Fable is easily one of my favorite games. I've spent hours upon hours in both full games, and definitely found the Pub Games to be awesome. Ever since the Pub Games released, I was thinking how cool it would be to have an actual Fortune's Tower set. I thought that eventually there would be a set like this a purchasable item, but a couple months back I got tired of waiting. I start designing the exact set you see in the pictures here.
First things first, I needed to completely redraw the cards. I used to work as a designer back in Chicago before coming to San Francisco to work here at Capcom, so I had a few connections back there that could print the cards professionally, and exactly to my specifications. I took photos off the screen of my TV while playing Pub Games, then imported them into Adobe Illustrator and began the long process of recreating all the cards.
I wanted all the bits of this to seem as if they came from the world of Fable, so I designed everything with the look as if it was a few hundred years old, and used by the traveling game masters in pubs. That said, I added distressing and imperfections to the cards, and had the print shop order a special parchment card stock to give the cards that old and worn feel. I had three complete decks with extras made.
After the cards came the chips. The Pub Games uses wooden chips, but they can fade and wear too easily with use. So instead I ask my father, a sculptor and artist in Chicago, to create me ceramic chips by hand. I redrew the guild seal from Fable and had a small stamp created that he could use to emboss the clay before it dried. He hand made each one, stamped each one, and under-glazed them all individually. That may sound like a pain, but I realized that chips in the world of Fable would have had the imperfections only hand-making them could add. Makes them feel more real, you know?
Next I went onto designing a box to hold all of this. Now, this was a slightly tricky part, since I've never made or designed cases before. I called in my cousin, who is a professional furniture maker, to create this. He made it to my measurements with walnut. Inside it would hold two decks of cards, and all the chips in simple drawstring pouches. He carved out the Fable logo on the lid with hand tools, making sure it kept the hand-made theme throughout this project. I didn't want the box to be glossy, so instead he used an old oiling technique, which made the wood darken up. He even added worn edges, and small nicks and scratches to give the appearance of being around for a while.
And finally I needed to create small pouches for the chips. I hand cut and sewed five bags for each of the colors of chips. The material is a very large weave cloth that looks very canvas like. From there I created simple drawstrings out of hemp. After completing the sewing, I hand dyed the guild seal on each bag in the color of the chips it contained. I used some of the remaining hemp to make pull ties for the card decks.
Once I received the completed box, I went to work applying silver leaf to the Fable lettering on top. After applying the leaf, I used some simple acrylic paints to make it appear tarnished. Then I applied a pearlescent medium to give the logo that luminescent shine you see on the official logo in the games and such.
Overall, this has been a project over two months in the making, and it has turned out even better than I could have imagined. The total cost for materials was about $400, but it was well worth every penny spent. I'm sure it could be done cheaper, but I wanted this to be a quality project. I figure there's fans out there who want to make their own sets as well, so I've made PDF files with everything you'd need for the cards, blueprints, and logos.
