World building can be hard. Especially when you need to do it quickly or at scale. It’s all too easy to get stuck in a rut, default to stereotypes or not think broadly enough.
As part of the development of Outside the Wire, we have been developing a fictional universe to test out various scenarios. To help us, we designed a card-based random country generator, which can quickly produce a wide variety of fictional settings.
The deck currently consists of 66 cards, which describe various assets a country might possess. The cards are split between: Population, industry, features and geography. It’s modern themed but could be used for other settings, you’d just have to view each card through a sci-fi or fantasy lens etc.
Players shuffle the deck, draw 10 cards, and follow any instructions on the cards to build their nation. This provides a narrative framework onto which other details can be woven.
Draft versions of Pine Forests, Heavy Manufacturing and Expeditionary Military.
Example: Camina Ranor
Camina Ranor is a small educated and industrialized country with a population of just half a million. It is ruled by powerful individuals elected from within the nation’s leading industrial sectors.
Lying north of the equator, the capital (and only) city is located on the coast. It is surrounded by an expanse of savannah, which is prone to drought and wildfires.
Economically, the nation possesses thriving research and financial services sectors and benefits from a large deep water port, through which it imports commodities, food and consumer goods.
Although the Nation Builder originally started out as an internal tool, we’re planning on releasing a set for print and play, probably on drive through cards.
The Stack 
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