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The GameMaster's Apprentice: Age of Sail DeckClick to magnify

The GameMaster's Apprentice: Age of Sail Deck

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Sails on the horizon!

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The GameMaster's Apprentice: Age of Sail is a system-neutral deck of cards that can be used as either a supplement for traditional tabletop RPGs or as a complete game engine for GM-free solo or group RPGs. 

You can view the cards' complete instructions for free by clicking the preview link beneath the thumbnail above, or view the Quickstart Guide and a set of quick-reference PnP/PoD Instruction Cards here on DriveThru if you prefer (if you wish to purchase the Print on Demand instruction cards to keep with your deck, be sure to combine the order with the deck itself! They are only six cards, and DriveThru will not print orders that small). You can also scroll down to view the card overview image and watch a video of the cards in use! 

On each card is a set of fourteen individual randomizers; with 60 double-sided cards, you can generate literally millions of possible adventures, all without having to hunt through a book or PDF for a single table!

With these cards, you can:

  • Instantly generate NPCs with randomized names, motivations, and backgrounds.

  • Create random events or story seeds.

  • Provide sensory details or random loot for characters searching or stealing.

  • Run games without a human GameMaster!

And more--they even work brilliantly as creative writing prompt generators, and have been playtested by 9th-12th grade students of both English and Game Design.

If you want specifics, including examples of how to use the randomizers on the cards, the complete instructions are available in the downloadable PDF preview linked below the cover image/thumbnail, but you can take a look at the overview below to see the quick and dirty version of what is on each card, and you can view a video preview from the original Kickstarter that explains how to use the cards (from the original, genre-neutral deck) to run a GM-free game or generate a story for a traditional RPG. This video is the second in a series, so if you want to see the first (which details initial generation of the story), check out our website, www.LarcenousDesigns.com! 

Card Overview

These cards were created with the support of over 360 individuals on Kickstarter, and would not exist in their current form otherwise! Thank you!

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Reviews (1)
Discussions (5)
Customer avatar
Christopher D January 23, 2022 8:14 am UTC
Oops, I accidentally ordered the steampunk deck when I intended to order the age of sail one. Any chance you can switch them before you send my order out?
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Customer avatar
Nathan R January 23, 2022 12:21 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Unfortunately, I have no control over the ordering/printing /shipping pipeline—I would contact customer support at their Submit a Request step. They might be able to cancel the original order, and if not, they can certainly refund you and let you place the one you wanted: https://support.drivethrurpg.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

I hope that gets sorted out for you!
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Customer avatar
Christopher D January 23, 2022 7:54 pm UTC
Thanks, I'll give that a shot. I just stumbled upon your emulator decks, cool stuff, I'm excited to try them out.
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Customer avatar
Nathan R January 23, 2022 10:01 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Thanks—I hope you enjoy them!
Customer avatar
Joseph S December 10, 2020 12:11 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Question: I own most of the GMA deck, including the Steampunk deck, but I'm thinking about running a solo steampunk adventure on an airship. Would this deck work better for airship shenanigans, or should I just stick with what I have?
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Customer avatar
Nathan R December 10, 2020 5:20 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Ooh; OK, I think the steampunk deck would be great, but the Base Deck could definitely handle it. Horror or Scifi or Age of Sail also, depending on the flavor of steampunk your world is.

If you are thinking of buying the physical deck, and you already own a bunch, shoot me an email at LarcenousDesigns@gmail.com first! I have information you would want :-)
Customer avatar
John B October 06, 2020 3:01 pm UTC
PURCHASER
I too want to give a warm shout out to Larcenous Designs for the Quarantine Discounts they're doing now. I picked up the Base and Fantasy decks in print and was so impressed I came back and got them all.

But I have one VERY minor quibble about the Age of Sail Deck. When I got each deck I went through every card to make sure the deck was complete. The Font choice on Age of Sail meant that some of the numbers fell below the line of the rest of the print. I understand that it is a stylistic choice but for the card numbers on the bottom right it made some of the numbers very hard to distinguish. 3 and 2, or 9 and 0 for example look very similar when the bottom third is missing. I got out a magnifying glass and was able to verify that everything is there. And it doesn't affect any of the important text in the body of the card. But I wanted to make a note so that if anyone else checks the card count and is confused that there seemed to be a couple of duplicates that there is a reason why.
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Customer avatar
Nathan R October 06, 2020 4:23 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Thanks for the kind words, and also pointing out the issue! I'm sorry I missed that--I thought I'd caught all the font-based issues, but apparently not! We definitely have to decide carefully, next time/on any future decks, if a thematic font is a good idea--we are probably sticking with plainer typefaces to ease readability, so that may fix the problem for us.
Customer avatar
Robert R April 30, 2020 10:15 pm UTC
PURCHASER
I want to thank GMA for the deep discounts they have extended. I already own the Base and the Fantasy deck. I just purchased the Age of Sail, Horror, Sci-Fi and Steampunk decks with a case. Thanks again.
Customer avatar
Kris S August 25, 2019 5:38 pm UTC
PURCHASER
I bought this and liked it enough that when I lost the physical deck I went on to buy the Fantasy one despite still owning the PDF version. These decks are nicely thematic and good inspiration for storytelling and roleplaying. Everything but the runes (which you can look up) has a pretty obvious meaning once you've seen the explanation once, so there are many ways to interpret these things for coming up with ideas. For instance, I had a vague idea about an adventure in an ocean world and I drew a card with a sense impression of "A fusillade of cannonfire", and a sequence of cards where the three-word combo could be read as "Divide Disruptive Obstacle". Okay, I said; how about starting with a scene where the heroes are shooting cannons at a barrier?

Note that if you're buying the physical cards (which I recommend) you currently can get the PDF and its extras for no extra cost. Also, you should get the "Universal Instruction Cards".
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Product Information
Platinum seller
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Cards
60
File Size:
29.2 MB
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Original electronic Click for more information
Scanned image
These products were created by scanning an original printed edition. Most older books are in scanned image format because original digital layout files never existed or were no longer available from the publisher.

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File Last Updated:
May 29, 2023
This title was added to our catalog on July 15, 2016.