I followed in Alextfish's inadvertent lead and spent the last two weeks designing an original Magic:TG set entirely without intending too. I started with a couple of cute ideas for individual cards I'd had ages ago (Tiny Bunny), and came up with a string of other ideas for other natural animals, especially for other sorts of rabbit, and spent a weekend talking ideas over with Liv.
And then kept on getting more ideas, and ideas for how to put them together, until I'd put them together into a cohesive set of 250 cards common, uncommon and rare, and with a variety of themes.
You can see a random three cards each time you refresh at http://cartesian-heights.org/magic-gentlemanmagician/random.php (Edit: Updated version)
And you can see a list of all the cards here: http://cartesian-heights.org/magic-gentlemanmagician/all_img.html (or img&text listing). (Edit: Updated version)
Culturally, the world is based around very traditional, English, non-ostentatious fantasy:
1. Normal woodland animals, represented as magic cards.
2. Small humanoid forest dwellers, called Boggles by themselves, and Ouphes by people who talk fancily. They're something like Pratchett's gnome series -- tenacious, brave and goofy, rather than stupid, greedy/angry and goofy. They have little wars between tribes, have legendary heroes, and so on. They often ride animals into battle.
3. Boggle shamans, who do druid-like stuff, channeling-spirits-of-animals to magical effect, but not throwing fireballs.
4. Gentlemen-magicians, in a very Jonathan-Strange-like mould, except living in an England that was never deforested or industrialised. To some extent, the set is more from the view of the boggles, so humans are strange and exotic -- there are five magicians in the set, and only a couple of other humans servants.
5. Really weird stuff, hidden away in the forest, based a lot on a Carol's Jabberwocky-like feel, which feels it's leaking in from some other plane.
And then kept on getting more ideas, and ideas for how to put them together, until I'd put them together into a cohesive set of 250 cards common, uncommon and rare, and with a variety of themes.
You can see a random three cards each time you refresh at http://cartesian-heights.org/magic-gentlemanmagician/random.php (Edit: Updated version)
And you can see a list of all the cards here: http://cartesian-heights.org/magic-gentlemanmagician/all_img.html (or img&text listing). (Edit: Updated version)
Culturally, the world is based around very traditional, English, non-ostentatious fantasy:
1. Normal woodland animals, represented as magic cards.
2. Small humanoid forest dwellers, called Boggles by themselves, and Ouphes by people who talk fancily. They're something like Pratchett's gnome series -- tenacious, brave and goofy, rather than stupid, greedy/angry and goofy. They have little wars between tribes, have legendary heroes, and so on. They often ride animals into battle.
3. Boggle shamans, who do druid-like stuff, channeling-spirits-of-animals to magical effect, but not throwing fireballs.
4. Gentlemen-magicians, in a very Jonathan-Strange-like mould, except living in an England that was never deforested or industrialised. To some extent, the set is more from the view of the boggles, so humans are strange and exotic -- there are five magicians in the set, and only a couple of other humans servants.
5. Really weird stuff, hidden away in the forest, based a lot on a Carol's Jabberwocky-like feel, which feels it's leaking in from some other plane.
