Digital Vision Cards 1: Vladimir Kush

Ever since the Everway RPG was published back in 1995, its fans have been supplementing the official Vision Card pictures with images found online. In that spirit (and because the recent Kickstarter has returned Everway to attention), I'm starting a series here on the blog to highlight artists whose work is both inspirational and suited to the assumptions about fantasy that Everway makes.

The first artist I'm featuring is self-described "Metaphorical Realist" Vladimir Kush. His work stems from the Surrealist tradition, but the line between the fantastic and the surreal has always been a thin one. Images like the one at the head of this post ("In Full Sails," my favorite of his oil paintings) make for perfect digital Vision Cards, and I recommend them to Everway players and GMs.

A similar painting ("Departure of the Winged Ship") suggests a realm in which all oceangoing vessels are powered by the wings of giant insects.

"Heavenly Fruits," on the other hand, conjures up the idea of a realm where trees are essentially floating arboreal "clouds," capable of being harvested by hand when the wind is quiet.

Finally, Kush's notes for a painting like "Dragon Defence" can be straight-up borrowed for an Everway game: what if a realm-spanning defensive wall is actually a slowly moving earth dragon?

Everway Silver Anniversary Edition Funded in 4 Hours

The Everway RPG has finally managed to draw the Spring card (upright meaning: "new growth") from the Fortune Deck: the Kickstarter for the Silver Anniversary Edition reached its funding goal in just under four hours. (I went in at the $120 level, picking up hardcopies and PDFs of both the players' and gamemasters' books.) Stretch goals have not yet been announced, but they have been strongly hinted at. If you're thinking about backing the Kickstarter but haven't decided yet, check out the free Gateway Book preview: it's an epitome of the two books and, at 62 pages, is rather thorough for a sample.

Everway Silver Anniversary Edition Kickstarter Live

I'm excited to report that the Kickstarter for the Silver Anniversary Edition of the Everway roleplaying game has just gone live. (Incidentally, so has this blog: surviving 2020 took a lot out of me, and blogging about RPGs wasn't part of the survival plan.) The new edition looks like a great improvement to an already lovely game, providing much more scaffolding for players and GMs to interact with the Thousand Worlds: for example, there are now guidelines for how to create the Boons that Everway Heroes receive as rewards, and the city of Everway has been given a setting overhaul, placing it into a regional context on its home Sphere (and thus making it more than just a waystop). The game's publishers (The Everway Company) have put together a more detailed guide to the revision, complete with some very enticing images of pages and rules material. Once I get a chance to look over the new books myself, I hope to publish more Everway-related material here.