On Jul 27, 2006, at 5:02 AM, Shadowcat wrote:
Whatever is lying around is better then 200 decks. I collect
them, and
used to read profesionaly. I am slowly working through the deck I has
deciding which to use for this project. I have discounted the
"Darker"
decks such as Geiger, Crowly, and Necrom, they just seem wrong for the
feel of the game so far. I have also decided against any limited
edition, or unique decks, as they could not be replaced. This still
leaves me more then 150 decks, you can see why I am asking advice.
Huh. I use Thoth tarot for Gnostica, and I love the darker imagery.
For Zarcana, which is a lighter game, a lighter deck might be good. I
think one of the main concerns is how good the cards are for
gameplay. Thoth tarot actually isn't great for games, because it can
sometimes be hard to tell the suit of a card, or which trump it is,
at a glance, especially when it's in your hand, and so you only see a
corner of the card. I've mitigated this problem by putting Gnostica
stickers on the cards, but if you want to preserve your cards, you
might want cards that have their suit/trump name in the upper left
corner, so you can fan them like playing cards while they're in your
hand and still be able to tell what's what. Of course, it can be hard
to find tarot cards that are designed like playing cards, and have
they cool, mystical, tarot imagery on them; you usually just find
those with older style Italian tarot images on them, which you may
find boring.
Another concern is that they should be reasonably compatible with the
Rider-Waite-Smith decks. They should have the same set of trumps for
Gnostica, and both the same set and same order for Zarcana. Thoth
doesn't quite have the same trumps as RWS, but it's close enough that
I can just use the stickers, or before I had the stickers use notes
on the reference sheet as far as what the correspondance was. jj