A peek at card game design
8 months ago
– Tue, Mar 19, 2024 at 02:21:29 PM
Cycling back to the card game design part of this Kickstarter . . . it's a really, really good thing that Alyc and I knew, back when we were drafting The Mask of Mirrors, that we would eventually want to crowdfund the deck, and that we'd include games in the project so as to increase its appeal. Because if we hadn't known that, we likely wouldn't have made certain decisions that are foundational for the ability to play games with the deck.
(There still would have been games in the setting. But we would have had to completely handwave how most of them work.)
The first game we came up with was nytsa, because Japanese hanafuda cards are likewise unnumbered, so it was relatively easy to adapt. But honestly, most card games assume a numbered deck. Since we didn't want to stick numbers on the cards -- that would make it feel more like tarot with a thin paint job over the top -- were we just utterly blocked from using the framework of any game played with a numbered deck?
Not if we concealed a structuring principle within the names of the cards.
Normally we list them out by thread. But look at what happens if I regroup them across threads:
- Orin and Orasz, Hare and Hound, Saffron and Salt, Warp and Weft, Dusk and Dawn, Coffer and Key
- Hundred Lanterns Rise, Two Roads Cross, Ten Coins Sing, Three Hands Join, Four Petals Fall, One Poppy Weeps
- Wings in Silk, Jump at the Sun, Sword in Hand, Seven as One, Storm Against Stone, Turtle in Her Shell
- Sisters Victorious, Lark Aloft, Mother Unveiled, The Ember Adamant, A Brother Lost, Reeds Unbroken
- Aža's Call, The Peacock's Web, The Liar's Knot, Pearl's Promise, The River's Blessing, Labyrinth's Heart
- Pouncing Cat, Drowning Breath, The Welcoming Bowl, The Laughing Crow, Sleeping Waters, A Spiraling Fire
See the (heh) patterns? Admittedly, there are some fuzzy corners, brought about by us balancing the need to create these sets -- two cards of each type in each thread -- against the meanings of the cards and what sounded like a good name for each of them. Seven as One starts with a number, but it doesn't belong with the "Number Nouns Verb" group; The Living Dream, the clan card of the Ižranyi, overlaps with the "Participle Noun" group. (We had a beast of a time naming that one -- I think we were literally in copy-edits for Labyrinth's Heart before we found something we were happy with -- so at that point, the niceties of game design were the least of our concerns.) And we could have aimed for a higher stricture of consistency, too, by giving all or no cards of a particular group an initial A/An/The, rather than mixing it up. But that felt too tidy, so we went with what sounded best to us.
What does this mean for the rules of our games? For sixes and the stretch goal games, these will serve some (but not all) of the same functions as the numbers in a regular Western deck. That is to say, where other games call for you to match cards of the same rank -- a four to a four, a seven to a seven -- you can instead match cards of the same type, The Peacock's Web to The Liar's Knot, Jump at the Sun to Turtle in Her Shell. The remaining difference is that, unlike in a numbered deck, the types aren't in a ranked order: Noun's Noun cards are worth neither more nor less than Noun Preposition Noun cards.
Which does have an effect on what I can and can't do with game design. But I'll talk about that more a few updates from now, when I report in on my progress with the solitaire game!
-Marie
The Face of Ages!
9 months ago
– Tue, Mar 05, 2024 at 04:55:22 PM
As I mentioned before, Avery's approach to the Faces and the Masks involves giving us a number of detailed sketches and then asking us to play Mr. Potato Head with them, picking out which face shapes and eyes and hair and so forth we like best. Sometimes there's a lot of mix 'n match involved . . .
. . . and then sometimes we look at the set, point to one, and say, "DONE. SHIP IT."
(In the "send it to customers" sense, not the "write fanfic about them" sense. Given the number of the latter types of ships in our books, it's important to clarify!)
Here's what Avery sent us for the Face of Ages:
Can you guess which one we chose on the spot?
As we said in our wonderfully articulate and detailed replies to Avery, GRANNY APPLE. This one just has so much personality, we couldn't resist it. And I personally love that, although I had vaguely imagined this as a more stately face representing a sage elder, what we're actually going with looks like a beloved grandparent telling tales by the fire. That sage elder probably exists in a deck somewhere in Vraszan, but I like that we're getting this version instead!
Next update, I'll have some things to say about the card games you can play with the pattern deck!
--Marie
Preview: The Constant Spirit!
9 months ago
– Tue, Feb 20, 2024 at 01:17:49 PM
Thank you to everyone who has sent in suggested epigraphs so far -- we're grateful, and keep 'em coming! And if I may indulge in a bit of news not directly related to this Kickstarter, today also marks the release of my novel The Market of 100 Fortunes, the conclusion of my Legend of the Five Rings trilogy. If supernatural enigmas, queer romance, and Japanese folklore sound like they're up your alley, the whole series is available now!
For today's preview, we're checking in with A.C. again. I've previously shared with you all some of the thumbnail sketches they made, extremely rough scribbles meant to give us a general idea of the composition before they start in on the more detailed versions; since then, they've sent us the pencil sketches, which are the next stage in the process, and more refined than the early thumbnails. To show you what I mean, here's the initial concept for The Constant Spirit, the card of the Meszaros clan:
Full of energy, but obviously that's just a vague gesture in the direction of "horse goes here," without a ton of concern for anatomical precision and the like. Here's the pencil version:
Not only has the pose been flipped, but now it is clearly an actual horse. Although the precise details of e.g. exactly how the mane will be flying in the wind are likely to change before we're done, this is much closer to what the finished version will look like. Which means that as we go through these, Alyc and I are getting shivers as we see the deck beginning to take shape!
--Marie
Quote hunters wanted!
10 months ago
– Tue, Feb 06, 2024 at 10:49:17 AM
A slightly different kind of update this time, because art is not the only thing in progress right now! And read to the end for how you, yes you, can make your mark . . .
I’ve started work on the pattern deck guidebook -- in fact, I have a mostly finished rough draft. It’s going to stay rough for quite a while, because apart from the card images, one of the biggest things it’s lacking is the full rules for the various games; those await some design and playtesting work before I’ll have anything to write there.
Working on this has required me to operate in a different manner than usual. Normally I prefer to write in a plain ol’ document, just the single-spaced Times New Roman that is the default, and worry about formatting later. For this guidebook, however, formatting is going to matter a great deal: above all, in order to make sure we have a nice layout where the card images are on the left side of a two-page spread and the interpretations for those cards are on the right, the text of the latter has to be kept to a single page maximum. So this time I did the formatting first, and then I’m writing the text within those constraints, to make sure I don’t run long.
But there’s one more element we want to include there, and that’s where you all come in!
Alyc suggested that to add some flavor to the card interpretations, we might include quotes from the existing Rook and Rose fiction. We already know what some of these will be -- for example, it’s 99.99% certain that the quote for The Liar’s Knot will be “Trust is the thread that binds us . . . and the rope that hangs us” -- but with sixty-seven cards in the deck, that’s quite a lot of quotes to gather.
If you would like to help us hunt out suitable lines for the guidebook, here’s how to play! Both the novels and the short fiction are fair game. Quotes should ideally be on the short side -- say 20-30 words max, and ideally less than that -- though if it’s longer, go ahead and send it in. Alyc has created a handy-dandy form for you to use, where you can give us the quote and where it comes from, plus (optionally) your name and which card you think the quote is good for (full list here). Yes, that means you can submit quotes that you just think are cool, without worrying about matching them to a card! You’re also welcome to suggest more than one card you think it might fit, or multiple quotes for a single card if you later come across another option you feel would be good. Basically, the more the merrier; sorting them out for the guidebook will be our job.
Also, this isn’t something we need immediately. The guidebook won’t be finished until the art is, so you have months in which to re-read (or read for the first time) and pick out interesting lines. I’ll include reminders every so often in these updates, and I’ll definitely let people know when we’re getting close to the finish line.
Happy hunting! And next update I’ll be back with something new on the art front.
--Marie
The Face of Glass + another Kickstarter!
10 months ago
– Tue, Jan 23, 2024 at 11:21:17 AM
Before I get to today's sneak peek, I wanted to point y'all toward the Kickstarter currently underway for The Inkbrush Rune Deck. Like our own pattern cards, this is an oracle deck rather than a tarot per se, which I always find appealing; as the name implies, this one uses Norse runes for its content. I find the artwork really intriguing:
Given that I know some of our backers were drawn here by an interest in such things, I thought this one might appeal! You've got about three weeks left to back it.
Now for our own project, I have another preview of samples from Avery, and an interesting aspect I really hadn't considered before she brought it up.
Understand, I'm not really a visual artist. I do photography (check that out on my site!), and yes, that's a form of visual art, but it's a pretty different beast from drawing/painting/otherwise creating the picture from scratch yourself. And while I don't have aphantasia, my visual imagination is not super highly developed, so the mental images I have of the Faces and Masks have always been vague at best.
Which means it threw me for a loop when Avery asked whether we wanted the faces to be the same between The Face of Glass and The Mask of Mirrors -- as in, the facial structure. I . . . hadn't really thought about it? To me, many of the descriptions I gave her (e.g. "this one should be all feathers") overrode such considerations, since the end result was not going to look much like a normal human. But her question is extremely pertinent, and I'm glad she asked it!
We're not sure yet what the final answer will be. From a worldbuilding perspective, it makes sense to give the same facial structure to each pair, since the Faces and the Masks are two aspects of a single deity. Having there be an underlying resemblance, even if it then gets covered over with feathers or pared down to a skull, reinforces that idea. But there's also the question of aesthetics and which of the samples Avery sends us that we like best in its own right.
For the one I'm sharing today, we don't have a final answer yet. But here are the six sketches she sent for The Face of Glass -- which general design do you think we'll be using for the finished card?
--Marie
