This deck is a multi-use playing card system. Its cards are meant to support a variety of games, both traditional and unique to this deck.
number
The deck contains 128 cards.
Each card is labeled in the bottom-left corner with its unique number in the deck, from 0 up to 127.
suits & ranks
Each card has one of 8 suits. These are:
- 16 moons
- 16 coins
- 16 bells
- 16 leaves
- 16 stars
- 16 planets
- 16 crowns
- 16 flowers
Within each suit, the cards have ranks from 0 to 15. This means there are 8 cards of each rank (i.e. 8 0's, 8 1's, and 8 15's).
If a game needs to give suits an ordering relative to each other, it can use the order in which the suits appear in the deck (the same order shown above). Moons are lowest (numbers 0-15), and flowers are highest (numbers 112-127).
colors
Each suit has a unique color. These colors should be treated as decorative and should not be essential to the rules of any games. The suit symbols carry the same information even without color.
Still, the 8 colors were chosen intentionally to be distinct from one another and to have reasonable contrast on white and black backgrounds.
| suit | color | contrast ratio over white | contrast ratio over black |
|---|---|---|---|
| | ? | ||
| | ? | ||
| | ? | ||
| | ? | ||
| | ? | ||
| | ? | ||
| | ? | ||
| | ? |
elements
In the top-right corner, each card has between 1 and 5 element symbols.
The element symbols are distributed across the whole deck based on each card's number:
- Every even number gets a symbol (water)
- Every odd number gets a symbol (fire)
- Numbers divisible by 5 or 7 get a symbol (earth)
- Numbers divisible by 4 or 10 get a symbol (air)
- Every prime number gets a symbol (aether)
These elements stack on each other if multiple rules apply to the same number. For example, card 20 is even, divisible by 5, divisible by 4, and divisible by 10, so it gets four symbols: 1 water, 1 earth, and 2 air.
The mathematics here give the deck a few other notable properties:
- Fire and water never appear on the same card, since no numbers are both even and odd.
- Aether only appears on the same card as fire, since prime numbers are always odd. But fire may appear without aether, since some odd numbers are not prime.
- Air always appears on the same card as water, since multiples of 4 and 10 must be even.
- No card has all 5 elements, since no number meets all of these rules.
Water and fire are the most common element symbols in the deck, and aether is the least common. Water and fire appear the same number of times (64), but are distributed differently; for example, water is more likely to appear on its own card.
Earth and air also appear the same number of times in the deck (45), but earth appears on more distinct cards than air.
| element | total appearances in deck | cards with symbol | cards with ONLY this symbol |
|---|---|---|---|
| water | 64 | 64 | 21 |
| fire | 64 | 64 | 16 |
| earth | 45 | 41 | 0 |
| air | 45 | 38 | 0 |
| aether | 31 | 31 | 0 |
letters
In the center of each card, there are letters to be used for word games. 104 cards have a single letter. There are also 16 bigram cards, which contain a pair of letters, and 8 ? cards, which do not have an assigned letter.
Letters and bigrams have point values, represented by the number of dots beneath the letter on the card. Point values are roughly based on frequency in English: more common letters and bigrams score fewer points.
The letter distributions and point values are based on letter frequencies in English.
| letter | count | points | % in deck (of all 128 cards) | % in deck (of 104 1-letter cards) | % in English | % in Scrabble |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| E | 10 | 1 | 7.8% | 9.6% | 11.2% | 12.0% |
| R | 8 | 1 | 6.3% | 7.7% | 7.6% | 6.0% |
| A | 8 | 1 | 6.3% | 7.7% | 8.5% | 9.0% |
| I | 7 | 1 | 5.5% | 6.7% | 7.5% | 9.0% |
| T | 7 | 1 | 5.5% | 6.7% | 7.0% | 6.0% |
| O | 7 | 1 | 5.5% | 6.7% | 7.2% | 8.0% |
| N | 7 | 1 | 5.5% | 6.7% | 6.7% | 6.0% |
| L | 6 | 1 | 4.7% | 5.8% | 5.5% | 4.0% |
| S | 6 | 1 | 4.7% | 5.8% | 5.7% | 4.0% |
| D | 4 | 2 | 3.1% | 3.8% | 3.4% | 4.0% |
| U | 4 | 1 | 3.1% | 3.8% | 3.6% | 4.0% |
| M | 3 | 3 | 2.3% | 2.9% | 3.0% | 2.0% |
| H | 3 | 4 | 2.3% | 2.9% | 3.0% | 2.0% |
| P | 3 | 3 | 2.3% | 2.9% | 3.2% | 2.0% |
| C | 3 | 4 | 2.3% | 2.9% | 4.5% | 2.0% |
| G | 2 | 2 | 1.6% | 1.9% | 2.5% | 3.0% |
| W | 2 | 4 | 1.6% | 1.9% | 1.3% | 2.0% |
| K | 2 | 5 | 1.6% | 1.9% | 1.1% | 1.0% |
| B | 2 | 3 | 1.6% | 1.9% | 2.1% | 2.0% |
| F | 2 | 4 | 1.6% | 1.9% | 1.8% | 2.0% |
| V | 2 | 5 | 1.6% | 1.9% | 1.0% | 2.0% |
| Y | 2 | 4 | 1.6% | 1.9% | 1.8% | 2.0% |
| Q | 1 | 8 | 0.8% | 1.0% | 0.2% | 1.0% |
| X | 1 | 8 | 0.8% | 1.0% | 0.3% | 1.0% |
| J | 1 | 8 | 0.8% | 1.0% | 0.2% | 1.0% |
| Z | 1 | 8 | 0.8% | 1.0% | 0.3% | 1.0% |
| TH | 1 | 1 | 0.8% | |||
| HE | 1 | 1 | 0.8% | |||
| IN | 1 | 2 | 0.8% | |||
| ER | 1 | 2 | 0.8% | |||
| EN | 1 | 3 | 0.8% | |||
| AT | 1 | 3 | 0.8% | |||
| AN | 1 | 2 | 0.8% | |||
| RE | 1 | 2 | 0.8% | |||
| QU | 1 | 6 | 0.8% | |||
| NG | 1 | 4 | 0.8% | |||
| OU | 1 | 3 | 0.8% | |||
| ED | 1 | 3 | 0.8% | |||
| ND | 1 | 3 | 0.8% | |||
| ON | 1 | 3 | 0.8% | |||
| HA | 1 | 3 | 0.8% | |||
| TO | 1 | 3 | 0.8% | |||
| ? | 8 | 0 | 6.3% | 2.0% |
how to use
The characteristics of the deck listed above provide some suggestions and constraints on how to use the cards. Beyond those, however, each game can define its own rules.
Games may require all 128 cards, or they may require omitting some cards to make the deck smaller. The rules for each game should specify which cards are needed and which should be omitted.
To emulate a standard 52-card deck, take the first half of the deck (numbers 0-63) and omit all cards of rank 0, 14, and 15. This gives 52 cards of 4 suits ranked 1 through 13. Ranks 2 through 10 are number cards, 1's are aces, 11's are jacks, 12's are queens, and 13's are kings. Suits can be used as-is or converted to French suits however you'd like. As a suggestion:
| suit | standard (French) suit |
|---|---|
| | ♣ clubs |
| | ♦ diamonds |
| | ♥ hearts |
| | ♠ spades |
You can use choose alternate suits if you prefer. To emulate two 52-card decks, use all 8 suits.