About this project

Admit it: You’ve always wanted to see Victorian Gentlemen fending off Lovecraftian horrors with Tesla’s lightning weapon, ancient Druids taking on Orquish warbands in Brooklyn, or Psychic Knights doing battle with the Titans right in your own home. And we want to show it to you, in dazzling detail and brilliant color, illustrated by some of the finest fantasy artists in the biz. Heck, we want you to join in, in a brand new hybrid of Card Games and RPG’s, the DCG or Dramatic Card Game! But we need art, and we need it to be great!

The Plan: Art! Art! Art!
Cards are fun, collectable, and exciting to work with, but they need art, and that gets expensive. The initial release we’re looking at is well over 350 cards, and we need art for every last one of ‘em. We want some really beautiful evocative stuff, and to this end we’ve already approached several artists like Echo Chernik, Peter Johnson, and David Fooden, among others. In short, we want great artists, and we want to pay them what they’re worth! The more we get here, the prettier the final version will be!

The Game: A new type of RPG:
In recent years, Live-Action roleplaying has seen something of a rise in popularity and credibility. As a natural offshoot of tabletop roleplaying, Live-Action play has enjoyed greater visibility thanks to the internet and recent media. And why not? Live-Action gaming is fundamentally immersive. The costumes, the pageantry, and the event-based nature can turn anyone into a dashing hero or a sinister villain.
However, there are limitations. Live-Action games are notoriously difficult to run, time-intensive, and even expensive to run and maintain. Systems tend to be clunky and awkward, especially for combat. We at the Bridge & Tunnel Union want to create a unified vision for Live-Action play, a new type of game that kept the story rolling and the players playing above all. We wanted a system that would allow the world of Ex Arcana to come alive, while staying as simple and user-friendly as possible. We had to think outside the box- or in this case, outside the book. We created the Dramatic Card Game.
Ex Arcana makes use of special cards that players assemble into “Character Decks”, like a character sheet in a RPG. These decks allow for a great deal of versatility between Live-Action (Or “Freeplay”) and Tabletop (Or “Narrative Play”). The cards make conflict resolution fast and easy, to keep the story moving forward. The cards are the focal mechanic of Ex Arcana: fun, light, easy props that players can collect and trade to create the perfect character.

The World: A Secret Society of Modern Magic and Steampunk Metascience.
Magicians! Even today, the word has a legendary quality, but in the late 1800‘s, it meant everything to a select group of men and women. Since the dawn of time man had studied the Eldritch arts, harnessing the magical powers that flow from the Aethers. To protect and study this practice, the secretive Arcanum was founded; Four Eldritch Leagues who each protect and harness one of the four elemental Aethers.
However, in the late nineteenth century, this led to the Oathbreaker War, a magical civil war so devastating that the only way the Arcanum could survive was to place its’ best and brightest- the Magisters- in suspended animation, and set off an explosive spell so powerful it drained our world of all magic for the next one hundred years.
The Century of Silence has passed, and magic is slowly filtering back into our world. The Magisters of the Arcanum are awakening from their protective Soulvault only to find a world foreign to them. Cell phones and cars have replaced telegraphs and carriages. Their only link to this modern era comes from the the Guttersnipes, powerful amateurs only recently empowered by the return of magic.
These are the new soldiers in the final battle against the Oathbreakers that survived the Century of Silence, and the ancient threats from the Outer Spheres. The stalwart members of the Arcanum have a duty to uphold the laws of magic, and to defend the Silent Masses from threats both within and without... who don’t uphold any laws at all.

The Creators: The Bridge and Tunnel Union
Founded in 2007 by two brothers, a wife, and a best friend, the BTU seeks to re-energize pop culture by taking an unconventional approach to games, design, fashion, music, films, theater, and whatever else we can get our hands on. Together, we cover a wide spectrum of interests and ideas. Megan Jaffe (the wife) is a costume builder for NYU who’s worked on multiple broadway productions and movies in the NYC area. Josh Jaffe (The younger brother) is an accomplished bassist whose band, The SmashUp, have just released their latest album, “The Sea and the Serpents Beneath.” Sean Jaffe (the older brother) is a writer and game designer, who has done work for various game companies like White Wolf, Vogster Entertainment, and Griptonite games. He recently optioned his screenplay, “Critical Hit”, to Revisionist Cinema/Philter Cinematic. And Matt Volk, (the best friend) is an accomplished designer and illustrator who does custom laser etching and prop work in the greater Philadelphia area.
Why ExArcana? As avid gamers and pop-culture geeks, we have a mutual love of Live Action roleplay and the Steampunk Milieu. We wanted to bring the two together in a fun, easy-to-grasp way that doesn’t require tons of set-up: in short, we’re building the game we’ve always wanted to play.