I was slightly disappointed that the New Game does not include any new locations outside of the optional Bandit Hideout and Lab. I was looking forward to mixing and matching locations. This leads me to creating new locations for my project. New locations need new Item decks but not necessarily new cards, I could custom print cards but I always feel they would be noticeably different.
Using the pre-existing cards from both games, you could customize not only new location decks, but the current decks as well. For the Base Dead of Winter, the item decks break down as follows:
| Weapons | Food | Fuel | Tools | Meds | Books | Outsiders | |
| Starter Cards | - | 10 | 5 | 5 | 5 | - | - |
| Police Station | 6 | 3 | 4 | 4 | - | - | 3 |
| Grocery Store | 6 | - | - | 5 | 6 | - | 3 |
| Gas Station | 5 | 3 | 6 | - | 3 | - | 3 |
| Library | - | 4 | 4 | 2 | - | 7 | 3 |
| School | - | 6 | - | 4 | 3 | 4 | 3 |
| Hospital | - | 4 | 4 | 3 | 6 | - | 3 |
By sorting all the cards into their types (Weapons, Food, ect), shuffling them, and then dealing them back into each deck according to the above chart, Each location would have the original number of each type of cards but no one will know exactly what you will find where. For instance, The Police Station would still have six weapons, but instead of the six 'Police Station' weapons, it would be six random weapons. Replayability skyrockets as players never know what they will find where, especially if you include all the cards from both games.
Creating new locations would then be as simple as creating a new 20 Card deck format and randomizing it or creating a custom list using the cards not used.
As an added bonus, this gives the Traitor some interesting options. For instance, attempting to complete the crisis where we need four food. Someone put in a tool card from the Gas Station deck and only one player has been to the gas station.
Just some musing on an easy optional way to change up a favorite game.
