The Little Deck of Game Design [Project]

In 1975, Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt published a deck of cards named Oblique Strategies. Their idea was to give creators a tool to help them get unstuck or see differently. I want to develop a similar kind of deck for game designers. 

Would you like to help?

 

The Project

I don't mean to create an instructional reference like Jesse Schell’s game design lenses or The 400 Project. What I'm aiming for is less about function or theory and more about inspiration, the sort of thing that might trigger an idea or insight, or maybe not. Light enough that you can try whatever a card advises without thinking about it too much, or simply let it drift in your mind while you do other things. 

Here's how I think we can make it happen:

1. Tweet your idea for a card.
2. Add the hashtag #littledeckofgamedesign to your tweet.
3. Retweet submissions by others that you like.
4. As interesting ideas (hopefully) emerge, I will add them to the deck. Each card added will credit its creator and provide a link to their Twitter profile.

The deck is located here (update: And in spreadsheet form here) or you can flip through an embedded version here. 

By the way, the deck is published under a creative commons license which permits other people to share, remix or do whatever they want with it. If you tweet an idea, I’m assuming you’re okay with that. 

Comments

[Emmeline Dobson]

There's a pack of such cards by Roger von Oech, whose book A Whack on the Side of the Head gets recommended by MtG Head Designer, Mark Rosewater. Now available as an iOS app, I see! http://blog.creativethink.com/

[Tomasz Bak]

I don't have a twitter account but I want to contribute;

"Add dinosaurs."