An Alira youth looking out above their home.
Bear with me, we must preamble this with a bit of context to Everway.
Everway came out in the 90’s, and the game was ahead of its time. It is closer to a game like 1000 Year Old Vampire, Koriko, or the soon released Yazeba’s Bed and Breakfast. It’s quite the esoteric game with tools providing everyone at the table a framework of reality to resolve a collaborative story. The premise of the game is that you are a sort of planeswalker traveling to new universes like an episodic, fantasy version of Stargate SG-1.
Its central tool is the Fortune Deck. As a professional practitioner of tarot, the deck is a mystical work of beauty. Without a Major Arcana, Courts, and traditional suits, it is more of an oracle deck. These cards contain A LOT of information. This urged me to graft my Home Fire ttrpg to their deck. If you are interested in the old system, one of the earlier versions is still on my Itch account.
Porting over the recent tarot version to Everway’s deck has been a creative fervor. I use my mechanics but their deck’s layout. Some moments have been arduous, but the amount of esoteric knowledge in the cards have sparked parts of the game I couldn’t do with a normal deck. Originally, the Knight class in my game used the tarot’s court cards for abilities. Today I wanted to show you a peek at the new Domain Knight.
As I said, Everway deluxe deck has no court, but it does have a bevy of domains the cards fall under:
Void, Duality, Animal, Source, Calling, Mentor, Avatar, Crossroads, Season, Source, Rivalry, Quest, Ordeal, Threshold, Ally, Avatar, Follies, Beasts, Estates, Deities.
Inspired by the Witcher, folklore knights, and rangers such as Aragorn, I realized I could make a customizable class that could capture a player’s idea of these archetypes. Each domain has an ability their cards represent. When a player creates a Domain Knight, they choose a domain they embody, and as their character experiences more in the world, they gain new domains.
A few examples of what our domains can do:
Deities - The Knight of Deities is known for their ability to hunt the supernatural. Cards of the Deities domain may be used in any DCs the knight makes involving creatures and beings not of the natural world. The knight always knows if a creature they see is natural or not. The Knight of Deities may discard a Deities card in town once as a free action to acquire a single piece of knowledge of a supernatural creature.
Animals - The Knight of Animal crafts an animal companion with the Storyteller. The companion’s level in one skill equals your tier. At the start of a Session and each game day, you start with the three Animal cards in your hand. These do not count towards your limit. You may only use these cards to give an order or enact a feat of skill with your companion that would demand a DC. You may add the domain card to result of the highest card from the skill’s DC.
Quest - A Knight of Quest may bind any Quest card from their hand to ask for any item or piece of information of a non-aggressive NPC. This always counts as a success as long as the NPC is capable of it. If the action can’t be resolved, the Knight may keep the card in their hand.
Season - The Knight of Season wields power from Adonaios. The Knight of Season may discard a Season domain to cast a spell relative to the season Card used. If the spell demands a DC, the player’s skill is 3 plus their tier and uses the suit of the Season domain discarded.
The last one is still in development, but it gives a bit of flavor and lore to the world. I want the Domain Knight to be a universal toolkit, so it shares influences of some of the other classes within it. It’s also a great choice to play the game as a solo gamer.
The design of the game is to bridge the player foward storytelling of rules light games with a bit of crunch from traditional tabletops. We set the groundwork for customization and abilities with the Fortune Deck to mold the playground set forth by the Storyteller.
If you want your own Fortune Deck, please check out Everway’s online shop! This deck is beautiful, and I mean to do a full review of the deck.