So, going with my new idea for a story, I've started looking at re-theming my game's cards. The premise of the game before was wizards building defenses for a town, so the cards included stuff like magical crystals that projected barriers around the town, and huge summoned monsters that would stomp the invaders flat. But with the new theme (wizards crafting magic equipment), those types of cards don't make sense anymore.
I think when I'm done, every card is going to have a unique magic item printed on it. The items I'm thinking of range from the mundane (a wand that produces light) to the typical adventurer staples (an enchanted sword) to the highly powerful (a staff that can destroy a mountain).
The problem is, my game has a large number of cards. The game uses three decks, and each deck has 24 cards. That's 72 ideas I have to come up with. (Not even getting into the 20+ player power cards.) I can reuse a couple of ideas across the cards, but for the most part they all need to be unique. That's a lot of magic items.
Fortunately, I have some reference material to draw on. Having played more than a few RPGs over the years, I've collected a bunch of book that I can mine for ideas for gear. I just hope it's enough.
Heh. I wonder if I should have a 'create an artifact a card in my game' contest. Would that attract people's attention?