I Made A Decktet
Sometimes it’s nice to make physical objects. It’s usually messier and more time-consuming than doing it on the computer, but in the end you have something you can actually touch.
Ever since I saw P. D. Magnus’s Decktet—a whimsical yet mysterious deck of cards for games or divination—I wanted one of my own. However, the Decktet is currently only available as a PDF, so any physical manifestation has to be of a DIY nature.
The deck has 36 cards (plus the optional “The Excuse”), of six suits, and its most unusual feature is that the number cards each have two suits. (There are also single-suited Aces and Kings.) This obviously adds a lot of interesting possibilities for games.
Magnus has given each suit a symbolic meaning, as well as a color, and done a good job integrating them into each card. For example, the Penitent (see above) combines the green color and violent connotations of the Wyrms suit with the orange and “decisive action and clarity of purpose” of Suns; while the Market combines Wood’s “gift of the earth … raw materials and food products” with Knots’ “craft, skill … commerce and money”.
(I should add that I am not a believer in the supernatural. I love tarot cards, and own the rare Hello Kitty deck as well as the usual Rider-Waite-Smith ; but I see these as a combination of objets d’art and Rorschach blots. They’re lovely and spooky and meaningful, but what you get out of them is coming from the depths of your own mind, which is I think just as mysterious as any Astral Plane.)
How To Do It
Fortunately I already knew where to get printable blank playing cards. I ordered the both-sides-blank variety and the magic coating spray. While waiting for the package, I adapted the Decktet PDF into the right layout for these cards, which was kind of a pain (does anyone know of a tool for cutting/pasting/cropping parts of PDFs?)
Then after the mail came, I carefully printed out each sheet of cards (the plain-paper setting worked best), fed them back in upside-down to print the backs, then held my breath while spraying sickly-sweet poisonous volatile plastic vapor over the sheets.
After an hour or so to dry, the cards were ready to punch out. The paper is micro-perforated (like those Avery business card sheets) so the edges come out very cleanly after you bend the perforations back and forth a few times. And voila…
The Cards!
Just like real playing cards! I love coding, but you can’t hold a set of methods in your hand like that.
The cards are shiny, and slippery enough to shuffle well, though they’re not as slick as a new pack of commercial cards. The edges are a little bit rough from the perforations, but not unpleasantly so. A few of the edges got a little bent while being detached. The cloying smell of toluene and acetone is dissipating.
Now I can use my Decktet! Should I tell my fortune first, or play a game of Window ?
August 1st, 2008 at 12:13 PM
> (does anyone know of a tool for cutting/pasting/cropping parts of PDFs?)
Preview. Use the rectangular-marquee tool, then the Copy, Paste, or Crop menu item.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:30 PM
@Peter — I tried that! But it seems to put the entire PDF page onto the clipboard: when I use the New command, it opens a new document containing the entire page I copied the selection from. (This is in 10.5.4.)
August 1st, 2008 at 2:07 PM
I copied and pasted a section from a PDF in Preview just now, funnily enough - I used the select tool, dragged a rectangle, then clicked edit/copy and file/’new from clipboard’..
August 1st, 2008 at 3:18 PM
Those are nifty!
but I see these as a combination of objets d’art and Rorschach blots. They’re lovely and spooky and meaningful, but what you get out of them is coming from the depths of your own mind, which is I think just as mysterious as any Astral Plane.
Funny, I was crushing on Richard Dawkins and thinking of tarot just yesterday and had the thought “they are really just a pretty, complicated Rorschach test and storytelling device” for the first time. I think previously I always have thought the same thing, but in a much more convoluted way.
I didn’t know you had the Hello Kitty deck. I would have begged you to let me see it when I was visiting. :-)
(ps. i don’t know if it is your end or LJ’s or something in between or pebkac, but I get a can’t verify id error when trying to comment with my LJ username)
August 1st, 2008 at 5:23 PM
@Kristina — I’ve recently been reading several books (“The Happiness Hypothesis”, “The User Illusion”) which do a good job of showing just how tiny the conscious mind is, compared to all of what’s going on in the brain. There’s an enormous amount of uncharted room in there, enough for all the stuff people attribute to spirits or gods or what-have-you.
It’s a shame the Hello, Tarot! is out of print, because it’s so well done, incorporating the symbolism and feel of Ryder-Waite-Smith while staying true to the Hello Kitty spirit. (And vice versa). I suspect Sanrio had some words with the guy who drew it. Anyway, you are most welcome to take it for a spin next time you’re out this way.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:40 PM
I made a video showing the PDF-cropping process. As you can see, it works for me, too.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:06 PM
@Peter — Thanks for going to the trouble :) Those are exactly the steps I’ve tried, and in all cases, with any PDF, what I get in the new document is the entire page I copied from, not just the selected area.
I just tried it again with three different PDFs. I have no idea what’s different about my configuration… But in any case, it’s kind of moot now, as I’ve already done the work I wanted that feature for.
September 15th, 2008 at 12:50 AM
You can use Photoshop to open the PDF. From there, you can do any croping, resizing you want…
January 11th, 2010 at 11:00 PM
Just a short note - the cards now be bought either from the website - http://www.fecundity.com/pmagnus/decktet/buyit.php - or you can print your own at Artscow.com, using the deck created at boardgamegeek.com.