I've figured out enough of the rules and such that it looks like I'm ready to write the second draft of the book proper.

Kind of a scary position to be at! So close and yet so far to shipping the thing. Now I just have to figure out how to phrase all the cool stuff I figured out in ways that are understandable to other people, and will make for a cohesive and hopefully fun, interesting game.

I decided to make this devlog to reassert my intentions with this game, and talk about how I think the rules I designed express those intentions, and would allow a player to experience the thing I'm trying to measure the shape of here, by which I mean... the concepts of queerness and culture and expectation and spirituality and destiny and free will and how we grapple with all of those things. How destiny can be freeing to some and restrictive to others. 

How destiny might feel, at times, reassuring, and at others, stifling. 

How the hand that fate deals us might not always be what we need or want. 

How we construct ourselves based on our experiences, based on things beyond our control, based on how we interpret the things we cannot control, and the things we fight against.

I've been trying to capture all of that in a relatively simple tarot and playing card game. I hope I did. I feel like there's potential here for me to expand this game with supplements - that the rules might remain simple, but the flavor could change, more options and suggestions for interpretations could be written as guides.

Firstly, there are two default modes of play: One where you and your soulmate are expected to enter a relationship as soon as you meet (why waste time?), and another where you may have a sort of courtship to begin. 

(I also have other sorts of modes in mind, which might come later: a scenario where you are adventurers who realize they're destined, one where you are fated rivals/enemies, and another where you instead play entities that control fate and weave and interfere with the lives of some soulmates.)

The concept of building your and your soulmate's identity/identities I tried to represent through the Major Arcana deck. These cards would be used to develop both the player and the soulmate's individual tarot spreads. The Major Arcana deck is essentially your shared soul, which you build together - but one side exists for each soulmate (the player and the soulmate, or all the players in the case of a 2+ player game).

The Minor Arcana deck represents events and the dictates of fate. The particulars of this I am still fine-tuning, but this is the "opponent" of the game, the thing which you either fight or willingly accept.

And to fight or accept fate, you use playing cards, against the Minor deck and against your soulmate, if needed. The results of acceptance or contention are: obtaining a Major or Minor card for your spread, which builds your self, your life.

Somewhere in here, I need to work in more specifics and questions to guide roleplay and imagination as well. I have ideas of how, but that part I did not include in my design journal. It will probably come out in the draft.

At or near the end of the game, you also get the choice to decide if you love your soulmate, and how, and if you want to form a union with them. You might fall in love with them, and you might not. You might detest them. You might carve them from your soul and reforge yourself, free of destiny's designs.

Something I have kept in mind for my design of the rules is: This is a tarot game, queerness does not always fit nicely into boxes, and I can make use of tarot's "upright" and "reversal" stages, and the concepts of things in relation to eachother, rather than always fitting things into specific categories. There is a place in this game for some suggestions ala "Swords = blah blah," but not everything need to be so defined.