Hey guys. Designer of the deck here O_O
I was told to come on over here by a few people on Kickstarter.
Welcome - as Rob said in my place, go "Introduce Yourself" on the intro board. People will welcome you, ask you questions, all sorts of fun things.
@MagikFingerz
I may have made my response a little too casually. It's not that I don't want it to be historically accurate, but more I didn't want to change something right away on the first day of the project. Some have messaged on Kickstarter saying they didn't want the colors switched, so I'm a little torn on what to do about that.
There was a suggestion to look into the Napoleon era as well to make the cards even more unique. So I've been looking into that and the Thermidorian Reaction as well. I'm sorry you find the cards boring =(
@Don Boyer
I am definitely open to suggestions and welcome critique! The liberty, equality, fraternity is a good idea. My thinking for the naming of the decks was the alliteration of the subjects of the decks, but the Reign/Regime decks do tend to get confusing. One of those hindsight things I guess.
I did read up on how the courts were replaced. My original thinking behind the decks wasn't based on the different periods, but to create a deck with courts of notable people from the Ancien Regime and the Revolution. Then, the white Reign of Terror deck came about and I figured the court had to be people that were guillotined. La Marianne is on the blue back card design, though I guess not prominent enough. Now, with everyones feedback I'm starting to think in stages of the revolution versus how I originally conceived the deck.
Some ideas...
On the French flag, the tricolor is in this order: blue, white, red. Using that as a launching point, you can use the blue deck to represent the period of royalty, white to represent the Revolution, red to represent post-Revolutionary France. In that order, Marianne would be best suited on the back of either the white or red decks. Since you have a nice guillotine for the middle time period, the red deck would probably be best.
The blue deck courts would be royals of historical note, alive at the time. The jokers can be commoners doing backbreaking labor at the bidding of the royals. Your Aces should be Ones in this deck, and very unadorned.
The white deck courts could be either the lopped-off heads, or (and this might be better), leading figures in the Revolution. You can reserve the Jokers for the Thermidor Reaction, with images of two prominent figures or two scenes from the Reaction. Keep the Aces as ones, but perhaps with a dash of spilled blood, representing the blood of the royals spilled.
The red deck could have Liberty, Equality and Fraternity as the courts. The jokers can be images of Marianne - one as she was pictured in Revolutionary days, one as she is represented today in France. For this deck, the Ones are now the familiar Aces, and should be attractive without being overly adorned - the Ace did still represent the common man, a citizen of the Republic. Make them noble without making them look like nobility, if that makes any sense to you.
Also, one last question. Is it weird to cancel the project? It feels early enough to do so and I've been mulling over the feedback. The Napolean/Thermidorian Reaction really does interest me, but to do a whole new court on top of the few courts I have to finish now and possibly fix any historical inaccuracies...the 30 days I have doesn't seem like enough time. It would be kind of weird if the project gets funded, but I'm far from done redoing the deck. I see there's an awesome Design & Development forum here, so maybe I can hang out there and I can iron out these cards? I'm still thinking things over.
Thanks again guys!
It will really depend on where you want to go with the decks. If you plan on keeping them very much as they appear now with few changes, then just keep running the project. If you plan on changes that might constitute an entirely new deck design based on the old one, it's not fair to the backers who supported you from the beginning and expected to get something largely like what the original design was. That would be a valid reason to cancel the project - going back to the drawing board. It wouldn't be the first time something like that happened.
As far as "negative reaction", I've seen two different types of early cancellation. Yours is the type where the project goes for an overhaul and is similar to but adequately different from the original design. That's fine, and while you might lose a few backers who liked the old design, you might gain more in the process to replace them and more. Anyone getting upset simply because you canceled and restarted would be completely unjustified and probably would have been a whiny pain-in-the-butt anyway, so you're better off without him or her.
The other type would be if someone saw the handwriting on the wall, knew the project was going to fall flat on its face and wanted to attempt saving themselves the embarrassment. If they return at all, the design is often identical or minimally changed from the original concept. Perhaps the budget was dropped or the reward tiers were changed, but it's pretty much the same stuff on a different day. Those are the projects that really earn the disdain of potential backers, especially in cases where the budget was dropped - it usually means that either the project will be of a lesser quality than was originally planned or that the creator has no clear idea of what it will really cost him or her to get their project made and shipped, so they lower the goal in hopes of being able to meet the goal and get the money, but in the end will lack the funds and what happens from there is never pretty. Also, it might be the case that the creator never meant to deliver in the first place and simply wants to rip people off. People are getting wiser to this - there are a few fraud cases right now that are being pursued by the authorities as a result of backers revolting and filing charges against the fraudster.
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