On Fri, 5 Jun 2026 19:19:34 -0400, Mark Urbin wrote:

>For simplicity's sake, I was keeping the traditional major arcana names.
>That isn't cast in stone though. I'm open to modifications. The new cards
>should have some relation to the old though.
>For the minor suites, Traveller updates to cups, swords, wands and
>pentacles would work.  I'd like to keep swords as swords though.  Imperial
>Marines cutlass and all that.

Just as a bit of semi-related trivia - modern card decks can be found in
three (by some counts, four) different suit patterns:

The version that most of us will be familiar with, with red hearts and
diamonds, and black spades and clubs, with the three "court" cards called
(in English translation) "King", "Queen", and "Jack", are called "French
suits", as the pattern originated in France. They're available almost
universally due to American troops having being deployed nearly everywhere
at one time or another. When introduced, the simple graphics and limited
colors made them the cheapest to print.

In Spain and Italy, the "Latin suits" are used; these are essentially the
classical Tarot suits of Swords, Cups, Coins, and Staves. These tend to be
"naturalistically" colored, with no particular color segregation.
Stylistically, the renderings are different, with the most notable
difference being that Italian "swords" depict curved swords, while Spanish
"swords" are depicted as straight. In southern Italy, it is actually more
common to encounter Spanish-rendered cards than Italian; the Italian
rendering is prevalent in the north. Court cards are slightly different
between the two, with Italian court cards being called (in English
translation) "King", "Knight", and "Knave", and Spanish court cards "King",
"Knight", and "Jack". The Spanish pattern is also common in the Americas
south of the Rio Grande.

In Germany and much of central Europe, the suits are Hearts, Bells, Acorns,
and Leaves, with court cards "King", "Ober [Over]", and "Unter [Under]".
Swiss-German suits are Roses, Bells, Acorns, and Shields, with the same
court cards. (Some consider the Swiss and German patterns to be separate,
others consider the Swiss pattern to be a variant German pattern.)

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