Blood Opera

When I originally started work on the Tapestry Deck I knew I was going to write some sort of game to use the deck with. I played with a lot of ideas, but ultimately I came up with some Euchre inspired rules that I think get the job done. I love art deco and I love medieval themes, so I really punched it up for these cards.

I wanted to make each character card a mini-character sheet that works visually as well as conveys key information. The original blood opera game I ran was very slavic themed, so I tried to continue that with clothing designs. My hope was to capture the physical language of each character so when you played you had easy visual cues to follow. I didn’t want any of the women to be vulnerable or traditional gaming sex kittens. Nothing drives me more crazy than that shit.

Of the cards, Magda might be my favorite as she is visually powerful and defiant, which is often hard to capture without overt violence in the pose. Viktor is my least favorite character design I think. Something about it rubs me the wrong way, though I am not sure what I would change.