Writing Tools: Before There Were Stars
Before There Were Stars is a little different from most of the card-based writing tools I use. It’s designed to be a storytelling game rather than writing prompts, but the way the game is set up, it works well as both!
In the game, you tell mythic stories about a fictional group of people, based on the shapes those people saw in the stars. The constellations are on cards, marked with dice showing a number of pips from one through six (like a standard six-sided die). Each player rolls 12 dice and then matches their rolls to the available constellation cards, choosing two of five available cards. After all the players have two cards, they tell the beginning of their story in turn. This is then repeated three more times, with each “chapter” telling a portion of the story.
There’s a scoring mechanism as well, but ultimately, the game is about improvising a story from prompts, which makes it perfect as a writing tool as well. While you might not want to follow the story structure exactly (the game only presents two story structures, one for myths and one for legends), using the dice to select two or more constellations and then using those as prompts for your own story, which might take a different direction. Because it is based on constellations and mythic symbols therein, it does tend to lend itself to mythic and legendary stories, but I think there are ways to make it work for other types of stories as well–imagine a sci-fi story flying near or through those constellations, or even a horror story in which the stars play a role.
You might also use this game to build myths and legends as a part of worldbuilding, or you could use them as a sort of divination for characters–thinking about the things that the different constellations and symbols might mean in the context of fortune telling. So the possibilities for using Before There Were Stars are pretty widespread!
It’s worth noting that this game is from 2018, and while you can buy it through the links provided, you might also be able to find a second-hand copy that’s still in good shape if you’re interested in trying it out!
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