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EnglishWhat Are Sidequest Decks and NPC Decks from Inkwell Ideas?
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Sidequest Decks and NPC Decks are two card-based accessories from Inkwell Ideas for tabletop roleplaying games. Sidequest Decks give you ready-made adventure outlines with maps—each deck holds over 50 adventures, and decks are organized by genre and setting. NPC Decks provide ready-to-use non-player characters: each card has a portrait on one side and personality, background, and quirks on the back, with decks covering adventurers, henchmen, townsfolk, monsters, science fiction, and more. Both are physical card products meant to cut prep time at the table.
Sidequest Decks: Adventures on Cards
Each Sidequest card is an adventure outline paired with a map. Instead of writing a session from scratch, you draw a card and have a premise, a location, and a map to run with. The decks are built around genres and settings, so you can pick the one that matches your campaign rather than reskinning a mismatched adventure.
Best for: GMs who need a session hook fast, want to improvise between planned arcs, or are running a sandbox where players wander off the prepared path.
What to check before buying: Confirm the deck's genre or setting matches your game, since the catalog splits adventures across multiple decks. The site does not list per-deck adventure counts beyond "over 50," so treat that as the floor, not an exact figure.
NPC Decks: Characters Ready to Drop In
An NPC Deck card is two-sided by design. The front is a portrait you can show players; the back carries the personality, background, and quirks that tell you how the character behaves. That split lets you introduce a face at the table while keeping the motivations and secrets on your side of the screen.
The decks are organized by need:
| Deck type | Typical use |
|---|---|
| Adventurers | Rival parties, allies, hirelings with depth |
| Henchmen | Retainers and followers attached to player characters |
| Townsfolk | Shopkeepers, officials, and background faces |
| Monsters | Creatures with personality beyond stat blocks |
| Science fiction | NPCs for sci-fi settings |
Best for: GMs who improvise NPCs on the spot, want consistent personalities for recurring characters, or need a large cast for a city or faction-heavy campaign.
How the Two Work Together
The products complement each other: a Sidequest card supplies the situation and map, and an NPC card supplies the people the players meet inside it. Drawing one of each gives you a self-contained encounter with a location and a cast, which is useful when players surprise you mid-session.
Choosing Between Them
- Pick Sidequest Decks if your bottleneck is adventure ideas, maps, or session prep.
- Pick NPC Decks if your bottleneck is populating the world with memorable characters.
- Pick both if you run improvisation-heavy games and want a draw-from-deck workflow.
Neither product is described on the site with pricing or format details beyond the card format itself, so check the individual product pages for current availability before ordering.