I was kind of in-between projects at the time and someone on Etsy approached me asking if I'd be interested in doing a Harrow Deck of Many Things. I was in the mood for a lighter project and decided to agree!

At first I thought I'd be able to reuse a bunch of the Deck of Many Things artwork, but unfortunately that was not the case; the Harrow deck is actually quite different from the Deck of Many Things. It's not just a larger Deck of Many Things, and includes a lot of different cards entirely. In the end I was only able to reuse about seven pieces of artwork.

The next thing I needed to investigate was the theming. The Harrow Deck divides its cards into six "suits": Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. I came up with simple icons to include in the top of the cards to represent each suit. For most of the stats I could easily associate that with a body part, so I used the body part. This may have been an excuse to use an icon of an anatomically correct heart, because any time I get to use that icon is value. Charisma was a little harder, since I'd already used the brain and the eyes for intelligence and wisdom, so I went with an icon of a face, but not just a face icon, a performer's mask, since I felt like that more accurately conveyed the idea of "charisma".

Like for the Deck of Many Things, I decided to make sure the "Wish" card was distinct. So, just like in the Deck of Many Things, I used white on the card, but nowhere else in the deck. I'm not sure why the Wish card is Serpent; I think it's a reference to a god, but the card I'll always think of when I think of wishes is the Moon from the Deck of Many Things. Which is why I included a small moon on the serpent as a bit of a homage.

Making the actual images and coming up with ideas was pretty quick and easy, and overall the actual "art" part of the project didn't take too long. The most annoying part was learning the rules for Harrowings (the mechanism that utilizes the Harrow Deck) well enough to write up a rules insert. (Page 1 Page 2)

Finally I had to make a card back. Card backs are kind of the bane of my existence; they're difficult to get right and very finicky. There were a lot of iterations of this one. The animals were something I struggled with until someone mentioned that canonically D&D has animals associated with stats and I was like "oh yeah". Differentiating between the eagle and the owl was still difficult, but I think at the very least it's identifiable as "an owl and another bird". I'm still not thrilled about the back as a whole; the yellow border looks awkward and I can't help but think I should've gone with the black border instead. The actual interior design is nice, but plain, and I think if I hadn't been in such a rush to get this project out the door I could've done better. If this project ends up getting a second print run, I'll probably change the card back.

This project was in shipping hell for about six months. It was trapped in customs and then ended up getting returned to sender, and it was a giant mess. As recompense the printing company offered to either reprint the shipment or give me free shipping on another order. I didn't want another 500 Harrow Decks, since I wasn't even sure how well this one would sell, so instead I opted for free shipping on a foil shipment of Harrow Decks.

Overall this project was a lot of fun, but I do have regrets about the card back. I still think it looks unfinished, and I wish I'd put some more time into it. The rest of the images I'm a fan of, and I got some great opportunities to be really creative.