Oblique Strategies

A deck of cards by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt, first published in 1975. Each card holds one prompt, to be followed however you see fit when you are stuck.

Oblique

Draws one of 117 Oblique Strategies at random, never the same card twice in a row. The wording comes from the 117-card collection in Matt Rickard’s List of All Oblique Strategies. Other printings of the deck differ in places.

Ephemeral

Not an Eno and Schmidt card. Each press follows one of two routes at random:

• A thought from the internet, taken from one of three free sources, each equally likely: Advice Slip, DriveBird (quotes credited to the author the source reports), and Stoic Quotes (Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus and others). The card shows only the wording, so the author is not displayed.
• A phrase built on the page from word lists: an imperative verb joined to an adjective, a possessive noun, an abstract place, a possessive abstract place or a feeling. The combinations are deliberately odd.

If a source is slow, down or returns something unusable, the page quietly uses the second route instead. Nothing is stored, and no account or key is involved.