. I and II fill the room with wants, wrongs, finds and monsters.
We'll Pick Up Next Week, the free letter: sleepersartifice.substack.com
The Sleeper’s Decks
More Decks
No. 2
Player Cheat Cards
Cards for the fifth-edition rules that slip everyone's mind in the middle of a turn. Free, or pay what you want.
Free · pay what you want, Player Cheat Cards (opens in a new tab)
No. 3
Class Round-Flow Cards
Twelve cards, one per class, each showing the shape of a typical turn, so initiative stops being the scary part for a new player.
No. 4
Pursuit Complications
Chase cards where each one is a stretch of ground with two ways across. Useful whenever somebody ends up running from something, or after it.
