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Asunder
Dreams Are Made Of StarsSummaryRulebookSample CardsPrint ItBuy ItLicenseHow It Was CreatedGalleryEpic SoundtracksFluonsHistory
Dreams Are Made Of Stars
The dawn of intergalactic travel is so close that its electric body galvanizes the minds of thousands of scientists and millions of wannabe colonists. Gravitons, artificial intelligence, quantum engineering and 3D printing are intertwined with everyone's daily life. The star system is teeming with ships, robots and people. One human has breached the very wheelwork of Nature and found a way to go anywhere in an instant, transiting through portals as if walking through open doors between worlds. But the dark side of humanity is showing its claws. The human civilization has been polarized by the people who want to acquire and maintain power over the masses. The humans of this world are in conflict. Shadowy figures are trying to obtain control over the greatest achievement of this world: the obliteration of any barriers of space. It is your destiny to intervene and set humanity on its path to the future you wish for. Join your forces with others like you, breathe life into the world, take part in events happening in the star system and beyond, and bring triumph or ruin to a world which finds itself in the agony of childhood. No human has ever been closer to the future of this world. Reach up and embrace your destiny, for you have the power to bring change. Become a Pathfinder!
Summary
The presented game is a preview of version 2, but the linked rulebook and cards are still for version 1.5, which is different. Asunder is a competitive, fast-paced card game for 2 or 3 players, with a science fiction adventure and exploration theme, atmospheric lore and artwork, set in an open universe where nothing has a fixed destiny, where the players can weave their own narrative arc from the card-sized stories and from the lessons they learn on the way, from light and from shadow, all while exploring deep space and mind alike. Asunder's charm comes from the smooth unfolding of the long combos which emerge effortlessly and create adventures in which the players create sprawling plans, deploying and reusing environments and characters on a galactic level, trying to becomes a Pathfinder. The winner of a game is generally unknown until the last few deployed cards. The core rules are very simple, but the resulting actions are complex due to the plug-and-play abilities whose rules can be learned while playing. For about 60 minutes, the players control 210 cards, 30 abilities and 7 play zones. To start the game, shuffle the cards. Each player draws 7 cards. The progression of a game is made of consecutive turns which occur in the turning order. During a turn, the active player may execute various actions, while the other players may not execute any action, unless allowed by a card's non-deployable ability. The active player may deploy (= play from hand) 1 card, but its executed ability may allow for more cards to be deployed. Deploying multiple cards during a turn, and executing their abilities, is called a combo. Throughout a game, a player's goal is to draw and deploy more cards, through long combos, in order to limit the cards available to the other players and to achieve a higher valiance than the other players, at the game end. Once the last card is drawn from the Destiny, each player may play one more turn, after which the game ends. The player with the highest valiance wins the game. Mechanics:
Rulebook
The presented game is a preview of version 2, but the linked rulebook and cards are still for version 1.5, which is different. Here are the rules in PDF format. Here are the rules in LibreOffice format. This is for anyone who wants to edit the rulebook.
Sample Cards
Sample front of cards:
Sample back of cards:
Print It
The presented game is a preview of version 2, but the linked rulebook and cards are still for version 1.5, which is different. The game is available in a print-and-play form, free for personal use. No commercial operation may offer copies of the game, including printing services, either for free or in exchange for money. Only the author may offer it, or each player must set up all the printing configuration. The game was designed to be printed on large-format cards, so the cards can be printed directly on photo paper, at a photo shop or at home, without cutting them after printing. The simplest and cheapest way to do the printing is at a photo shop. Several photo paper sizes are possible: 3R (127 * 89 millimeters, 5 * 3.5 inches), 4R (152 * 102 millimeters, 6 * 4 inches), B7 (125 * 88 millimeters, 4.9 * 3.5 inches), A6 (148 * 105 millimeters, 5.8 * 4.1 inches). The large size makes looking at the artwork and reading the lore feel great. If the cards were normally sized playing cards, it would feel claustrophobic to look at the artwork and read the lore, but it can be done if you want to reduce the print cost. To print the cards, download from here the archive with cards (saved as image files). If you want to print the card artwork, or use it as wallpapers, download from here. If you want to print the card lore, see it here.
Buy It
The presented game is a preview of version 2, but the linked rulebook and cards are still for version 1.5, which is different. You can purchase a professionally printed copy from GameCrafter. This is not a business operation from the author's side, it's a convenience for people who want to have such a print. The price is exactly the production cost, the same that you would get if you were to set up your own game using the digital files. Because GameCrafter is a print-on-demand service, the cost is high, but their bulk printing can reduce the price down to half (for a few hundred printed copies). This may be done in the future with a crowd sale, if enough players are interested. Advantages of the GameCrafter print: the cards are also printed on the back, the handling and shuffling are much better due to the card stiffness and rounded corners, and it comes with a box and rulebook. Components:
If you create custom cards, GameCrafter offers extra-large-format cards that fit in the game's box: 203 x 102 mm (4 cards) and 152 x 102 mm (4 cards).
License
The game is available in a print-and-play form, free for personal use. No commercial operation may offer copies of the game, including printing services, either for free or in exchange for money. Only the author may offer it, or each player must set up all the printing configuration. See the rulebook. Some of the lore of the game is inspired by, and is a rewrite of, the quotes below. The original quotes belong to the specified authors:
The card font is Xolonium (alternative), which is under an Open Font License.
How It Was Created
For the gameplay design principles, see What is a game? The cards were designed and rendered with Mosaic. In version 2 of the game, the artwork will be generated with AI. Not all games are equal in terms of size. Some games require just a few images, some require hundreds. For an individual game, like Asunder, to be economically viable, in terms of both money and time, so that it can actually be made, there has to be a way to bring the cost of the game to a level similar to a game which requires just a few commissioned images, like is the case for most board games. Publishers may be able to get the funds required to commission hundreds of images, but they're doing this only with simple and low cost images, and only for a handful of games. For a hobbist game like Asunder where hundreds of high quality images are needed, the designer whould never (be able to) pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for the artwork because this kind of money isn't a month's income. There has to be a way to level the playing field regardless of the size of each game. That way would be to commission an artist to create the game's visual atmosphere with the highest level of detail, a theme with colors, lighting, shapes and rendering style, and the composition sketches, and then let the AI generate the hundreds of (extra) images that are required. This isn't a question of whether the artists like to manually create all the images, but of what is economically viable for a game, in terms of money and time. Some people may think that games which require hundreds or even thousands of human-made images must exist because they increase the industry-wide art budget and offer work to many artists. However, most board games require just a few images and their existence doesn't decrease the industry-wide art budget, they increase it because it becomes economically viable for more publishers and designers to commission artists for such games. To put it differently, if every board game were to require a million dollar art budget, virtually no board game would be made, so there would be no art budget for board games. Even if some such games were made, the number of players would tank because of the lack of variety, which would make their publishing riskier and therefore more expensive, which in turn would further decrease the number of games, players and industry-wide art budget. The visual style of Asunder is a work in progress, using Midjourney's reference style feature. A visual style must first be chosen, but It's difficult to choose a style because most of them are irreproducible across prompts (usually due to the change in scale), and the background usually doesn't fit the desired theme. To produce the visual style of the images, over 900 AI generated images were used as individual reference styles in order to understand the visual styles that they can produce across prompts, in over 80'000 generated images. A custom-built application was used to automatically organize the selected images per reference style, each in its own folder, in order to easily see the result of each reference style.
Gallery
Epic Soundtracks
For soundtracks to listen to, for an epic experience, see this.
Fluons
You can read here a technical / mathematical explanation of what fluons / portals are.
History
Version 2.0.0This is a preview of the next version. The new rules and cards are almost finished; there is a lot of refining happening. The artwork is a work in progress. 2026 The rules have changed fundamentally, the game has been effectively rewritten. From the previous version, only the general concepts remain: cards with valor and abilities, play zones, deploying / playing cards and long combos. The game has an adventure and exploration theme. The players control 210 cards, 30 abilities and 7 play zones. There are 78 new cards. The previous lore (including the character names) has been reworked, is much better and it better fits the new exploration theme. Added the multiple abilities per card mechanics. Added an easy to use cost mechanics to pay for executing powerful abilities. The effects of some (non-deployable) abilities apply under specific conditions, not when the cards are deployed. The progression of a game is now done only through consecutive turns, simplifying and replacing the plot, obstruct and rounds. Added the portal mechanics for collecting and reusing the preferred cards (= deck building and level up). Added the "Portal" play zone. This is a complex version of the previous "Recruiting", "Reserve" and "Experience". Added the experience mechanics for increasing the valiance, for extending the abilities of some cards, and for reducing the cost for some abilities. Added the "Experience" play zone. Added the questing mechanics to allow playing stories. Added the "Void" play zone where cards are discarded (= removed from the game). Added the "Obscurity" play zone. Added a way to balance the finale, when some players have cards in the expanse, but other players have no more destiny cards to draw. Renamed the play zone "Timeline" to "Expanse". Renamed the card attribute "Sway" to "Valor". Removed the exhaust mechanics. Removed unlocked abilities. Removed epic cards. Removed factions.
Version 1.5.12023.09.20 Added epic cards. Added some clarifications.
Version 1.5.02023.09.07 Changed the name of the game from "Gardener of Thoughts" to "Asunder". Significantly revamped the rulebook. The rules remain compatible with previous versions. Made it explicit that several turns make a round, and that players can win rounds. Merged the reserve play zone into the experience play zone; cards may be put in it only with abilities. Merged all the abilities; some were previously listed as custom abilities. Added unlocked abilities, with massive strategy implications for advanced players.
Version 1.0.152014.06.22 Replaced the "Secondary ability" with the "Recruitable" custom rule.
Version 1.0.13Corrected the "Omen" ability rules: "The player may take and look at 4 cards from the top of the destiny, may move 1 of the cards to the ops, and must put the others at the bottom of the destiny, with their faces down, in any order. The card to move to the ops must have either no faction or the player's faction. This ability may be executed only if the player has less than 7 ops cards."
Version 1.0.8Added the "Endurance" custom ability.
Version 1.0.7Corrected a rule in the "Winning turn" section to balance the gameplay: "If the turn loser has no reserve cards, or there are no destiny cards and no ops cards (for both players), the game ends and is won by the turn winner." This correction is useful for when a player has a covert card during the finale, because engaging this card may have (until now) ended the game too abruptly. Added a rule in the "Obstruct" section to balance the advanced gameplay: "If there are no destiny cards, each player must move the experience cards to the ops."
Version 1.0.6Corrected the rules of the "Sabotage" custom ability.
Public Release12.05.2014 Public release of the simplified version of "Gardener of Thoughts" card game version 1.
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