The Singularity Deck
The Singularity Deck is a universal playing card system that is infinitely expandable and allows for an immense number of games to be played. Check out Games for a list of games designed specifically with the Singularity Deck in mind. See this geeklist for a variety of other games compatible with the Singularity Deck.
The card back and suit icons have been released to the public domain so anyone can add new cards or expand the deck as they see fit.
Click here to access the public domain design files
Patrons get access to the individual pnp card files so they can print their own deck. They also get to make suggestions for new cards and design ideas:
Singularity Games Patreon
Click here to access the public domain design files
Patrons get access to the individual pnp card files so they can print their own deck. They also get to make suggestions for new cards and design ideas:
Singularity Games Patreon
You can get a professionally printed copy of The Singularity Deck from Drive Thru Cards:
The Singularity Deck includes the following stand alone card sets:
Singularity Deck 2.0 Design Notes
The Singularity Deck is a
universal card system for playing modern and traditional card games. The design
components are freely available, allowing anyone to design their own cards.
Check out Games for
a list of games designed specifically for the Singularity Deck. See this Geeklist
for a list of games playable with the Singularity Deck.
The singularity deck was designed to:
The complete Singularity Deck consists of three stand alone sets of cards: the Earth Set, the Cosmos Set, and the Spacetime Set. The Earth set and Cosmos sets are functionally identical, although they each contain unique sets of suits. Combining them allows for up to 12 suits. The Spacetime set contains a single suit, the hourglass, but the cards rank from 0 to 100.
The singularity deck was designed to:
- maximize versatility, usability, and compactness. Ultimately, my goal is to design a deck that people would carry with them and enjoy playing with. There are many multiuse card decks, however balancing the number of systems on the cards and usability is challenging. Getting this part of the design wrong can lead to a deck that ends up being a chore to use. The Singularity Deck was designed to ensure that necessary information is readily clear, and unnecessary information is easily ignored. The number of suits and ranks available were chosen to allow as many games as possible to map on to the deck one-to-one. Players should never have to remember conversion rules during gameplay.
- be added to by the community. The design components of the deck have been made a part of the public domain. This means that others can easily build on top of the deck and design their own cards. There are many amazing game systems, however they are always limited by what the creator themselves define as part of the system.
- have its own identity. By their very nature game systems have little theme. They exist as an abstract set of icons that meaning and mechanisms can be applied to. Despite this openness being one of the key factors of a game system, a little thematic flair can be an asset. When designing the singularity deck I wanted to design suits that were distinct and hinted at a greater meaning, while being generic enough that the system could remain flexible. The hope was to give each suit a bit of its own character that could be used to help anchor gameplay. The way I attempted to achieve this was by giving the suits a conceptual role and meaning within the system and letting that drive the design of the cards.
- be color-blind friendly and able to fan in either direction. Good graphic design should use color as a way to highlight information, but it should never be the primary designator. Every game group I've been in has had at least one color blind player. During the design process several people reached out to me asking if I could make sure the design was easy to use for both right and left handers. For this reason the icons exist in both the right and left hand corners of the cards, making the cards able to fan in either direction. I'm glad those individuals reached out to me, because this is something I had never considered. One of the challenges of design is being able to escape your own limited perspective.
The complete Singularity Deck consists of three stand alone sets of cards: the Earth Set, the Cosmos Set, and the Spacetime Set. The Earth set and Cosmos sets are functionally identical, although they each contain unique sets of suits. Combining them allows for up to 12 suits. The Spacetime set contains a single suit, the hourglass, but the cards rank from 0 to 100.
The Anatomy of The Singularity Deck
Before I get into each suit, I want to go over
the anatomy of the cards, and some of the special ranks included as part of the
deck. This information refers to the Earth and Cosmos cards. The Spacetime cards are a bit different and as such are detailed later.
The Primary Suit:
Represented by a unique icon. Each suit has a unique icon and color. I go into the design of the specific suits below. Throughout
the design I never wanted color to be an essential designation of information. This
color limitation meant that the suit pairings in a standard deck of cards would
be lost as they are based on color. To make up for this, each card includes a secondary suit to indicate pairings.
The Secondary Suit: Represented by pairs of icons
between cards. The secondary suits are called "shields".
The design inspiration for the secondary suits comes from the symbology of
logic gates. Between both sets of cards the symbols map onto all major logic
gates. Within a set (Earth or Cosmic) each suit shares a
secondary suit with one of the other suits. For example diamonds and hearts
share the "AND" symbol. Across sets the AND/NAND, OR/NOR, and XOR/XNOR symbols pair up to create three sets of four suits each.
The Primary Rank: The most basic part of a playing card is its
rank. Layout wise I wanted the player to be able to fan the cards in either
direction and as such all information is repeated on the right and left of the
cards. This is in distinction from most standard playing cards in which the
information is only on the left of the card. The ranks of the singularity deck
include those found in a standard deck of cards (A, 2-10 , J , Q, K) as well as
some extra ranks.
The first rank is the Alpha Card. Functionally it is just an ace, but thematically
paired with the omega card (shown a little bit later) it represents the beginning of each suit.
The image on the Alpha card is the earth, with each suit showing a different rotation of the earth.
You could put all of the alpha cards in a stack and make a flipbook showing the earth's rotation.
The standard Number Ranks go from 2 to 12. I made
available separate expansion cards that brings the number of ranks up to 24
for each suit, but I chose 12 for the main deck for a couple reasons. The main
reason is that I wanted the secondary dice pip ranks (discussed later)
to repeat twice within a suit and since they go from 1 pip to 6 pips it was
necessary that the main ranks had 12 total cards. The other, less important
reason is that I'm a fan of the base twelve number system. I've thought about
putting out a little set of cards that could swap out the 10, 11, and 12 cards
for ones with base 12 iconography so that this would be a proper base twelve
deck of cards.The card art for the 12 rank depicts the subject that each suit represents.
The Earth suits include the Civilization Card. This is ranked above the King. Since
thematically I placed the Ace/Alpha card as the lowest rank I wanted there to be a card that existed above the
king, just to help prevent any players from getting any monarchical
inclinations. Anyway the imagery on the civilization card represents
that society based on the subject of each suit. For example the club represents
plants, which is illustrated by a society that lives in tents among the
trees.
The Tower Card exists in the cosmos set and replaces the city card. It shows a monument to the subject matter of each suit in that set.
The omega card represents some catastrophe
associated with each suit. Since hearts represent animals, the omega card for
hearts is overpopulation. The idea is that each suit begins with alpha and ends
with omega (with the exception of the singularity card, shown next).
Last, is the Singularity Card which is the
namesake card of the deck. The singularity card is ranked both 0 and infinity
and sits outside the other cards representing the cycle of the universe to
which we are all beholden despite our best intentions and machinations.
The Secondary Rank: Represented by dice pips.The number ranks each also include a secondary rank represented by dice pips. The dice pips allow for games in which some numbers are represented twice. A good example of this is Hanabi. To play with these ranks the cards are simply flipped over, and again the right and left sides are symmetric. I spent a long time debating between different systems for representing the secondary ranks, including roman numerals and uniquely designed iconography, before settling on what was the most obvious solution all along, dice pips. The face cards do not have dice pips associated with them, because I wanted them to have a more flexible hierarchy. If say for example the queen had a two pip dice and the king had a 3 pip dice, while not necessitating that the king always be ranked higher than the queen it would have introduced iconography that would have fought against the players if a designer wanted to make a game in which the queen card ranked higher.
The Earth Set
These cards represents the constituent
components and forces that make up the earth itself. This set contains the
"standard" French suits of most common playing cards.
Clubs: In the singularity deck the clubs
specifically represent Bikonta which is an early division of life that became
plants. Unsurprisingly, the color of the suit is green. As with the other
french suits, my interpretation of the suit for the singularity deck is posthoc
and the design of the suit is largely unchanged from the conventional design.
The weapon of choice for the forest royalty is the wooden club/staff. The
civilization card shows a society that is nomadic and lives in the woods. The
omega card depicts global pollution and famine.
Diamonds: The diamonds represent information/the
synthetic. To some degree this is a catchall for the things that exist on earth
as the result of intelligent manipulation. The royal cards are scientists who
use pens and scrolls. The civilization card is a university/ research campus. The
omega card represents the overthrow of the earth by artificial intelligence.
Hearts: The Hearts represent unikonta, which is
the early division of life that became animals and fungus. The royal hearts use
swords and includes the suicide king. The civilization card is a city that has
a large concentrated number of people. The omega card represents
overpopulation.
Triangles: The triangles are the
first suit in the singularity deck that is non-standard. It represents
mountains/stone and any non-organic material on earth. The royal cards hold
large hammers. My favorite royal card in the earth set is the queen of
triangles. The civilization card is a society of miners living among the
mountains.
Ovals: The ovals suit represents prokaryotes
(single cellular organisms). The royal cards carry shovels as soil is the
result of prokaryotes mixed in dirt breaking down other organic material to
make nutrients usable by plants. The civilization card represents a society
among the dirt. Design-wise this was inspired by hobbit holes. The omega card
is global disease.
Spades: The spades represent the most abstract
thing conceptually in the earth set. It represents the concept of syntropy.
This is paired up with the asteroids suit in the cosmos set which represents entropy. Entropy is the property of matter that in a closed system disorder and
chaos will increase. In essence syntropy is the inverse of entropy, it
represents the collection or consumption of energy in order to maintain
organization in a system. A possible example of this could be a lion eating a
gazelle. Or a plant absorbing energy from the sun to maintain its existence. In
a sense war could be considered a form of syntropy in that one group increases
disorder in another group (through violence) to take their resources in an
effort to maintain function and stability in their own group. This is why the
royal cards hold spears and wear armor. The civilization card represents a
society that lives in a large bunker.
Extended Ranks: each suit has an optional set of extended rank cards that add ranks 13-24.
The Cosmos Set
These suits represents the components that make up the universe itself.
Stars: The stars suit represents electromagnetic
radiation, such as light or radio waves. The royal cards are holding maces and of course…morning stars. Naturally,
the tower card is a light house. The omega card shows the earth being destroyed
by a super nova.
Circles: The circles suit represents baryonic
matter, which is the matter the stuff around you is made out of, including the planets themselves. This is in contrast to the other forms of matter represented by other suits. The royal cards are holding shields. The omega card depicts the earth being
sucked into a black hole.
Antimatter: As soon as antimatter comes into contact with ordinary matter they both obliterate. The icon for the antimatter suit is based on the shape of the containment units designed to study antimatter. The royal cards are each holding a mighty axe. The tower card actually shows two towers that are opposites of each other. The omega card shows the earth being obliterated by its antimatter counterpart.
Dark Matter: Dark matter is just the name for much of the matter that exists in the universe that is distinct from baryonic matter. It is called dark matter because it has proved incredibly difficult to detect. The royal cards are each holding keys.
Dark Energy: Dark energy is the most abundant component of the universe and yet we barely understand it, despite it explaining the expansion of the universe. The royal cards are all holding bows and arrows. The tower card depicts the possible relationship between Dark Energy and Time. The Omega Card depicts a theoretical end of the universe called the big rip.
Asteroids: The Asteroids suit represent entropy, the force of the universe that always draws matter towards chaos and disorder. This pairs up with the spades suit which represents the inverse of this force. The royal cards are all holding lances. The tower card depicts a building modeled after an asteroid collision. The omega card depicts an asteroid colliding with the earth.
The Spactime Set
The Spacetime Set is a special stand alone set of cards that consists of a single suit, the hourglass, and contains ranks 0 through 100. The anatomy of these cards are slightly different from the other sets of cards as can be seen below.
Each card in the Spacetime Set has a primary rank from 0 to 100. It includes two copies of the 0-rank and 100-rank cards. Each card also has a secondary rank of I through V in roman numerals (20 cards with each numeral). Additionally, each card has a bit symbol which can be interpreted as either a 0 or 1(looking at the white part), or as a 1 or 2 (looking at the number of circles in the symbol).
Each card depicts grains of sand falling down the hourglass starting with 100 grains and dropping down to 0. The alpha card in this set is the 100-rank card and the omega is the 0-rank card. The set also includes a special "Death" card representing the end of time for an individual being.
The Wormhole Suit
The Wormhole Suit is the final piece to second edition of the Singularity Deck. It is a bridge between the other sets of cards. In terms of gameplay, it is a suit that stands alone and yet could represent any other suit as a wild-card. Stylistically, it pairs with the spacetime set. Thanks to Eric Coutu for the original idea.
