Memories of Everway

I didn’t back the Everway silver edition Kickstarter as it’s not my thing, but it prompted me to reflect on the first edition.

Of course, these being 25-year-old memories, there may be some dust in there.

First edition

I bought Everway in the mid-90s when it first appeared. It was revolutionary in several aspects, particularly replacing dice with a tarot-like fortune deck and using fantasy artwork for character creation.

As for the setting, Everway was a world-hopping fantasy, each world (or “sphere”) linked by gates. The PCs journeyed through the gates in search of adventure, and the city of Everway was where all the gates were. (So very similar to how Magic: the Gathering’s background developed, with planeswalkers and different worlds.)

While it was a neat conceit to tie together the very different art styles used during character generation (more on that below), I found it all a bit bland. But then, it would always be a hard sell as, generally, I’m not too fond of fantasy settings.

Although I had Everway, I don’t think I ever ran it. I do remember playing it, once, at a convention. As I recall, Mike Cule was the GM, and while I think I can remember my character, I have no memory of the adventure itself.

The fortune deck

Instead of dice, Everway used a deck of tarot-like cards that the GM had to interpret. There were 30-odd cards, and they all had different meanings, which meant learning what each card represented. I found that was a formidable barrier, which I never overcame.

Perhaps if Everway’s setting had inspired me, I might have persevered with the fortune deck. But I didn’t like the setting, and the fortune deck felt far too fiddly to be worth persevering with.

A touch of genius

Where Everway shone, though, was in using illustrations for character generation.

Everway came with 90 illustrated “vision” cards. During character creation you chose a handful of cards and used them to describe things about your character. It was the first time I’d encountered anything like this—and I thought it was brilliant and shamelessly stole the idea.

In 1995 I played a lot of Illuminati: New World Order, Steve Jackson Games’ trading card game. I had masses of cards, and I took a pile I wasn’t using and used them to create wild, random characters for a modern-day improvisational conspiracy game. (I wrote this up for Pyramid magazine, and in my head, I always thought of it as Illuminated Everway.)

And when I didn’t have the art available, I used “scenes” (much like the vision cards but written out) to create one of my characters in an early Other London game. And because I throw little away, I still have them.

·         Scene: A pavement artist, black beret on the ground collecting coins. The artist is painting directly onto the paving flags with chalks (rather than paper) and is drawing a city scene of London, with a Gothic castle where St Pauls should be. People in suits are walking by. The only person looking at the painting is an old, shabby man.

·         Scene: A man working at a typewriter in a book-lined garret. Through the garret window, Alexandra Palace can be seen. A woman is leaning over the man’s shoulder, looking at what he is writing. Her feet aren’t touching the floor.

·         Scene: A kitchen table. There are two bottles of whisky, one empty and one half-empty, plus an empty glass. There’s a crumpled pack of cigarettes. A pack of newly-developed photos lies on the table. Most photos are of a happy smiling woman. And one of them shows people in black, cowering under black umbrellas in a green place.

·         Scene: A woman in her fifties. She wears glasses and is dressed in layers, topped by an old cardigan. She stands in front of a table, upon which is a strange skull mask and a chain of keys. In the background are artists easels and students watching intently.

I have no idea why games based on licensed properties with lots of artwork (such as Judge Dredd) don’t do something like this. The system and numbers could remain the same, but I bet characters would be more memorable if they were created using evocative artwork.

Everway: more miss than hit

So despite its brilliant character creation, the mediocre background and steep fortune deck learning curve meant I was never going to become an Everway fan.

I don’t expect ever to run Everway, but maybe I’ll play it again one day.