Backstory Cards: Core Deck for Foundry VTT
The Immaterial Plane presents Ryan Macklin's Backstory Cards for Foundry Virtual Tabletop, officially licensed from Galileo Games!
Backstory Cards blend your characters and setting concept into an intriguing set of relationships and history. It’s tailor-made for games where the player-characters already know each other—from fantasy adventurers to star marines, from supernatural beings who share the same city to global-hopping troubleshooters.
This deck of cards works well with most roleplaying games, including GM-less ones. It also includes how to directly integrate Backstory Cards into Fate Core and Fate Accelerated’s character creation.
For a more enhanced experience with your Backstory Cards sessions, we highly recommend downloading the free Backstory Cards Techniques Guide which contains tips on how to workshop answers to prompts and flesh out your setting elements and elaborates further on the basic instructions included with this purchase.
About the Module
This module can be used with any game system for Foundry Virtual Tabletop, which is required to use this software. Foundry VTT requires a Foundry VTT license.
The module includes:
- A Card Stack from which you can draw text-based prompt cards with selectable text and expandable tag definitions.
- Journal Entries containing List of Tags, Player Tips, GM Tips, Arrow Diagram, Prompt Card Anatomy, and the complete Backstory Cards Techniques Guide.
- The ability to create a mixed deck to combine your core deck and expansions into one.
- Settings for automatically excluding cards with unwanted tags.
- Light and dark mode versions of fillable setting grid Scenes that include a virtual table for arranging PC tokens to use with the Arrow Diagram when determining intraparty connections.
- Journal Entries linked to imported setting grids with each page linked to each setting element and labels syncing between the setting grid and Journal Entry.
- Macros for drawing prompt cards and rolling a Backstory Die to randomly select another PC from around the table or a setting element in the scene.
Expand Your Collection
Want more Backstory Cards to add to your deck?
Expansion Pack #1: Distant Worlds, Unseen Threats, & Wicked Shadows
Expansion Pack #1 includes 45 genre-specific prompts for science-fiction, horror, and noir intrigue.
Expansion Pack #2: Even More
Expansion Pack #2 gives you Even More (literally), which expands on the core deck and the themes presented in Expansion Pack #1.
Expansion Pack #3: Setting Elements
Expansion Pack #3 contains Setting Elements, a set of 40 cards providing inspiration for defining unique Individuals, Groups, Places, and Events as well as Motivations! Each card includes randomly selectable Traits or Roles to help you enrich your setting elements.
Purchase
In order to download this Foundry VTT module you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $11.99 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Comments
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Are there any changelogs for these modules? I see updates now and then, but don't see any changelogs anywhere. Can you provide a link?
Thanks for posting this question.
We're trying to think of the best way to do this. A lot of feature and function updates happen in the assets library module, which isn't listed anywhere publicly. Because it's not listed publicly, how to share updates for that package is kind of a challenge. We're considering putting a change log directly within the Compendium for that module as one possible solution.
The actual content modules barely have any actual updates at all other than content corrections. However, we've recently updated the content modules simply because we added some additional data in the manifest file for display on The Forge and Foundry Hub. (Another one is coming out soon just to fix a URL in that file.)
For content package updates, we plan to post changes in the Foundry Discord server under #package-releases. We considered posting emails to purchasers of the respective modules, but we were worried it might feel spammy.
We're open to suggestions, and we'd love to get everyone's opinions on how you might prefer to receive change logs going forward.
~ Kristian
Thanks for the answer and I understand the trouble.
One way you could display changelogs in foundry itself is using this library: https://github.com/theripper93/libChangelogs
At least then you follow a coherent workflow that other modules use as well and it's easier to understand what's changing when :) Also means no one has to search for the changelog in unexpected locations.
Thanks for the suggestion. That looks like a promising solution. We might use that going forward. Of course it'll require another update to integrate it and set up the dependency. 😆
By the way, one of the recent Asset Library updates added a "Dark Mode" version of the Setting Grid scene, in case you missed it. 😉
Sounds great! I will have to look into the cards in general. I have the original physical card set and we used them quite a lot over the years, but not some of the new expansions. Especially the Setting Cards are completely new to me :) Can't wait to try it out with my group!
Another option we're considering is using the devlogs on itch.io. Each product has its own devlog, and it would allow us to share lengthier information in a nicely formatted presentation with screenshots if desired. We could of course do both as well by posting the details in the devlog and linking to it from the Changelogs module within Foundry VTT.