Story Deck FAQ
Maybe ten years or so ago, Dan Wells and I had a really cool idea. It was for a collectible card story–where a story was split up among many different cards, like a TCG. Except, the whole goal was to promote interaction and trading at a convention, where people tried to put together the stories a little like a scavenger hunt. We didn’t think we’d have the resources ever to make it a reality–but Dragonsteel Nexus actually finally gave us the opportunity. Three years ago, we pitched it to the team, and they’ve spent those years getting it ready–going so far, even, as to patent the design and the idea.
So, is this meant to be your own TCG or CCG? (Aka, like Magic the Gathering.)
No. Story Deck was developed exclusively for convention use. For trading, collecting, and all that in a somewhat closed environment. It’s not meant to be “played” as a card game; rather, it works to facilitate participation and fun at a convention.
How do I get packs, then?
If you are at Dragonsteel Nexus, you can get more packs by doing things at the convention. Most activities (such as going to panels, visiting the convention floor and looking at some of the cool booths, going to the craft room, etc) will reward you with packs, using a system of stamps and a passport.
If you aren’t at Dragonsteel Nexus, we will eventually put boxes up for sale on our store. We talked about not doing this. (It was my original intent to never sell packs, as I see this as a convention enhancer, not a large-scale CCG type game.) However, we realized not selling them would only encourage scalping and eventually go against the spirit of the game, for people would stop collecting for fun, and instead for value. By selling the boxes, we put a cap on what any of the individual pieces can ever cost. (Note that we don’t expect these boxes to go up until after the new year, as the shipping team is already swamped for holiday shipping.)
We do think that a box of packs like this could work really well for any group setting where you want a cool incentive for people to participate and get to know each other via trading. Family Reunions, smaller fan conventions, and the like. And who knows, maybe the fanbase will gamify Story Deck in other ways.
Let’s talk about the stories involved. Are they canon?
Two are. One is not. It will be immediately obvious which one is not.
Who wrote them?
The two that are canon were stories I’ve long talked about writing–they fill in holes in the Stormlight Archive story. (Specifically from books one and two.) When we talked about doing this for real, I pitched these two stories to the team as things I wanted to see written.
Talking it over with Dan, we decided that he would write one, and Isaac Stewart would write the other, from my outlines. All three of us were heavily involved in all three stories, which we workshopped, edited, and tweaked until they felt just right.
The third story was written by Dan Wells from an idea the entire team had together, as I recall.
Who did the art?
The original idea was for each card to have an illustration on the back, but then we hit on the idea of nine-card panorama style illustrations. We had a few extra spots, and so we decided to include the wonderful paintings of the heralds we’ve been collecting over the years.
A special thanks to our artists: Erion Makuo for the Jasna story, Marie Seeberger for the Lopen story, and Anna Earley art directed all three and did the Chasmfriends art.
Are there special treatments?
Every pack contains some foils and alternate text cards. The alt text cards are not canon, and can sometimes include some kind of fourth-wall-breaking joke.
I’m at Nexus. I’m worried about getting the stories before it ends.
We planned for enough packs to be available for free (by doing events at the convention) that you should be able to collect at least one story by casually just going about your business–and if you do everything, and fill the entire passport, you should have enough cards to complete all three stories. However, we haven’t done this before, so we’re not 100% certain we hit this number right. We’ll be watching to see.
That said, we have things like a trading post where you can both trade with others and get specific cards you are missing from our team via trades. None of the individual cards are more rare than others. (Excluding foil and alternate treatments.) So, for example, we don’t have “rare” and “common” cards–otherwise, the only people who could complete their stories were those who pulled the rare cards. We feel confident that with trading, and using the resources we’ve provided to get those last few cards you need, you should be able to collect the stories without spending money.
Because the foil and alternate treatments ARE more rare, though, we make no promises about someone being able to collect all of those. And if you would like to pick up a box of Story Deck to take home to play with your friends or family reunion, we do plan to put them up for sale on a “by the box” basis at some point nearer the end of the convention. That way, you can pick up one and take it home to share with those who couldn’t make it to Nexus, if that interests you.
Will the stories be available outside the card game?
Yes, they eventually will be. They’ll remain exclusive to Story Deck for at least a year, however. Probably a few years. Eventually, we promise they’ll be available in a traditional format–either as part of a second Arcanum Unbounded book, or as their own stand-alone printing.
We do hope that, during those years wait, you can be patient and allow Story Deck to be its own cool thing. We’d rather fans not distribute the full text of the stories during that wait, though we understand that this sort of thing is difficult to both ask and enforce. However, we’d love to bring Story Deck to a few other locations to let people experience the joy of collecting and discovering the stories in this format that I find so much fun.
This is a cool idea! Could you bring it to other types of conventions?
We do actually have a patent on the design, and would love to bring Story Deck to other kinds of gatherings. If you happen to be involved at a high level in a large fan gathering, and would like to talk about how we did this, and how you could do something similar, please contact my team at events@dragonsteel.com.
