Galaxy Builder Decks: Planets

BUILD YOUR OWN GALAXY!

The Galaxy Builder Decks Series

Galaxy Builder Decks are a series of system-neutral cards for worldbuilders and GMs to quickly create scifi settings and cultures right on your table. Pair Planet cards with Planet Trait cards for unique locations and encounters. Each deck is designed to work with others in the series to help fully flesh out your galaxy. I created this series for several reasons: 1) as a helpful worldbuilding tool for authors and gamemasters to quickly create believable settings, 2) to boost immersion, appearing on the table as a series of computer display screens, 3) to provide players with a sense of exploration and discovery while you play, and 4) as a modular overmap on the table for seeing where you are in the universe without having to draw circles over and over.

Notable inspirations (Franchises): Star Wars, Star Trek, Mass Effect, Alien, Firefly, Babylon 5, Elite Dangerous, Dune. Notable inspirations (Games): Stellaris, Endless Space, Master of Orion, Starbound, Stars Without Number, Ironsworn Starforged

Galaxy Builder Decks: Planet Cards

Galaxy Builder Decks: Planets is a deck of double-sided cards of planets, asteroids, and stars for creating star systems during worldbuilding or on the fly during a game. Each card is loaded with information on size, climate, gravity, atmosphere, and possible terrain. On the back are listed traits and skills associated with this type of planet, useful for character creation or generating a native culture.

Note: This Product is for Print-n-Play PDF Files. Printed Decks with tuckbox are available on my store at Drivethrurpg.

Deck of 54 Double-sided Poker-sized Cards Includes:

• 4x Continental - Earth-like watery planets 
  • (small, medium, large, large ringed)
• 4x Desert - Hot, arid planets with little water
  •  (small, medium, large, large ringed)
• 4x Glacier - Cold, icy planets 
  • (small, medium, large, large ringed)
• 4x Ocean - Sea-covered planets with 80-100% water
  • (small, medium, large, large ringed)
• 4x Jungle - Warm, marshy planets 
  • (small, medium, large, large ringed)
• 4x Swamp - Lush, forested planets 
  • (small, medium, large, large ringed)
• 5x Volcanic - Scorched, lava-covered planets 
  • (tiny, small, medium, large, large ringed)
• 5x Barren - Cratered moon-like planets 
  • (tiny, small, medium, large, large ringed)
• 5x Iceballs - Pluto-like planets covered in ice 
  • (tiny small, medium, large, large ringed)
• 4x Gas Giants - Cloud-covered planets (Hot and Cold classes)
  • huge, huge ringed, huge, huge ringed)
• 3x Asteroids - Rocky debris
• 1x Comet - Venting icy body
• 3x Stars - Sun-like stellar objects
  • Yellow G-type, Orange K-type, Red M-type
• 1x Black Hole - Cosmic region of high concentration of matter and gravity
• 1x Lagrange Point - Stable gravitational point in space

Who Are They For

For Worldbilders

Galaxy Builder Decks makes worldbuilding easier by placing important information for a star system concisely and visually on a few cards laid out on your table. You can quickly lay out many different types of star systems, showing exactly what planet or moon is where. On the front of each card are listed general stats such as water, temperature, minerals, and vegetation levels shown in system-neutral pips of "low" to "high". And if you pair them with Planet Trait cards, they tell you what is even more unique about these worlds in various categories such as astronomy, geology, meteorology, biology, planetology, and more.

For GMs

You have an idea. You want your players to investigate a distress call from a planet with hordes of insects that mostly only come out at night. But wait, what else do we know about the planet? Is it an icy world or a swampy one? Draw a Planet card and find out! Turns out it is a large jungle world with heavy gravity and a thick atmosphere, plenty of mineral resources and vegetation, its surface marked with river canyons and great waterfalls. Any moons? Draw more cards! You have a whole deck to explore the possibilities and plan out the perfect adventure.

During Play

Your players' ship hovers in orbit above a small desert moon orbiting a green gas giant. They have been hired to explore the system’s habitability for colonization. How far from the star is the planetary system, they ask you. Uh oh, how to know that? Draw some Planet cards and lay out a star and a few planet cards in order. “It is orbiting the fourth planet from a yellow Gv-type star,” you tell them. If they ask about the star type, habitable zones, the world types, their terrain, gravity, then the essentials are there. Now if they want to know about air composition, lifeforms, planet geology, freak weather, and more, well there are Traits for that too.

For Players

Using the Galaxy Builder Decks series, players can create backgrounds for their characters.You can build your homeworld, make it unique, use the named traits and attribute icons on the back to pick skills that your character would have picked up from living there. The more cards you use, the more fleshed out your character becomes. The skills are system-neutral enough to be included in most games as part of the "lifepath" form of character creation.

Print-n-Play Version Includes:

• Color version PDF - Front and Back sheets in 3x3 layout of US Poker-sized cards.
• Printer-friendly version PDF - Front and Back sheets in 3x3 layout of US Poker-sized cards.

Check Out Other Products Available In The Galaxy Builder Deck Series: