Clearly, you need Nanofictionary to use this set, and if you're not familiar with the game, you might wish to go read a review before moving onward.
The Components
Nanoblanks contains 13 cards in a plastic wrapper. They are:
- 4 blank character cards
- 2 blank setting cards
- 2 blank problem cards
- 2 blank resolution cards
- 1 Wild Idea action card
- 1 Juror award card
- 1 Wild card for Aquarius
The 10 blank cards are clearly the heart of this package. And, Looney Labs has actually produced their blank cards intelligently by laying out the basics of each of their card types upon the blank cards, and allowing you to then fill in that template.
This is in contrast to most blank card packs I've seen which leave the front totally blank. Thus, the cards never look right because they don't have the headers, footers, colors, etc. of actual cards in the game. The downside of the Looney Labs approach is that you can't, e.g., sit down and write up 10 characters, but given how that would off-balance the game, this is probably a good thing.
I suppose it's also worth noting that because Looney Labs choose to go with simple line drawings for the core Nanofictionary set, your line drawings will look just fine next to them. Another interesting & ultimately beneficial choice.
Besides the blank cards you also get a couple of extras thrown in.
The Wild Idea is a new action which lets you choose to use any one of the 4 actions from the original game (Brainstorm, Plagiarize, Uncrumple, Complication). Given that an increased deck size will also increase the variance in card selection, this is a good and thoughtful addition.
The Juror card allows a Juror to actually hand over a card for his choice of favorite story, rather than just pointing at a player. I suppose that's somewhat useful to help uot in counting up points at the end. More helpful, however, is the fact that the Juror card contains on its back some instructions on being a good juror.
The Aquarius card is, clearly, for a totally different game. It's a cool add-on, though not of particular relevence to a Nanofictionary player.
All of the cards are card quality, with rounded corners and gloss. Because of the gloss, the ink smeared a little while I was drawing, but seems pretty solid afterward--and I expect will remain so unless a gamer pours a can of Coke on them. (And as a side note, I smeared my cards more than my wife smeared hers by a fair amount because of the wacky way I hold a writing implement.)
Overall, because of the decision to make the blanks card-type specific, I think the Nanoblanks exceed the average expectations for card blanks, and thus I'd given them "4" out of "5" for Style
The Game Play
In and of themselves, the Nanoblanks don't change the game play of Nanofictionary. You'll have some cool new story elements next time you play the core game, and thus you'll have different stories to tell--perhaps ones that are nearer and dearer to your own hearts.
However, I'll comment that drawing up your Nanoblanks can be a fun game all in itself. My wife and I sat around for an hour or two working up ideas that we thought would be fun, sketching out the pictures, and then finally transferring them over to the cards.
It was slightly tricky figuring out the optimal specificity of story element to put on a card, as you want the elements to be specific enough to help get players thinking, but not so specific that they really lock down a story. I found that laying out all of the Nanofictionary cards of the specific type and reading over them before writing up a new card helped a lot.
A word of advice: if you're a poor artist like I, rough out your drawings first, make sure you have something that works, and only then transfer them to your card. We had two cards in particular ("Problem: Pronoun Trouble" and "Character: The Guy Who Reads While Walking") which went through a number of iterations before arriving at something within my artistic range.
I've left 2 of the Nanoblank character cards blank, for future usage, but here were the other 8 story elements which my wife & I worked up while fiddling with the set:
- Character: The Cute Girl who Wears Glasses (my wife)
- Character: The Guy who Reads while Walking (me)
- Setting: On the Roof of the House
- Setting: In the Airplane Lavatory
- Problem: Pronoun Trouble
- Problem: No Key for the Handcuffs
- Resolution: They Lived Unhappily Ever After
- Resolution: They Realized They Were on a Reality TV Show
I had fun writing up the Nanoblanks. I'm sure they'll be fun to use in the game proper. I don't really know how any of that says anything useful about Substance in general, so I'll just offer it the default number of "3" for average.
Conclusion
If you play Nanofictionary with any regularity, you'll want to pick up these cards to increase the range of stories that can be told. And, filling in the cards will probably be fun too.
