Why did I make this game? 

This is part post-portem and part game design musings, so fair warning, I'm about to get a ramblin'.

I feel like many ttrpgs require a lot from the players. You see this with every game out there - there's usually one or two players in the group that has read everything and knows the rules like the back of their hand. That's fine. Time is finite and people will focus on the things that bring them enjoyment. But not everyone has that time or interest.

I thought, "what if I could make a game that allows all players to stay equally engaged at the same time?" This is why I designed each character focused on using a deck of cards and having each their abilities be reflected on those cards. 

This information is always in front of you. It's tactile. You can strategize around it. You can adapt to it. Some players can min-max within the confines of the game and others can just enjoy playing without the demand of having an encyclopedic knowledge of everything in it. Yeah, some players are going to index, compartmentalize, strategize and develop that knowledge - they thirst for it. It's part of the mastery portion of the game and is represented in ways through Talents like Full/Half Blood and Classy.

Players can do fun and overpowered things with these talents, if they choose the right combination of cards. Yet it never felt like it broke anything (in playtesting). It sometimes made a character into what felt like a one-trick pony, but that was their thing and rallied the table when they started their "wombo-combo" of card plays.

This leads into one of the design pillars of the game, which I learned from my years in the video game industry:

Make Everything Overpowered

Leaning into this aspect from the player point of view helped tremendously with providing players situations and methods in which they felt heroic or badass. When it came to card balancing, I tended to look at cards players weren't choosing and buffing them, rather than nerfing the common and more popular choices. This was a win-win for everyone, because it provided more options and build types for players, promoted build diversity amongst the same classes and allowed me to design encounters and foes on other end to provides opportunities and challenges for players to solve with their diverse and powerful skillsets available to them.

An Example

I'll end this post with an example that one of my players discovered while we were playtesting:

This strategy revolved around using cards that provide Shift (Allows a character to move a specified number of squares as part of the card

action or effect.) and then end it with a powerful card from the Warden deck to deal massive damage.

By combining cards like the Theurgist "Flickerbolt" card with the Warden card "Mortal Apparition" and the magical shield called "Driftwood", they were able to deal massive damage through creative use of the effect Shift.