Cantrip Games
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Check it out, here are the Warrior, Item and Battlefield card backs for Story War! Click on them and check out the details! The logo was designed by Ned Hugar, the border was designed by Maré Odomo and the textures were designed by Farid Safaie.

It took us MONTHS to settle on these. There were so many challenges involved with coming up with the card backs: We wanted each one to evoke a book cover and also their role in the game. But they couldn’t be too literal because we intend to do expansions that share a common card backs but have different “themes” - for example, a scifi expansion would look odd if it had a leathery book texture on the opposite side. But the cards need to all have the same backs so that they can be mixed together. So I told all of that to Maré and he came up with that book-like white border which looks really great.

We went with red triangles for Warriors, because it evokes “attack” and blue circles for Items because it evokes “defense,” and green checkers for Battlefields because it looks like a chess board or a field. We originally had “gold” for items, and they were briefly called “Treasure” and they were a thing you earned and spent. But we decided that items are used in much more interesting ways if they replenish automatically. Also, yellow is a difficult color to balance with white and”red green blue” sort of makes more sense as a set than “red green yellow.”

Each card back needs to have some distinctive texture so that Story War can be played by color blind people or in low light - I’ve tried playing it with non-textured backs in bars, etc, with colored lighting, and it’s always difficult to tell the decks apart. The textures are designed to make it easy to tell which card is wich without relying 100% on color, but also keeping all three backs on a unified theme. Farid did a great job on these.

The logo was the first thing I designed with Ned Hugar. Originally it had some lightning bolts around the sides - the stars and lightning bolts were going to be a recurring motif, but people kept parsing the lightning bolts as superscripted “S” shapes, so we got rid of them. The star became the logo for the game, and it’s a recurring motif you’ll see a lot on the card art.

Before we even had a logo, we had a celtic knot looking star thing as the “Triforce”-like symbol for Story War:

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We eventually settled on a more cartoony art style and a less serious tone, so we got rid of this star (which we called the “five point lotus” - SO SERIOUS) and replaced it with the new star. We originally called the new star the “cute star” at first, but have since renamed it the Wishing Star.

We decided to make the Wishing Star it’s own item card after discovering problems with the genie. It was hard to limit the genie’s powers, and also a genie felt like he should be a servant to someone else - it didn’t make sense to put our “wishing” mechanic on a Warrior card. So instead we added the Wishing Star, which will grant any wish your heart desires but not without an “ironic twist”:

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The idea that the Wishing Star can do whatever you want, but someone else (the judge) is going to mess it up for you is sort of the core idea behind Story War.

I think a lot of people will hear about the concept of Story War and get excited about the idea that it allows for unbridled creative freedom, like Minecraft in Create Mode - but that’s not quite the case. The fact that Story War is a mandatory 3-or-more player game means your creative freedom is reined in by input from other people, which I think is a really interesting concept. I’m really glad the Wishing Star exists, even though it was one of the last new items we added, it feels like a thing that was meant to be in Story War all along.

We’ve got less than 2 days to send the game to the printers. If you didn’t get a chance to back our Kickstarter you can always pre-order Story War here.

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06 / 04
91 notes
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We’ve just added some brave new Warrior cards! If you back Story War at the Deluxe Pack level you’ll get these eight officially licensed Bravest Warriors cards!

Story War is a storytelling party game where players take on the role of fictional characters and then try to convince another player acting as a judge that their characters would win in a fight against their opponent’s characters. We started out with that classic “who would win in a fight between Batman and Superman” conversation and we kept developing the cards and playtesting the rules until we came up with this really fun game.

But obviously we can’t make a game about Batman and Superman without DC Comics’ permission! So we had to start out with public domain characters like Medusa and King Midas. One of the ideas behind Story War is that we’d build the game on public domain characters and then slowly introduce more licensed character expansions over time.

So we hope Story War will slowly grow into something like the card game version of Super Smash Brothers. And luckily for us, everyone at Cartoon Hangover is super cool and they gave us permission to make these eight new Bravest Warriors cards, which represent our first major step in that Smash-like direction!

Bravest Warriors is a great franchise to play Story War with because all of these adorable characters come with their own set of super powers. And if you want to learn the nuances of the kinds of stories you can tell with each card, all you have to do is watch the Bravest Warriors web series on YouTube!

All Story War cards are printed with a common card back, so you could easily shuffle the Bravest Warriors into your Story War deck and take them out if the people you’re playing with aren’t familiar with the show.

These eight cards are exclusively available as a Kickstarter bonus! Trying to get these cards after the campaign ends would be like trying to make oatmeal cry. So if you want to get these Bravest Warriors cards you’ll have to go back Story War on Kickstarter at the Deluxe Pack level!

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13 / 03
5,196 notes
Hey, do you like cool things? Do you like friends? Do you like when people who make cool things are friends? This is happening! If you back Story War on Kickstarter and ALSO back The Machine of Death game on Kickstarter you’ll get an EXCLUSIVE CARD in both versions of the game, as well as rules that combine the two games into an insane fairytale-assassination hybrid! Check out these rare cards you can only get if you back both games: The Machine of Death card in Story War can be used to predict your opponent’s death with just a single drop of blood; the Story War card in Machine of Death can be used to redeem something from a fairy tale. Both cards stand alone as usable items in both games, but they become even cooler when you combine the two games! Can a vampire die of cancer? What if it’s sunlight from the Cancer constellation? Using the Machine of Death’s cause-of-death predictions on fantasy characters adds a whole new level of creative challenge to the gameplay of both games! We’ll post more about the crossover rules later on in the campaign! (PS: We also hit $35k today! That means the Story War expansion deck now has at least 70 cards!) If you think this cross promotion is a cool idea, reblog this post! If this thing goes over well, we might be able to do more cross promotions throughout our campaigns!

Hey, do you like cool things? Do you like friends? Do you like when people who make cool things are friends? This is happening! If you back Story War on Kickstarter and ALSO back The Machine of Death game on Kickstarter you’ll get an EXCLUSIVE CARD in both versions of the game, as well as rules that combine the two games into an insane fairytale-assassination hybrid!

Check out these rare cards you can only get if you back both games:

The Machine of Death card in Story War can be used to predict your opponent’s death with just a single drop of blood; the Story War card in Machine of Death can be used to redeem something from a fairy tale. Both cards stand alone as usable items in both games, but they become even cooler when you combine the two games!

Can a vampire die of cancer? What if it’s sunlight from the Cancer constellation? Using the Machine of Death’s cause-of-death predictions on fantasy characters adds a whole new level of creative challenge to the gameplay of both games! We’ll post more about the crossover rules later on in the campaign!

(PS: We also hit $35k today! That means the Story War expansion deck now has at least 70 cards!)

If you think this cross promotion is a cool idea, reblog this post! If this thing goes over well, we might be able to do more cross promotions throughout our campaigns!

25 / 02
106 notes
The Story War Kickstarter just reached $30k! That means we’re 150% funded and we hit our first major stretch goal milestone! Our first new game mode is called Myth Master! It uses all the same cards as Story War and is structured similarly, the key difference is that you are playing as yourself manifested into the battlefield and you are summoning Warriors from the cards in your hand. The ultimate objective isn’t just to take out the other player’s Warriors, it’s to take out the human player who is controlling them, just like in Magic the Gathering, YuGiOh, and the Pokemon manga*! “Myth Master” was actually the original working title for Story War. The first time I ever playtested it was in a hallway at Babycastles - I needed to find some people to play against, and Peter Berkman came out of an elevator and wanted to play. He recruited dozens of people to join in and we kept trying new rules and by the end of the night we had this system where players played cards from their hand one at a time to ‘summon’ a new Warrior into battle. We eventually decided to go into a the more open-ended direction that currently exists as Story War’s default rules - which is that the Warriors just happen to all be in the Battlefield when the battle begins. This allows for creative conjecture as to why they’re in the Battlefield and their relationship to the setting and each other. But summoning Warriors like Pokemon is pretty cool too! So now that we’ve hit $30k, I’m going to spend the next few weeks playtesting the Myth Master rule set and refining it and then packaging it in an easy-to-understand PDF rule sheet that you can print out for free! We have a couple more game mode ideas we want to develop and a lot more expansion cards to make, so please, help us reach all of our stretch goals! (* in the Pokemon manga the objective of battle is often to kill the other trainer, it’s pretty metal)

The Story War Kickstarter just reached $30k! That means we’re 150% funded and we hit our first major stretch goal milestone!

image

Our first new game mode is called Myth Master! It uses all the same cards as Story War and is structured similarly, the key difference is that you are playing as yourself manifested into the battlefield and you are summoning Warriors from the cards in your hand. The ultimate objective isn’t just to take out the other player’s Warriors, it’s to take out the human player who is controlling them, just like in Magic the Gathering, YuGiOh, and the Pokemon manga*!

“Myth Master” was actually the original working title for Story War. The first time I ever playtested it was in a hallway at Babycastles - I needed to find some people to play against, and Peter Berkman came out of an elevator and wanted to play. He recruited dozens of people to join in and we kept trying new rules and by the end of the night we had this system where players played cards from their hand one at a time to ‘summon’ a new Warrior into battle.

We eventually decided to go into a the more open-ended direction that currently exists as Story War’s default rules - which is that the Warriors just happen to all be in the Battlefield when the battle begins. This allows for creative conjecture as to why they’re in the Battlefield and their relationship to the setting and each other.

But summoning Warriors like Pokemon is pretty cool too! So now that we’ve hit $30k, I’m going to spend the next few weeks playtesting the Myth Master rule set and refining it and then packaging it in an easy-to-understand PDF rule sheet that you can print out for free!

We have a couple more game mode ideas we want to develop and a lot more expansion cards to make, so please, help us reach all of our stretch goals!

(* in the Pokemon manga the objective of battle is often to kill the other trainer, it’s pretty metal)

25 / 02
126 notes
Story War is now live on Kickstarter! (Click here to go to the Story War Kickstarter page!) Man, you guys! We’ve been making this game since last summer and we’re so excited that it’s finally ready to print! All we need now is you, the player, to actually buy the game. What is Story War? It’s a storytelling party game for 3 to 8 players. There’s no numbers or stats or complex rules - each card is simply a name, illustration, and description of a Warrior, Battlefield or Item. It’s up to the players to determine what each character does, and how their Warrior would beat their opponent’s Warriors. Players start each battle by selecting Warriors that they think would have a tactical advantage in a randomly drawn Battlefield, and then  an organic story evolves from the conflict. It’s not about “who would win in a fight” so much as it’s about how they’d win in a fight. Players control their Warriors by describing what they’d do out loud in an open discussion. One player is always acting as an impartial judge that changes after every battle. If a player claims their character is too powerful (for example, claiming a Wizard could pull the moon out of the sky) their opponent can “challenge” that claim and the judge can decide whether or not to allow it - think about how objections work in the courtroom. Challenges are rarely invoked, but the existence of the rule keeps everybody’s narrative grounded. Battles generally start with a scrimmage to control the Battlefield, then once someone has the high ground they’ll go in for a direct attack, then usually Item cards are introduced and add more complexity to the battle. In large team games, Warriors are often matched up one by one and each team gradually whittles each other down. The cards are only a starting point - where the battle ends up depends on the story lines the players try to weave. The best part of Story War is being backed into a corner and having to use ridiculous cartoon logic or a reference to Harry Potter or Pokemon to get yourself out of a jam. “A Blob can’t eat a Skeleton - bones are what amorphous blobs SPIT OUT when they eat something!” “In Harry Potter the Basilisk’s fangs could bite through curses!” “You can’t punch a bird - flying types resist fighting attacks in Pokemon!” As long as the judge accepts your rationale, it’s fair game! Who is Story War for? Everybody! We went out of our way to make Story War as inclusive as possible. We playtested it with a diverse mix of ages, genders, and skill level and we’ve yet to see a single person not have fun with the game. It’s a great way for adults and children to connect on a creative level! We’ve also seen it unlock hidden potential in “non-gamers” - suddenly their storytelling powers come to life and they blow everyone else out of the water! Big games of Story War are played in teams, and we’ve found that the team-based gameplay makes it easier for newcomers. Because you’re never having to battle against a power player alone, you can contribute as much or as little to the game as you want. It’s a game where everybody involved is going to have a good time no matter what! Everybody who participates in a game of Story War will walk away from it with memorable stories that can just remain a special experience shared between them and their friends, or it can even serve as inspiration for their own creative endeavors. Whoa cool, how can I get Story War? If you go to our Kickstarter page you’ll be able to back the project and get a copy of the game. For $10 you can get a print-and-play copy, for $25 we will ship you a physical copy of the Story War cards, and for $40 you can get the game plus the expansion that we’ll be developing with creative input from our backers! If you back at the $60 tier (or $50 after the fan art/fic discount, see below) you can get the Deluxe edition, which contains: A comic book featuring various interpretations of the characters, blank cards that you can draw on yourself, and limited edition cards based on Grumpy Cat, Keyboard Cat, Nyan Cat, Scumbag Hat and Cyberspace: And if you can pledge anything above $100, we will draw custom artwork based on you, your favorite things, or your original characters and print a one of a kind card just for you! There’s a lot of really cool reward tiers, be sure to check them all out! Why Kickstarter? Story War is already finished, our Kickstarter is just to get enough preorders to print the game in bulk, which is about 90% cheaper than doing print-on-demand. Profits will be funneled back into making our first expansion more awesome. Our funding goal to print the game is only $20,000 - but if we reach our $100,000 stretch goal, we’ll be building out a free online multiplayer version of Story War so you can tell cool stories with your e-friends! Check out the Kickstarter page for more details! What else can I do to help make Story War happen? Oh wow it’s so sweet of you to ask that!  A bunch of people have decided to help us out by making fan art and fan fiction, which they’ve put in the #Story War tag! If you post original fan art or fan fiction in the #Story War tag, email your post’s URL to Fan@CantripGames.com and we’ll send you a SECRET CODE that you can use to get $10 off the Deluxe edition of Story War!  The single most helpful thing you can do is reblog this post to get the word out about the Story War Kickstarter! Lets do this!

Story War is now live on Kickstarter!

(Click here to go to the Story War Kickstarter page!)

Man, you guys! We’ve been making this game since last summer and we’re so excited that it’s finally ready to print! All we need now is you, the player, to actually buy the game.

image

What is Story War?

It’s a storytelling party game for 3 to 8 players. There’s no numbers or stats or complex rules - each card is simply a name, illustration, and description of a Warrior, Battlefield or Item. It’s up to the players to determine what each character does, and how their Warrior would beat their opponent’s Warriors.

Players start each battle by selecting Warriors that they think would have a tactical advantage in a randomly drawn Battlefield, and then  an organic story evolves from the conflict. It’s not about “who would win in a fight” so much as it’s about how they’d win in a fight. Players control their Warriors by describing what they’d do out loud in an open discussion.

One player is always acting as an impartial judge that changes after every battle. If a player claims their character is too powerful (for example, claiming a Wizard could pull the moon out of the sky) their opponent can “challenge” that claim and the judge can decide whether or not to allow it - think about how objections work in the courtroom. Challenges are rarely invoked, but the existence of the rule keeps everybody’s narrative grounded.

image

Battles generally start with a scrimmage to control the Battlefield, then once someone has the high ground they’ll go in for a direct attack, then usually Item cards are introduced and add more complexity to the battle. In large team games, Warriors are often matched up one by one and each team gradually whittles each other down. The cards are only a starting point - where the battle ends up depends on the story lines the players try to weave.

The best part of Story War is being backed into a corner and having to use ridiculous cartoon logic or a reference to Harry Potter or Pokemon to get yourself out of a jam. “A Blob can’t eat a Skeleton - bones are what amorphous blobs SPIT OUT when they eat something!” “In Harry Potter the Basilisk’s fangs could bite through curses!” “You can’t punch a bird - flying types resist fighting attacks in Pokemon!” As long as the judge accepts your rationale, it’s fair game!

Who is Story War for?

Everybody! We went out of our way to make Story War as inclusive as possible. We playtested it with a diverse mix of ages, genders, and skill level and we’ve yet to see a single person not have fun with the game. It’s a great way for adults and children to connect on a creative level! We’ve also seen it unlock hidden potential in “non-gamers” - suddenly their storytelling powers come to life and they blow everyone else out of the water!

image

Big games of Story War are played in teams, and we’ve found that the team-based gameplay makes it easier for newcomers. Because you’re never having to battle against a power player alone, you can contribute as much or as little to the game as you want. It’s a game where everybody involved is going to have a good time no matter what!

image

Everybody who participates in a game of Story War will walk away from it with memorable stories that can just remain a special experience shared between them and their friends, or it can even serve as inspiration for their own creative endeavors.

Whoa cool, how can I get Story War?

If you go to our Kickstarter page you’ll be able to back the project and get a copy of the game. For $10 you can get a print-and-play copy, for $25 we will ship you a physical copy of the Story War cards, and for $40 you can get the game plus the expansion that we’ll be developing with creative input from our backers!

If you back at the $60 tier (or $50 after the fan art/fic discount, see below) you can get the Deluxe edition, which contains: A comic book featuring various interpretations of the characters, blank cards that you can draw on yourself, and limited edition cards based on Grumpy Cat, Keyboard Cat, Nyan Cat, Scumbag Hat and Cyberspace:

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And if you can pledge anything above $100, we will draw custom artwork based on you, your favorite things, or your original characters and print a one of a kind card just for you! There’s a lot of really cool reward tiers, be sure to check them all out!

Why Kickstarter?

Story War is already finished, our Kickstarter is just to get enough preorders to print the game in bulk, which is about 90% cheaper than doing print-on-demand. Profits will be funneled back into making our first expansion more awesome. Our funding goal to print the game is only $20,000 - but if we reach our $100,000 stretch goal, we’ll be building out a free online multiplayer version of Story War so you can tell cool stories with your e-friends! Check out the Kickstarter page for more details!

What else can I do to help make Story War happen?

Oh wow it’s so sweet of you to ask that! 

A bunch of people have decided to help us out by making fan art and fan fiction, which they’ve put in the #Story War tag! If you post original fan art or fan fiction in the #Story War tag, email your post’s URL to Fan@CantripGames.com and we’ll send you a SECRET CODE that you can use to get $10 off the Deluxe edition of Story War! 

The single most helpful thing you can do is reblog this post to get the word out about the Story War Kickstarter! Lets do this!

20 / 02
4,514 notes
IMPORTANT UPDATE: VENUE CHANGE I’ve been informed that even though the Ondine Hall Lobby is open to the public, a relatively large or loud group could potentially be asked to leave, as it is not technically a wholly public space. While the chances of this happening are relatively low, we’ve decided to be cautious and move the playtest a few blocks east to the Smith Memorial Student Union at 1825 SW Broadway, accessible from the park blocks. I have on good authority that the Student Union building will be a much better idea. Sorry for the confusion!  hey guys! we’ve finally got some concrete details about the Story War playtest with me and Tom in Portland! it will be happening on Thursday the 17th (tomorrow) on the bottom floor of the Ondine Residence Hall Smith Memorial Student Union at 1825 SW Broadway on Portland State University’s campus on the south end of downtown Portland. we’ll start up at 4:00PM and stay until we’re finished, probably upwards of a few hours (depending on how many games we want to play). we apologize about the very short notice, but we’ve been very busy finalizing the deck this week and almost forgot we needed to find a venue! if you can’t make it to this one i’m sure i’ll be hosting a few more playests in Portland before/during the kickstarter, so all hope is not lost. this is probably the only time Tom’ll be here with me though, so it’s gonna be a fun time. can’t wait to play with you guys! -V

IMPORTANT UPDATE: VENUE CHANGE

I’ve been informed that even though the Ondine Hall Lobby is open to the public, a relatively large or loud group could potentially be asked to leave, as it is not technically a wholly public space. While the chances of this happening are relatively low, we’ve decided to be cautious and move the playtest a few blocks east to the Smith Memorial Student Union at 1825 SW Broadway, accessible from the park blocks. I have on good authority that the Student Union building will be a much better idea. Sorry for the confusion! 

hey guys! we’ve finally got some concrete details about the Story War playtest with me and Tom in Portland!

it will be happening on Thursday the 17th (tomorrow) on the bottom floor of the Ondine Residence Hall Smith Memorial Student Union at 1825 SW Broadway on Portland State University’s campus on the south end of downtown Portland.

we’ll start up at 4:00PM and stay until we’re finished, probably upwards of a few hours (depending on how many games we want to play).

we apologize about the very short notice, but we’ve been very busy finalizing the deck this week and almost forgot we needed to find a venue! if you can’t make it to this one i’m sure i’ll be hosting a few more playests in Portland before/during the kickstarter, so all hope is not lost. this is probably the only time Tom’ll be here with me though, so it’s gonna be a fun time. can’t wait to play with you guys!

-V

16 / 01
112 notes
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(Story War is a cool card game we’re making that’s like Apples to Apples combined with Dungeons and Dragons, read more about it here.)

Hey, so! Anybody who makes Story War fan art and posts fan art in the #Story War tag will get a Secret Code that can be used on our Kickstarter to get a special edition of the game at a discounted price! And our Kickstarter launches at the end of the month!

Fan art can be of any of the above characters or anything we’ve posted on our blog! Everything is fair game! (You can even feel free to mashup Story War characters with characters from other fandoms, that’s totally acceptable and kind of canon - our game is set in a world that exists between other fictional worlds, so random cameos aren’t totally out of place! You can draw characters fighting, hanging out, or just doing a cool dramatic pose!

Also: We might be including a sheet of some fan art in the game itself as an additional little zine thing packaged with the cards. So if you submit fan art to the Story War tag, we might message you and ask if we can include your art in the game itself!

What if you can’t draw, and still want a chance at the Secret Code?

That’s fine, by reblogging this post and following our blog you would be doing us a huge favor! So, we’ll go through the notes and pick 10 random people who reblogged this post and give them the Secret Code, in addition to anyone who submits fan art to the #Story War tag.

Alright? Cool! Go go go!

(PS: If you’re in NYC, you can come to our playtest on Saturday!)

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08 / 01
621 notes
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Story War playtest #1 is happening this Saturday! If you’re in NYC and want to help us improve the game (or if you just really wanna play it) then head over to the Facebook event page. Even if you’re not in NYC, it’s also super helpful if you just reblog this post or share the event on your Facebook so that more people in NYC might see it!

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25 / 12
283 notes
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Wow, we’re almost done with all the art for Story War! The photo set above is just 10 of the 90 original pieces of art we’ve created for our card game.

The basic premise of Story War is that you have to use visual cues from the artwork as well as allusions to popular culture or mythology to convince a player acting as a judge that your character could beat your opponent’s character in a fight. It’s really creative and fun! Read more about the game here.

Here’s a word from our artist, Vondell, about his work on the game:

It’s a big challenge to breathe life into 60 characters, not only in a way that makes them interesting to look at but also in a way that makes them interesting to play! Although all of our warriors are based on notable cultural myths and legends, what we’re really doing here is creating original characters to populate an original world. In that respect, making the art for Story War has felt less like making a card game and more like building a fantasy world and its inhabitants from the ground up. We’ve got a great mix of cool, fun, and occasionally really creepy, and it all adds up to some really genuinely great open-ended gameplay potential. 

Be sure to follow us for more updates on the game, and to be alerted when the Kickstarter goes live next month!

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11 / 12
543 notes
Check out this 3D gif of one of our Warrior cards, the Rat King! 3D gif by Dain Fagerholm, original art by Vondell Swain. (To learn more about our card game Story War, read this post) Story War is a subjectivity game where you try to convince the judge that the Warrior depicted in your card’s artwork could defeat the Warrior depicted in your opponent’s artwork. So the art is very important! But it’s also important that each Warrior is based on a cultural touchstone, so that players can easily extrapolate what their powers and abilities might be.  For example, everyone knows how a vampire or werewolf works. But I also noticed, while playtesting, that people responded well to cards based on animals - there’s a logic of like, dog beats cat, cat beats rat, bees beat dog - and people can quickly visualize how a fight between those two animals would play out. So we really needed a rodent card to cover the most common animals but there wasn’t really any rodent in mythology that was prominent enough or powerful enough to work. We were going to just do a plague rat but a plague rat feels like a low level enemy you’d encounter early on in an RPG, and all the Warriors need to be on roughly the same tier in terms of power. So we kinda went a little more “original content” with this Warrior than we did with most of the other ones, who are very much based on real mythological things. The rat king actually is based on a real mythological thing, but not one that most people are familiar with and also not one that’s very powerful. So we decided to make him a Voltron-like humanoid of rats working together, as opposed to a tangle of uncoordinated rats. He was also partially inspired by the Mouse King from the Nutcracker. And hopefully there’s a little bit of a plague rat implication in there too. Anyway this guy is really cool and fun to play as! One time the Rat King was in a fight with Medusa, and she turned him to stone - but only PART of him - because Medusa’s petrification curse only works on an individual target at a time, and not a group of individuals. So Medusa really just succeeded in turning the Rat King’s arm into a stone club that he used to bash her face in. It was a really cool battle. We’re about 75% done with the art for Story War, and we expect to be launching the Kickstarter in mid January. Make sure you follow our blog so we can let you know when Story War goes on sale! - Brad

Check out this 3D gif of one of our Warrior cards, the Rat King!

3D gif by Dain Fagerholm, original art by Vondell Swain.

(To learn more about our card game Story War, read this post)

Story War is a subjectivity game where you try to convince the judge that the Warrior depicted in your card’s artwork could defeat the Warrior depicted in your opponent’s artwork. So the art is very important! But it’s also important that each Warrior is based on a cultural touchstone, so that players can easily extrapolate what their powers and abilities might be.  For example, everyone knows how a vampire or werewolf works.

But I also noticed, while playtesting, that people responded well to cards based on animals - there’s a logic of like, dog beats cat, cat beats rat, bees beat dog - and people can quickly visualize how a fight between those two animals would play out.

So we really needed a rodent card to cover the most common animals but there wasn’t really any rodent in mythology that was prominent enough or powerful enough to work. We were going to just do a plague rat but a plague rat feels like a low level enemy you’d encounter early on in an RPG, and all the Warriors need to be on roughly the same tier in terms of power. So we kinda went a little more “original content” with this Warrior than we did with most of the other ones, who are very much based on real mythological things.

The rat king actually is based on a real mythological thing, but not one that most people are familiar with and also not one that’s very powerful. So we decided to make him a Voltron-like humanoid of rats working together, as opposed to a tangle of uncoordinated rats. He was also partially inspired by the Mouse King from the Nutcracker. And hopefully there’s a little bit of a plague rat implication in there too.

Anyway this guy is really cool and fun to play as! One time the Rat King was in a fight with Medusa, and she turned him to stone - but only PART of him - because Medusa’s petrification curse only works on an individual target at a time, and not a group of individuals. So Medusa really just succeeded in turning the Rat King’s arm into a stone club that he used to bash her face in. It was a really cool battle.

We’re about 75% done with the art for Story War, and we expect to be launching the Kickstarter in mid January. Make sure you follow our blog so we can let you know when Story War goes on sale!

- Brad

08 / 12
447 notes

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