Introducing a project: Some art, some thoughts

Parallel to all my rpg heartbreakers, I am finishing a cherished project of mine; this time a small card game with no name yet (just some ideas). It's not mean to be a CCG or a TCG, just a set of cards which compose a "boardgame" all together.

You are suposed to play against a friend both with the same deck; each of you representing some sort of shogun trying to recover their respective heirloom relics from the hands of the other, who has stolen them. Yeah, I know its weird, but it made sense to me eventually.

These are some hand-drawn cards from the beta deck (in spanish). One of my design goals for them is to have the card text as short as possible. I realized shortly that I was writing too much text on them, trying to cover every possible legal trapping: due to my long relationship with MTG, I was using the same prose and mentality.

Though it as hard as it is hard for a man not to carry his homeland's accent, I am trying to get rid of the corporate game-designer vices. There is a reason for MTG to be extremelly careful on their wordings: they got the DCI, grand prixes, etc. They cannot afford a card to have an ambiguous meaning. If, for example, a card is a merfolk, you cannot just name it Merfolk Assassin and have a merfolk on the picture: You must specify Creature - Merfolk on the type line, or cards that affect merfolks won't have effect on him.

But I want to revel in the advantage I have over that kind of game. 

This is a small game meant to be played by persons. Probably persons who are friends or family with each other. I want to believe that if an hypotetical card affects "all creatures who carry a sword" they can civilly discern it by watching the pictures. 

I have this card called "Marsh Frogs", which originally were to have a bonus against spiders. Then I thought on writing "If the marsh frogs combat against the spider, they will automatically win the combat". But then I went: What the fuck, this is not a game for bots. People will understand this. Maybe it will change over time, but the current text is: "They will eat spiders directy". I think that people will surely interpret it the right way, and even if it is not the case, I think that the pleasure of working with human language instead of lawyer language still is worth the risk.

[illustration] SidSothoth; H.P. Lovecraft pixel art

 These are all from @SidSothoth at twitter. I found them when searching for images for an upcoming, lovecraft-related post, and could not resist saving them all. I love that aesthetics! Good art must be spread so everyone can enjoy it, and here it is! I think I am going to make a "tradition" of dumping works of inspiring artists from time to time. 

[illustration] World of Guweiz

Official Soundtrack of the post:

This post is dedicated to the artist called Guweiz who did all of this drawings. One of his recurring themes is this samurai girls, under a seemingly endless rain. Doing who knows what, at what seems to be the outskirts of a flooded modern city. Some part inside me remembers waking up early in autumn mornings, to walk the way up to high school on days like that. And that specific kind of magic. Lots of grunge.

This one above summarizes the essence of the ¿setting? perfectly for me. It's title is Countryside. Notice how there is a constant presence of that warm lights around the girls. Sometimes its pendants, sometimes butterflies. Sometimes lamps. As if that light hold a great importance to their survival or the missions ahead. Maybe that is why our girl came to the countryside now; to gather a little light for the road ahead.

There is something that speaks to me in this world. What kind of plot or setting would it had if it was an RPG? would this girls be the PCs or the Monsters? what do you do in a world like that? Is it a normal autumn in our world, or is it another one, smaller, where the autumn never leaves? Where you put a lamp on your door to keep your home safe from whatever is lurking there? 

Notice the giant oni armor at the background. Did she just beat him? is he pledging service? or just a dead cask that happens to be there? Whats going on in this city?

Is it all in the end a metaphor for teenage life? Why so many girls? And how do they get their XP? If you have any ideas of what this setting could be about, please tell me.