Give life to your NPCs with the Shattered Star Face Cards! More than 50 key characters fill this gorgeously illustrated deck designed for use with the Shattered Star Adventure Path, but suitable for use in any fantasy roleplaying game! Each card includes the character’s name, his or her role in the Shattered Star Adventure Path, space to record key details, and artwork by Paizo’s finest illustrators. These Face Cards bring the most prominent cast members of this lethal Adventure Path to your tabletop and let your players look into the faces of the enemy!
Daefu
Fenster the Blight
First King Xin
Gathuspia
Gein Kafog
General Stom
Gnaeus Gnaru
Gray Maiden
Hasari
Kandamereus
Karzoug
King Zuuga
Koriah Azmeren
Krugulk Throatcaller
The Shattered Star Face Cards Deck is perfect for any Golarion Campaign set in Kaer Maga or Varisia. I think Paizo limits the audience of their AP based decks because consumers seem to think they cannot use these cards outside of the designated AP. Conversely, I find that these AP face decks make for the perfect NPC library - especially if you're currently running a campaign through the AP setting.
For example, I'm running The Godsmouth Heresy for my players at the moment and like the Shattered Star AP, the Godsmouth Heresy is set in Kaer Maga. This makes for a great face deck as it features the Dusk Wardens, runelords and Troll Augurs of Kaer Maga. The art is colorful, gorgeous and imaginative. Pick up a deck for your game today!
The concept is great, the artwork is awesome, but the execution of the concept is flawed, at least based on my players’ reactions. Whenever I pull out one of the ‘disembodied’ face cards (i.e. with the arms and/or torso removed) the reaction is sniggers and severed head comments – demonstrating the cards are taking the players out of the game, rather than bringing them deeper into it.
Perhaps this design decision was made to emphasize a crisp distinction between the card background and the artful border, or maybe it was to draw focus towards each NPC’s face. If this is the case though, I think it’s too rigid or literal an interpretation of ‘face cards’. Where full body portraits exist, they’re very expressive. They help to reveal more about each NPC. I’d like to see more of them on the cards, not less.
Because of my players’ reactions, I’m selective about which cards I share with them. As a result, I end up formatting and printing portraits of many NPCs myself – a step I was hoping the face cards would eliminate from my game prep. I’d love to rate these higher, but the two star review is an honest assessment of the actual utility these cards provide to my game in their current format.
I'm happy with this set of face cards. The art work is very good and there is a good selection of different races and genders to add to your game. I hope the next item deck has the art detail that this one does.
I'm curious, are the characters that had only full-body art cropped to show only their faces or did they get new portraits?
I'm picking them regardless, but was just wondering. :)
In most cases, we cropped full-body illustrations to make portraits, though in the case of many of the major NPCs, we already had both a head shot and a full-body illustration. At any rate, we did not order any new art for these cards.
Art Director
