We haven’t had a lot of news lately from Zedex Dragon regarding his Ultima-inspired RPG (for the ZX Spectrum platform), U3.5: Pax Britannia. However, a while ago, he did post (on the Ultima Dragons Facebook page) about an inspiration he had when looking at the Major and Minor Arcana tarot cards created by Mythic for use in Ultima Forever:

Because I started U3.5 before Ultima Forever was even a thing, and because Ultima Forever was so short lived, I hadn’t paid much attention to it. But it occurred to me today that the Major Arcana would be a good fit for the U3.5 character classes during character creation. I’ll have to do a little bit of a rework on the in-game graphics but that can wait until the rest of the thing is done.

Taking this inspiration and running with it, he grabbed copies of all of the Ultima Forever tarot card artwork and set about upscaling (and, in some cases, modifying) it, with the aim of producing artwork for a complete set of printed tarot cards. Indeed, he was quite pleased with the overall result, and it’s worth noting that his Pax Britannia-specific modifications to the artwork do a good job of preserving the original feel of the images Mythic produced.

And the response from the Ultima Dragons was similarly favourable; this poll, for example, showed that more than a few UDIC members had an interest in having a set of cards for their own (or, in some cases, mutiple sets).

Zedex, for his part, has released the complete set of card artwork, and you can grab a copy of it at the U3.5: Pax Britannia project subdomain.

If you’d like to get a set of cards printed, Zedex recommends using MakePlayingCards.com; the artwork has been formatted for the standard tarot card deck available through that site. (I’ve used BoardGamesMaker.com in the past and have been very happy with the results; MakePlayingCards.com is the same company.)

And do also consider checking out this simple little game that Zedex has come up with, which you can play with a printed card deck if you happen to pick one up.