Blood and Salt TCG is thus far the result of a long term passion product turned novel writings turned card game started in 2019.

As an aspiring writer and now TCG Designer and Developer, I recognized early into my writings and creations that fantasy writing and creation is deeply rooted in research and I was pleasantly surprised. Choosing to lean on my previous card game experiences and my current experience in Large Molecule Sciences in Clinical Research, I began to put together Blood and Salt early in the mornings before I worked, usually starting around 5:30am each morning, coffee in hand, with the intention of making a game that held all of the qualities and feels that a player WANTS. Amongst these desires, I wanted the main emotion of the game to be grim and gritty, evoking a sense of struggle and perseverance to the player. Most importantly, I wanted the player to truly FEEL the flavor of this game. I wanted my card game to operate with rules but urge players to break from the path given and make it their own.

I started with a dream of making a vast world, one with cranky cooks and savvy artists, bounty hunters, pets, rivers, warships, empathy, and tragedy. I wanted objects and people and places to make sense and connect in meaningful ways that created an economy of emotion and greed.

Then I got into my study and began. I focused on a quote from J.R.R. Tolkien who said, “I wisely started with a map”. I couldn’t argue with that, so sketching away I went.



















Drawing with pencil the small towns and countryside connected by rivers and oceans and people and cultures I slowly began to write about the depths of the seas and its beautiful dangers. Days of creating become easier as I let the world put itself together and I began to feel like the world was all there already, I just had to find it. I had 16 countries with fully fleshed out personalities and a plethora of characters with mental and physical economies that would be taxed by the world and its inhabitants. I planned for nearly 40 POV characters over 3 books that all pushed and pulled each other, some to each other’s demise over power and others to switch flags and Sailfind for a quick coin.

I set out to create a breathing world, one of dangerous beasts and disease that could combine the grey realism of moral decisions and naval expeditions with my microbiology background as to write what I knew. I wrote about a blood borne disease linked to blood type factors that created a civil war on the morals of mankind and its struggle with death, finality, and indifference. Slowly, this idea blossomed, as I constantly dug to find the world that was yearning to be excavated from the depths of its potential.

What I found was a disease that acts as the magic of the world. Catch it and you would find your senses and metabolism elevated at the cost of your lifespan, being able to hear and speak unheard languages that could pull energy from two distinct worlds overlapped each other in a symbiotic relationship. One who is able to speak this blood tongue feels the language as a psychological pressure exerted in the heard world and can exert it if they are able to hone it. I connected this to another language, referred to as “tongue”, beast tongue, where special individuals could feel and exert pressure to beasts, making them invaluable guides for travelers and kings. In a world of lethal creatures and perilous pirates, in an endless flood, above and below the waters of the world there were dangers.

Through writing and deepening my understanding of the human psychology of card games, I learned to design feelings and empathy. By putting myself into these character’s possessions, I was constantly in a state of acting, thinking what it would be like to fear what they fear, or rejoice to what they rejoice. Ultimately, it changed me as a person and as a creator. The fear of not being enough, not making the right choices, and the fear of not knowing grew my humanity and empathy. Through the medium of cards I hope that Blood and Salt can be a place of connection for all that touch it and that through this gameplay experience, I hope to ingrain players into the mindsets of their Crewmembers so that they may evoke compassion for them and find some part of them in the characters. It is when we help each other, and serve each other, that we may find true happiness and experience love. I hope you enjoy our game.