Transcript: Deckbuilding (Signs of the Sojourner) with Lady Tabletop

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Further Reading

Signs of the Sojourner by Echo Dog Games

Band-Aids & Bullet Holes by Sam, on Kickstarter now

Slay the Spire 2 by Mega Crit

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Lady Tabletop on itch

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Credits

Our logo was designed by sporgory, our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.

Sam: Hello and welcome to another episode of Dice Exploder. Each week we take a tabletop mechanic and try to haggle over its price. My name is Sam Dunnewold, and my co-host today is Lady Tabletop. Lady Tabletop is back. She is a designer, a producer, a friend of the show, and a vital part of the Band-Aids and Bullet Holes Kickstarter going on right now.

If you haven’t yet, go check out Band-Aids and Bullet Holes, my new John Wick-style revenge game. You just heard LT on the show a couple of weeks ago talking about it, and today she is back for more. Today I’m continuing my mini-series about mechanics that influenced Band-Aids and Bullet Holes.

This is also a very special episode because it’s the first episode of Dice Exploder where I’m covering a video game mechanic. Today LT and I are talking about Signs of the Sojourner, a small indie game from Echo Dog Games published in 2020 during the height of lockdown. You play as a member of a post-post-apocalyptic merchant caravan traveling between small towns and talking to people.

The way you talk to them is by playing a card game. Signs of the Sojourner, like Band-Aids and Bullet Holes, is a deck builder. Your character is represented by a small deck of cards, and who they are comes through in what cards you include and how you play them.

It’s a beautiful and elegant design, and today we get into how and why its core deck-building mechanics allow for strong character expression, even when the cards themselves are very simple. We also talk about how the game supports that core mechanic with art, music, and writing, while leaving space for you to fill in the subtext yourself.

I love deck builders. I love this game.

If you backed the itch.io bundle for racial justice and equality in 2020, you probably already own this game. Go play it and come back. It’s only a few hours long. If not, you can pick it up on Steam.

Thanks to everyone who supports Dice Exploder on Patreon. Here is Lady Tabletop.

Your character is a deck of cards from Signs of the Sojourner. Lady Tabletop, welcome back to Dice Exploder. It’s good to have you again.

Lady Tabletop: Nice to be here, Sam. Thanks for having me.

Sam: We’re talking about something I’m really excited about today. What are we talking about?

Lady Tabletop: We are talking about Signs of the Sojourner, which is a video game, not a tabletop game.

Sam: It’s a video game.

Lady Tabletop: Yes.

Sam: The first video game Dice Exploder has ever covered. Let’s go.

Lady Tabletop: Changing the direction of the show forever. It’s Signs of the Sojourner by Echo Dog Games. It’s a small deck builder, but extremely story-driven.

We’ve been talking about it for a while, especially because you’re working on a deck builder and I’m obsessed with them.

Sam: Yeah, we’ll get into that. First, I want to say this is my favorite video game. I love this game.

Everything about it is perfect. The art is phenomenal. The music is phenomenal. The mechanics are polished. The writing is great. Everything works.

The premise is a post-apocalyptic or post-post-apocalyptic world. It resembles the real world in some ways but doesn’t map directly to any real place.

You play a traveling merchant driving from town to town. You’re collecting goods to bring back to your small shop in your hometown. Your mother has recently died, so you’re taking over her role in the caravan.

Your town is at risk of being dropped from the caravan route, which would effectively kill it. You’re trying to save it by keeping your shop stocked and relevant.

The game is about talking to people, and that’s where the interesting part comes in.

Lady Tabletop: Yes.

Sam: The game is a deck builder. Your character is a deck of cards. You have ten cards, with five in hand at a time.

Each card has a symbol on the left and a symbol on the right. Each symbol has a color and shape, but they map together, so it’s easiest to think of them as colors.

You sit down for a conversation. Someone plays a red-red card. You play red-green. They play green-red. You need to match symbols to continue the conversation.

If you can’t match, you stumble. You’re trying to chain successful matches to progress. Each conversation has a success threshold before too many failures.

That’s the core loop. Successful conversations usually get you items, though sometimes success still leads to complications.

Lady Tabletop: There’s another layer. At the end of a conversation, you can take one of their cards and add it to your deck, but you have to replace an existing card.

So there’s a mechanical incentive to have conversations, even if you’re not invested in the story. But you should be, because the writing is really good.

Even failed conversations can give you cards if you had at least one success. So you might fail socially but still gain something mechanically.

Sam: Your deck evolves over time, and the metaphors start stacking up.

Each color corresponds to personality traits. Red is empathetic, green is logical, blue is creative and industrious, and so on.

You can imagine conversations through the cards. If I switch from red to blue and you can’t follow, maybe I got too abstract or creative for you.

Some cards have abilities. Chatter lets you play multiple cards in a row, which feels like talking someone’s ear off.

These effects aren’t explicitly described in the writing, but you start reading subtext into them. That interpretation happens in your head.

Lady Tabletop: Exactly. There’s also a mechanic called accord. If you match symbols in a certain way, you get a buffer that lets you survive a mismatch.

It feels like the strength of the conversation carries you through a mistake.

There are also cards like reconsider that redraw your hand, which feels like rethinking your response. Or observant, which lets you see the other person’s hand.

Sam: Yeah, and those interactions create little narrative moments. You observe someone’s hand, then they reconsider and redraw, which feels like they’re being evasive.

Characters have signature cards, which reinforces their personality.

Lady Tabletop: And even though the dialogue is fixed, you still add context based on how the cards play out.

Sam: One of my favorite examples is the caravan leader. Early on, she mostly uses red and green cards. But if you push outside that, she reveals she has access to other colors.

It’s like discovering she has a broader perspective than she initially shows. That moment feels really rewarding.

Lady Tabletop: Especially early in the game when that flexibility is powerful.

Sam: Another key system is fatigue. The longer you travel, the more fatigue cards enter your deck. They have no symbols and automatically cause failure.

Eventually, your deck gets clogged, and you can’t talk to everyone. You have to choose who you want to connect with.

Lady Tabletop: That realization hits hard. You can’t pursue every relationship. You have to decide which storylines matter.

There’s also an earthquake event later that introduces a new symbol representing shared trauma. That adds another layer of complexity.

Sam: And that ties into themes like class and community. Some characters respond with empathy, others with exclusion.

You’re forced to choose between maintaining your livelihood and supporting vulnerable people.

Lady Tabletop: And the art style is bright and soft, which contrasts with the heavy themes. It draws you in before revealing the deeper material.

Sam: The game balances that well. It never feels overwhelming, even when dealing with serious topics.

Lady Tabletop: It also encourages multiple playthroughs. You can’t see everything in one run, so you explore different relationships each time.

Sam: And the writing supports that. It leaves space for interpretation while still being strong on its own.

Lady Tabletop: The silent protagonist helps with that. You project your own intentions into the character.

Sam: It reminds me of games where minimal mechanics create strong emotional responses. Each element is deliberate and evocative.

Lady Tabletop: Exactly. Small details build a full picture without overexplaining.

Sam: So how did this lead to Band-Aids and Bullet Holes?

Deck builders like Slay the Spire show how mechanics can express character. Different playstyles feel like different personalities.

I wanted to bring that into roleplaying. Why not build characters as decks?

Lady Tabletop: We talked about this a lot while you were developing it.

Sam: I started with the idea of using playing cards and assigning meaning to suits. Then I introduced calling cards, short phrases that define a character.

Those became the core of the system. The John Wick inspiration came later.

Lady Tabletop: The connection to Signs of the Sojourner is clearer than you think. The way cards create back-and-forth interaction feels very similar.

Sam: And like in Signs, you read meaning into how cards interact. The same pair of cards can tell different stories each time.

Lady Tabletop: That flexibility makes it feel alive.

Sam: Another lesson from Signs is simplicity. The mechanics are easy to learn but support deep interpretation.

That inspired me to strip down Band-Aids and Bullet Holes. Remove unnecessary complexity and let meaning emerge from play.

Lady Tabletop: It becomes like a Rorschach test. You interpret what you see.

Sam: Exactly. The base mechanics are simple, but the context makes them engaging.

Lady Tabletop: And that simplicity creates space for storytelling.

Sam: Right. If the mechanics are too complex, they crowd out narrative.

Lady Tabletop: It’s a balance between what the system provides and what players bring to it.

Sam: There’s room for both styles of play, but this approach prioritizes story.

Lady Tabletop: And that’s what makes Signs of the Sojourner so compelling.

Sam: It’s a fantastic game. You should check it out. And you should check out Band-Aids and Bullet Holes too.

Lady Tabletop: You can get Signs of the Sojourner on Steam or Switch.

Sam: Audrey, thanks for coming back to Dice Exploder.

Lady Tabletop: Thanks for having me.

Sam: Thanks again to Lady Tabletop for being here. You can back Band-Aids and Bullet Holes on Kickstarter now. Check the show notes for links.

Thanks to everyone who supports Dice Exploder on Patreon. You can find me on Bluesky at Dice Exploder, and my games at sdunnewold.itch.io.

Our logo was designed by Sporgory. Our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey, and our ad music is Lily Pads by Travis Tessmer.

Thanks for listening. See you next time.