Cards in Oneshot Incarnate
Published July 28th, 2025
What I've been doing
I've been working on all the fundamentals of the site, things like email validation and password resets. I'm not using any kind of comprehensive framework, it comes at the cost of time but the benefit of expertise. The plan is to have the first games through Oneshot Incarnate in September, I'm on track to make that happen. Work now is on the significant aspects related directly to the model of Oneshot Incarnate, AKA the fun part!
I'm heading to Gen Con this week! I've never been before but I thought this year is particularly important because it can have such a huge impact on the development of Oneshot Incarnate. I'm signed up for games and/or talks every day though I have plenty of off-time as well. I'll be gaining plenty (more) perspective on attending games as a player. I'll be there all 4 days, if you want to chat please find me on Bluesky.
Cards in Oneshot Incarnate
I'm working with local artists on a set of tarot cards for Oneshot Incarnate. I'm not really a (significant) tarot practitioner (though that is actively changing). I think it's a neat way to integrate art, vibes, and progression into Oneshot Incarnate.
They're tarot cards?
To begin with, not really. They'll be styled/formatted like tarot cards and I ultimately want them to correspond to the major arcana, if not the minor as well. I'm learning about this as I go.
Not all cards will be available to start
In fact, only 'The Organizer' will be available for certain on day 1. I'm hoping to have at least 'The GM' and 'The Player' as well, but that remains in the air. I will be adding cards as I can; Oneshot Incarnate popularity will have a large influence on them.
Where can we find the cards?
'The Organizer' will appear on the page where games are organized. At this point I think 'The GM' and 'The Player' will show up where relevant as well, but all of this can change at any time. I will ultimately have multiple cards per role, so I may have to have certain card classes randomly assigned. For example, there may be 'The Rules Lawyer' or 'The Min-maxer' that would be potentially acquired based on game performance.
What do you mean 'acquired'?
One of the core aspects of this is that participants can 'gather' cards on their personal profiles. I haven't hammered out all details yet but I'm thinking I'll implement it as a board of cards on your profile where acquired cards have a count below them representing how many you have. For example, organizing a game will grant a 'The Organizer' card, likewise for GMs and players. After a game participants will have a chance to grant an additional card to another participant, hopefully representative of their performance during the game. I don't have any practical way to enforce that, and I don't have the actual cards yet, so implementation may vary significantly. Ultimately organizers will be able to 'vet' applicants based on their cards collected. If you see a GM with 10 GM cards you'll know that they've participated as a GM in 10 games.
What about trading cards? Eh? Eh?
So one thing about me, I don't really use cosmetics in MMOs. I love the olden days where seeing gear that you knew somebody got by participating in a raid against a particular boss was an outward indication of achievement. I might do a similar thing here BUT maybe I make the minor arcana tradeable. I can see a lot of possibilities with this system!