One of my favorite things with one of my regular tabletop gaming groups is warm-up questions. We each roll a d100 and get asked something from the perspective of our character. It could be something about the party, something about their past, or something more profound—what they think will happen when they die, or what they consider to be the meaning of life. It's a great way to get in the headspace of the character before actually getting into the game proper.

It's also a great way to discover things about your own character. Because no matter how big a planner you are, you're not going to account for every potential question. Pausing to think like your character enough to figure out an answer can lead to interesting future plot twists. It's also one of my favorite creative exercises, and one of the reasons I love tabletop gaming as a writer.

Now, there's The Ultimate RPG Campfire Card Deck. Created by James D'Amato, who's already won me over with his massive books of character-building questions, this turns that process into a game within a game. Or a warm-up exercise. However you choose to approach it.

The deck is divided into six smaller decks, which you can either shuffle together into one gigadeck or select from individually. For example, a relatively new party might not benefit from the "Your Companions" cards until they've all gotten to know each other better. Or the flow of the campaign's story may lend itself more to Dreams and Hypotheticals.

Once you've picked which deck(s) you'll be using, you shuffle 'em up and hand every player two cards. Each player chooses one card in their hand to answer in-character, and one to ask another specific character. You go around until everyone's used their cards.

When my Sunday group did this, we did it in lieu of warm-up questions. However, it can be used to guide a campfire RP scene. Much like The Ultimate RPG Tarot Deck, there are diegetic ways to use the cards to enhance the game itself and encourage in-game activity. Imagine gathering your party right before they fight the big bad for one last late-night heart-to-heart guided by the Your Companions deck. Or encouraging a secretive character to open up to a new party by taking turns pulling from the Your Past deck.

But what if there's a question the character—or the player—doesn't want to answer? That's accounted for.

The red X card included in the deck allows you to trade out a question. Let's say a character is hesitant to open up about something because they're anticipating a major reveal in the campaign. Or let's say a player feels a little weird coming up with a past love life for their character, or is in a place in life where they'd rather not talk about things like life after death. Tap the card, no questions asked.

This nearly came into play during our test run. One question making the rounds was whether the character had a secret they'd been waiting for the right time to tell the party. The answer for one character was yes... with the right time being later that session. In other words, the red card can be for something as simple as a storytelling beat, or something as complex as a distressing topic.

I'm always happy to see tools that permit games to continue being fun. The improv side of RPGs can be difficult to grow into, and sometimes it takes us to places we're trying to escape from temporarily. Not having to homebrew a reason to skip a certain topic or card is nice.

The cards go on sale August 1 from Adams Media. Check out the official shop page to pre-order yours. For my part, these are already becoming a go-to at the various gaming tables I frequent, and I have a feeling they will for you, too!