Man, I feel for your buddy because I've been that guy. Back in college I got one of those books with 642 things to write about and every single entry turned into some dude sitting alone in a diner thinking about his ex. Same diner, different ex. The prompts weren't the problem though, I was. I was just using them as a door into the one room I already knew how to walk into. What worked for you, I bet, is that you treated the card like a boss giving you an assignment you didn't pick, so you couldn't fall back on your usual thing. That house-to-owner one would never come out of my brain on its own, and that's kind of the whole point. So no, I don't think it's a gimmick, but I also don't think the deck is doing the heavy lifting. You showed up 60 days straight, and that's the part nobody can sell you for $25.