One of my creative pleasures is using a card deck for writing inspiration. Back in the day I reviewed quite a few that were created for just such a purpose, and even gave a talk about how to use them to get ideas for stories at a conference. I was intrigued when I saw the In Dreams storytelling card deck by Jamie Thul and Mike Berg on Amazon, especially as it was billed as "slightly surreal". I decided to invest in a deck to see how it worked.
The deck comes in a gorgeous case, and has a little booklet of instructions on how to use the cards. There are 36 prompt cards and 18 event cards.
You draw a total of eight prompt cards to determine the main character of your idea, creating them out of the prompts in the booklet and on the prompt cards.
My character draw produced this: "I am from far away, and am lost, and before this dream ends I must return to another dreamer."
You then draw up to 2 to 4 prompt cards to generate an encounter, which is also determined by the prompts on the cards, and then use an image from one of the cards drawn for setting inspiration. If two cards match in a certain way you can also trigger another encounter.
My draw generated these phrases for the encounter: "secrets revealed, desire for change, hang in the balance, broken heart." My setting was some lovely stacks of books, suggesting a library. I also triggered another event that was revealed as "Your goal is at odds with that of someone you meet" and the tone of this event is "unsettling."
Upsides: The illustrations are definitely the stuff of colorful fantasy, and there seems to be enough variety of prompts and events and random chance for a user to generate plenty of different ideas. You can also use a single prompt or event if you get stuck for inspiration, or make up an entirely new way to use the cards. The cards would work very well as journaling prompts (the makers encourage using a journal with the deck) and could also help artists get some new directions. I liked the intelligence and thought that went into this deck.
Downsides: The character prompts are a bit limited, and are more about actions than character building. Some of the prompts are pretty vague, too. The art and prompts are not universally applicable; I think they wouldn't work for hardboiled crime fiction writers, for example.
Is In Dreams worth the $14.99 Amazon charges for them? To me, yes. I really enjoyed the process of using the deck and the results I got. If you'd like to read the short story I wrote from my prompts, check out Adrift.
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