So, it's a daily magic sim
Every day, you can open it and get a spread of three cards that tell your fortune and affect the spell if you have mp for a spell
It's based on an alchemy system I've been designing a little over a week
So, yeah, the deck is four elements, which you can hopefully guess from the pictures
There are seven alchemical metals for each element, like the minor arcana or numbered suits
There are seven types of spells:
"love","prosperity","justice","peace","health","insight","goodwill"
So, drawing an alchemical element will give a bonus to its equivalent spell (I have to assign them still) and its standard element gives bonuses for the catalyst types
I haven't figured out what the major arcana of 12 cards will do mechanically, but have sorted out that it will be 12 cards, for a total of 40, which is 5*2^3
Maybe the major arcana can be split in half so that it's two sixes, since six is under-utilized in the framework
I am definitely leaning into 5 and 7 though
Imagine building a magic system informed by The Pixies song Monkey Gone to Heaven
Anyway, once you pick an intent, you choose an intensity, represented as a regular n-sided star, with nodes at its points to add catalysts to, which you define according to objects in your environment
When you define an object, you give it a name and an element and it can only be used on the day of the week that you first imbue it.
Deleting an item or changing its element can be done, but costs mp
You do level up like in an RPG and get more mp to work with and higher intensity spells
But yeah, the most mechanically dense bit is actually placing the catalysts on the nodes as any nonadjacent nodes connect via lines and react as such:
Opposite elements (fire vs water, earth vs wind) affect the spell negatively
Neutral elements (fire vs earth, wind vs water) do not have an effect
Same elements give a bonus
Complementary elements (fire vs wind, earth vs water) give a higher bonus
So it's a very difficult balancing game
And for max effect, you want your elements to be good representatives of your irl catalysts
Not in-game
You can use any name or element combinations
But I'm crafting this game with the intent that it be used according to the spirit of performing real magic