Good (card) Suit names?

[Intrope]

You can start off with the traditional tarot suits and just add four more, but unless you make up four more elements, which is hard to do, or have two suits for each element you'll lose the elemental connection.

The original tarot suits are: cups (water), coins/pentacles (earth), wands/staves (fire), and swords (air)

If you just want to create four more suits for the same four elements you can use something like: bowls (water), horseshoes (earth), orbs (fire) and shields (air)...

Or, (especially for D&D worlds) you could have the new 4 map to outer-planar/alignment types: Light(Good), Dark(Evil), Rules(Law), Changes(Chaos). Or something along those lines.

Of course, if you're building a super-tarot, you'll need major arcana as well: I recommend The Drama Queen, The Real Man, The Looney, and The Munchkin

 

[Ry]

Of course, if you're building a super-tarot, you'll need major arcana as well: I recommend The Drama Queen, The Real Man, The Looney, and The Munchkin

I'm not a big fan of having a separate major arcana; I prefer having more face cards and more suits, with "major arcana" fitting into them.

To me "Major Arcana" and "Minor Arcana" is so 3e. In 4e EVERYTHING is Major.

 

[Age of Fable]

a variant on elements:

earth, air, fire, water, aether/void, wood, & metal.

This is a combination of elements from various sets of 'classical elements': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_element

but that's only seven, so you could divide aether into good and evil, giving

earth, air, fire, water, wood, metal, good, evil.

Although the problem with that is that in Western culture evil is already strongly associated with fire (and good is associated with light which in turn is also associated with fire).

edit: wouldn't any combination of fantasy and the classical elements remind people of Magic: the Gathering?

 

[Age of Fable]

For a more enjoyable game:

wrath, vainglory, despair, gluttony, lust, greed, sloth, and pride.

 

[Intrope]

I'm not a big fan of having a separate major arcana; I prefer having more face cards and more suits, with "major arcana" fitting into them.

To me "Major Arcana" and "Minor Arcana" is so 3e. In 4e EVERYTHING is Major.

Heh! that works for me: and you'd have (I'm guessing) 5 majors per suit? (1-10 + 5 majors = 15 cards per suit). 40 majors is enough to suit me

 

[Ry]

There are some funny things you can do without going into Magic: The Gathering. Here's how far I've gotten BEFORE I got into the tricky business of identifying suits.

I'm fascinated by the number 120 - it has all sorts of properties that appeal to classical numerology (divisibility being a major one).

120 is 5*4*3*2*1, and making that meaningful was my first "pass" through the deck. Each card has one of 5 forces, one of 4 seasons, one of 3 methods, and one of 2 genders, and a unique ordinal.

That means each card has a lover (same force, method, season, opposite gender) two allies (same gender, force, and season, different method), three siblings (same gender, force, and method, different season) and 4 cousins (same gender, method, and season, different force). To make these more understandable, I've organized them as phrases:

A In Spring, a Cryswoman resists
B In Summer, a Rootwoman forces
C In Autumn, a Osmoswoman permutes
D In Winter, a Breakwoman resists
E In Spring, a Weaveman forces
9 In Summer, a Crysman permutes
8 In Autumn, a Rootman resists
7 In Winter, a Osmosman forces
6 In Spring, a Breakwoman permutes
5 In Summer, a Weavewoman resists
4 In Autumn, a Cryswoman forces
3 In Winter, a Rootwoman permutes
2 In Spring, a Osmosman resists
1 In Summer, a Breakman forces
O In Autumn, a Weaveman permutes

Now I'm in the position of trying to organize these cards through the deck. I've broken down the groupings into suits and ranks, but I don't have names for either. That's my conundrum.

 

[Ry]

Heh! that works for me: and you'd have (I'm guessing) 5 majors per suit? (1-10 + 5 majors = 15 cards per suit). 40 majors is enough to suit me

Depends on whether you count the 10. Then you'd have 48


I have: A, B, C, D, (E/10), 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, O

So each suit has an Alpha and an Omega in addition to the cards you'd expect.

 

[Ry]

For a more enjoyable game:

wrath, vainglory, despair, gluttony, lust, greed, sloth, and pride.

Tempting (get it? tempting? get it? AHAHAHAHAA... heh... pheww)

A little on the pessimistic for the whole deck to be devoted to sin

I like to think of these as the 120 building blocks of the reality I'm creating.

 

[Whisper72]

Interesting ideas.

Maybe the 'sin' deck as proposed by Age of Fable is a 'shadow' deck used by the gods of evil/destruction/entropy who try to use it to corrupt reality...

Just thinking, with 15 cards per suit, and each card being male or female, though for the overall 120 this works out, per suit there is a preponderance of males or females... Maybe an entire suite is either male of female?

Other possible 'operators' could be based on the phases of the moon: a card is waxing or waning, full or 'empty' (forgot how its called in English), or the three 'ages' of man: the virgin, the mother and the crone / the warrior, the father and the sage or somesuch.

If using five forces, mayhap take a swipe from Robert Jordan's five powers: the four elements and as a fifth: spirit. (Which also have male and female counterparts..)

I question why per se 8 suits, why not 6/20?

Personally, I would try to maintain some closeness to 'regular' cards, and have such titles included as: the King, Queen, Knight, Magi, Priest, Warrior etc.

Also, have a look at Steven Erikson's books, where there exists a deck of cards which corresponds to the types of magic, where each type of magic is related to a plane of sorts (Warren), and each plane has it's own hierarchy of gods / champions. Then there are several 'unaligned' cards as well. His stuff has plenty ideas.

 

[Ry]

Erikson's deck and its relation to reality is fantastic - I'm trying to stay away from direct copying though. This is going to be released Creative Commons Attribution so anyone can use it.

Each suit is either masculine (8 male, 7 female) or feminine (reverse). Each suit has all combinations of method and force.

My five forces are (temp names but they work):

Crys - order-making
Root - growing
Break - destroying, striking
Osmos - exchanging
Weave - connecting