The Magician
Outlining the second major arcana card in our deck.
Keith Hiscox
11/15/20252 min read
If you are reading this then you've persevered with coming to the blog despite the fact that this post singularly failed to go live on the listed date. Mea culpa. Anyhoo...
As you can see we've shared with you hereabouts Ledesma's dual design for the Magician card. This card has been carefully designed to contain key elements found in traditional tarot whilst linking to the suit designs for our game. Once again we'll be discussing: 1) What does this card mean? 2) How does it represent Berg's specific fantasy setting? and 3) How does it mechanically impact on the stories you can tell during the game?
Card Meaning
The Magician traditionally represents resourcefulness, planning, inspiration and power. The potential of magical knowledge to change the world.
The card masterfully represents a solidly constructed "Yes" answer to most questions.
Setting Specific Design
In the world of the Collegia Magica circles are important to spellcraft, so we've included lots of those in the imagery, as well as the usual infinity symbol. Upon the table of mystic artefacts there's a skull, a nod to the interests of the particular magician from the novels that inspired the design of the character on the card.
You can see our Magician's wand is more of a staff, as is fitting for the Sabrian setting. His blue robes and mage's silver collar are also direct ties to the fantasy of the Collegia Magica, where all trained mages must display the collar as a sort of combined badge of office and a warning to others. The blue is the signifier of a trained Sabrian mage, as opposed to the green of the student - a change from the usual white of purity and red of willpower and passion which are more often seen in esoteric decks.
Mechanical Impact
The Magician represents the character creation concepts of the learned mage, but also any kind of scholar or scribe that might be encountered in Sabria.
During main gameplay the Magician card is usually the only critical success card present in the decks of mundane characters (those who do not use magic). For this kind of character it can be extremely useful though, usually successfully completing an action requires the play to lay down a number of cards of the correct suit. The Magician overrides that - making any card played alongside it wild - counting as if it were the required suit.
For a magic using character this card, like all of the Major Arcana, also allows the tapping of arcane energies allowing a spell to be cast. If you are a spell caster then you may have another Major Arcana card in your hand and you can recycle the Magician, revealing him in order to temporarily change the other card count as if it were the Magician, before burying the real mage back into your deck to rise again later in the game.
And that's about it for the magnificent Magician. If you haven't already read our post about the Fool then read on below, otherwise we'll see you soon to explain the depths of the mysterious High Priestess.
