I've owned Champions of ZED and Dragons at Dawn for a while now. I enjoy pulling them out and reading through them both for inspiration. Both of these games have sections discussing chance cards and how to use them. The idea behind chance cards is pretty simple. The DM and the players use a stack of index cards to write down events that could take place in their campaign. At certain points in the campaign - the start of every game month, every 90 days in game, etc. - the DM will draw one of these cards and apply it to the campaign. The group could also use these cards to generate a background history for the campaign world as well. For example, the DM could want to use two events per year for the last 12 years of game time to develop a history for the campaign world. 16 cards would be drawn from the cards available and then the DM would string them together and get the history they wanted.
I know I could do this with some simple brainstorming, rolling on tables, or some other method but I want to do something different. I've become really interested in using the chance cards in my game for the physical aspect of it. I think that comes from two influences. First, I watch a lot of the videos put out by Game Methuselah on his YouTube channel. He mentioned writing the monster information on index cards and using them in game; basically, a map, notes, and a box of index cards to run his game. Second, since I began painting miniatures a few years ago I really want to start using them in my game as well. I never used them back in the day, but I've gotten the itch to use them now.
Do you use chance cards or something similar in your game?
