The GameMaster's Apprentice 2e: Cyberpunk Deck

Alright, runners, ready to hit the 'net?

COMMUNITY-BUILDING COPIES AVAILABLE! As tariffs strike gamers, and both my job as a teacher and the human rights of many of my students become endangered, this is a rough time. In the short and long term, printing costs may be increasing, but I will not be raising my prices except where the printing cost actually exceeds the sales cost of the product. While I initially made my products free during the first days of lockdown, since I do not see a definitive end in sight here, I instead make this permanent offer: If you cannot afford the to purchase my work, please reach out to me at [email protected]. While DriveThru does not have a 'Community Copies' feature by default, I will do my best to hook you up, no questions asked. We gamers need to stick together.

The GameMaster's Apprentice 2e: Cyberpunk Deck 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. Freshly augmented and better than ever, this new edition of the GMA is the first of the 2e line!

You can view the cards' complete instructions for free by clicking the preview link beneath the thumbnail above. You can also scroll down to view the card overview image and watch a video of the cards in use (though, as of this writing, that video is from the Kickstarter, and uses a slightly older beta draft)! 

On each card is a set of more than a dozen randomizers; with 60 double-sided cards showing 120 unique card faces, 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 below from the Cyberpunk Kickstarter, or see several videos from the original 2014 Kickstarter on my YouTube channel that explain how to use the cards to run a GM-free game or generate a story for a traditional RPG. 

These cards were created with the support of over 530 individuals on Kickstarter, and would not exist in their current form otherwise! Thank you!

How does the GMA2e differ from the original edition?

While I am still very proud of the original GMA Decks of all genres, they have always been a passion project born of tinkering–and so I could not help but want to improve them.

Everything critical about what they are for remains the same, but I have made the newest versions (designated ‘GMA2e’ for now) more true to my original goal: Preventing the need to reference tables or look up information in PDFs to make them useful.

I’ve also learned a LOT about solo gaming and improvisational GMing over the past decade, watching the hobby evolve and continuing to teach Game Design to generation upon generation of high school students!

So while there’s nothing wrong with using the old decks and materials, and I still have a soft spot for the Tag Symbols from the old decks, I believe this new version is a huge improvement, and much, much easier to use on the fly, as intended.

I’m not necessarily sure I won’t continue tinkering a little, but keep an eye out for more GMA2e decks in the near future–and happy gaming!