AI Cards
A downloadable plug-in
READY TO ADD AI TO YOUR RPG?
AI CARDS offer you an exciting and easy way to enhance your characters with artificial intelligence for use in any fiction*, including tabletop role playing games and other forms of storytelling. With nothing more than two 6-sided dice, some colours, and a wallet-sized CARD, you can program how characters gossip, respond to bargains, react when flirted with, and more!
This modular, cutting-edge RPG tech is ready to be used on its own for a rules-lite, freeform role playing experience OR plugged into your favourite game to help your characters come alive. Use AI CARDS as a GMing tool or to automate your GM-less play. Everything is better with a little AI.
*or in real life. I'm not gonna stop you.
So... how does it work?
On each CARD you'll find a 6x6 square grid with four probable responses to a given prompt. Using highlighters, pencil crayons, markers, or whatever colouring tools you have on hand, divide the grid into uneven quadrants — a bigger quadrant means the character is more likely to act that way.
When the situation arises and you need to know how your character will act, roll 2d6 and find the corresponding square on the grid. Think of it like an oracle with probabilities that you adjust for each character depending on their personality.
Fill out a full set of cards for a character and you have a robust set of reactions to rely on whenever you need to answer the question: "how does this character act?"
Example of play: Your friend Aviya is usually very low-energy from working night shifts at their job. You are going to meet them today and you aren't sure how they are feeling, so you roll 2d6 and get a 5 and a 3, which corresponds to the top left quadrant: stressed. When you see them they are hunched over in their chair and gritting their teeth. What might be on their mind?
What do I get?
Your purchase includes the first full set of 10 AI CARDS, including:
- Bargain
- Confront
- Courting
- Fashion
- Gossip
- Lies
- Meeting
- Mood
- Threat
- Violence
You are welcome to print the cards at home, have them commercially printed, or use the individual images for online play. (Paint bucket tools work very well for colouring your grid!)
Future Development
This set of AI CARDS is designed to be a launching-off point. This framework is easy to design and iterate upon, leaving plenty of room for booster packs and hackable content. I may even do a print run at some point. Have any AI you want to see or situations you need CARDS for? Let me know in the comments below! ⬇️
This was designed as part of the Pleasure-not-Business Card RPG Jam.
Purchase
In order to download this plug-in you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $5 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Community Copies
Support this plug-in at or above a special price point to receive something exclusive.
Community Copies
Community copies are provided here to reduce financial barriers to accessing my games, especially for disabled, queer, trans, and IBPoC players. If getting this game for free would help you out in any way, you are more than welcome to claim a copy.
If you have the means and the security to purchase this game, please consider doing so; for every purchase I will add another community copy!
Comments
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Looking forward to use this for a new campaign! I'm planning on doing this for all of my primary NPCs and using the results to develop backstories for them as to why their reactions would be the way they are. It's my sister-in-law's first game and she's stoked. I'll report back!
Loving this on paper, going to try it out tonight. A couple quick questions: was the intention to require rectangles from the quadrants or is it looser and allow some L shapes, etc? and what is the intent behind "mistake" on the courting card? Is it "we would be a mistake together" or a sense of obliviousness?
Hi! Would love to hear how this worked out for you :)
Because there are no mathematical hooks to the quadrants beyond the corresponding dice, L shapes would absolutely work. And with the courting card I thought of the mistake like a fumble -- an awkward moment where sparks don't really fly.
(also, super fascinating to see people engaging with this years later. Makes me think I should give it some more attention with a fresh set of eyes and more projects under my belt).
It was really fun! Rolling unlikely outcomes made things super unpredictable and fresh, like when a wimpy character decides to fight instead of fleeing. It had a tendency to create great moments when it wasn't clear what the best course of action was going to be.
I think it could be easy to overuse. For example, I was tempted to roll every time I had a player bargain, without respecting their skill check. I found them super duper helpful when I was split or for more inconsequential, character charm moments. The meeting and fight cards in particular were very useful.
The only miss, strangely, were the mood cards. Try as I might, it was just too hard to subtly infuse a character's words with fatigue or stress without piquing my players' interest, prompting intense rounds of questioning. "This NPC must be tired for a reason" they all think, owing to ancient gaming instinct. For such a broadly applicable card that I would like to use a lot (essentially every time the players meet a character again) it's too much of a burden to give them a satisfying answer in the moment as to why someone is stressed today and they love jumping to try to "help". I'm not sure whether I should be changing my approach or tinkering with the card itself, swapping out emotions for ones which evoke less in my players.
I suppose that criticism comes down to "these cards create moments every time, don't use them if you don't want something to happen", which is far from a knock against them, more of a word of caution to overeager GM's who might be inclined to lean too hard on them.
This is very nice and I would like to try this, pwease add another community copy, I love this idea
This is a really nice system from the looks of it, I would love to see more specific interactions maybe?
Or possibly status modifier cards where you can lay a card over another with some squares cut out, an "Attracted to" or a "Scared" card in that vein could be really neat.
This design is way too elegant and so greatly designed ! Absolutely love it :o
I was wondering if I could use your cards in my upcoming solo TTRPG ?
Your cards was recommanded by the gift of gabes and it was a great recommandation :D
Thanks for making and sharing these !
Hiii so happy to hear you enjoyed this! 🌼 Feel free to use the mechanic in your work, all I ask is that you mention & link my work where you can (itch page, in the game text, etc.) Have fun playing around with them~
Hey, I was playing around with this and I made a little Canva template.
Canva Template
One can also turn it into an excel/sheets template too.
I hope people like it.
This is GREAT!!
I would love to have a tool to generate all of the cards on a single click. (or a few) That way you can generate npcs quickly for gmless play.
What a great idea! I might look into dropping a little app in the future. Thanks so much for this suggestion 💕
This is great! There could be a blank card too, though.
Great idea!!! DLC 1...