It has been an age and a half since I uploaded any kind of #PlayingCards, #Chinese or #western. So I decided to share a set I picked up yesterday.
The cards are a routine #poker deck: 52 cards (French suit), two jokers (black and red), and a "certificate of authenticity". (I'll get into that later.)
The cards are made of PVC with a light texture which makes them waterproof and nearly indestructible. The ace of spades is a very colourful design, while the face cards are the very standard images we've all come to know and love. The jokers are simple illustrations of a seated fool with an owl(?) perched on his feet, differentiated by size (black is smaller) and by the colour of the text that reads "JOKER".
PVC cards, especially the textured ones, are quite slippy in comparison to those made from card stock, so it takes a couple of minutes to acclimatize when you're unfamiliar with them. (Be prepared to have them spray out of your hands when shuffling until you get the feel.)
So what's the "certificate of authenticity" about?
The cards are made with gold foil inside the PVC, and apparently, despite gold foil being cheap like borscht (ask any crafter friends!) there's apparently enough fraud around this that they actually have a report number you can look up on a government cite to check the bona fides.
The card back is termed "彩金 游龙戏凤" (cǎi jīn yóu lóng xì fèng) on the site I bought the cards from, but I'm not actually sure what it means. The first two characters can mean a lot of things but the literal translation is likely best: "coloured gold". The rest is ... less clear. Literally it means "swimming Dragon playing with Phoenix" but ... ugh. This is probably some weird idiom or other. [A quick hit on Baike](https://baike.baidu.com/item/游龙戏凤/17640) says that it's an idiom with a historical allusion, but isn't clear on what its intended meaning is. [There are a lot of entries](https://baike.baidu.com/item/游龙戏凤/11102037) however, too many to look up.
What can I say? I'm obsessed with #dice, almost as much as I am with #PlayingCards. #RPG (#TTRPG) have been such a huge part of my life since 1977 that, naturally, I have a good, healthy appreciation for quality dice. But more than that, I'm fascinated by randomness and the various tools humans have used for thousands of years both to generate, and often simultaneously tame, stochastic processes.
Hence cards and dice.
As usual Mastodon viewers will have to click through to see all the pictures.
If I'm going to play Savage Worlds, I'll need the perfect deck of playing cards. I'm using the Last Parsec setting, so I'll want something with space opera art.
Mini decks are available for each of the 2 playing card decks I’m currently funding on Kickstarter. I love these little creatures, especially the teeny ones. 💚 (links in bio)
I can’t get over how adorable these mini playing card decks are. In about 2 weeks I launch a Kickstarter campaign to fund 2 sets of decks in standard & mini sizes. Scroll back a little bit to see photos of the other deck!