🛠️ duck dynasty

The ducks of the royal court vie for the crown of the ailing king; will any of their schemes pay off, or will the king outlast them all?

Duck Dynasty is a re-theme of the Love Letter card game by Seiji Kanai. But instead of barons and princes pining over the affection of a princess, we have a medieval court vying for the crown of a king (...oh and they're all ducks.)

What started as an idea for a quick app my friend could develop to play with her son, ended up as...

Origins

In early July 2025, I hosted a Clojure Camp mob session where we implemented most of goofspiel with reagent. One of the participant's young son overheard she was making a game and got excited, so she finished it off and successfully played with him (adding in some duck emoji - because he was very into ducks). She was looking for a project to practice her web app dev skills, and was considering fleshing out the Goofspiel game further - but I suggested Love Letter instead.

Why Love Letter? First of all: Goofspiel is not mean to be fun; it was designed as an object of study for game theorists. But what it has going for it is simplicity. Young kids don't have much "taste" for games (Monopoly and Candy Land still keep selling after all), but we-who-know-better have a responsibility! ...I have a dream ...of a world ...where children are not subjected to mediocre games. Right, so, Love Letter. It's still very simple (only a choice between two options on most turns) and quick. Plus, I saw my nephew go berserk over it during a family vacation a few years back, so I predicted it would be a good fit.

...especially with a few tweaks.

It needed ducks, of course. ChatGPT could supply the art. ...oh, and while we're at it, the "suitors pining after a princess" theme could be rethought to be better tailored towards the 10 year old boy demographic: ...magic ...intrigue ...regicide!

...and so the wheel's started turning, and I went down a rabbit-hole of a duck-themed Love Letter re-conceptualization, generative prompting, graphic design, etc.

Here are all the cards in their final form:

Design Notes

• I wouldn't haven even considered this as a project if I didn't think it was feasible (I'm not much of a visual artist). With the somewhat new ChatGPT Image API, I thought it might be possible to generate consistent assets. The Ghibli-fication trend demonstrated that ChatGPT is very good at making use of source images. Even then, it surprised me how well it was able to transfer styles. It still took several attempts per asset for me to be satisfied (often with me adjusting the prompt to give the results a bit more "character", ex. not just "queen duck in a blue dress" but "scheming duck queen in a blue dress with her hands tented"), but this project would have been still-born without generative art.
• For the graphic design, I wanted each character to have a distinctive colour (and also ended up giving each rank their own "house banner")
• Also added names for each "action" the card enables (ex. "En Garde!" for the Rogue's duel-like ability) - I think it makes it a bit more thematic rather than a pure abstract strategy game
• Mostly kept to the "original" Love Letter I knew (the Tempest edition), apart from:
  • renaming most of the cards
    • (which for veteran Love Letter players is likely to be the confusing; the King is still around, but in a different role)
  • added a 0 card based on the One Ring card from Hobbit Love Letter (a last minute addition; I had an extra card slot on the press sheet) (although, Canna keeps harping that I should have made a card count reference sheet)

Tools Used

• ChatGPT API (images edits endpoint) via Bash
  • started by generating a reference art image
  • used that reference image to generate all other art (other ducks, duck background, card back, rule card backgrounds)
    • ex. "Similar in style to the attached, a cartoon drawing of a medieval duck queen in a blue dress"
• Google Fonts
  • Metamorphous: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Metamorphous
• GIMP
  • color tweaking the back of card image
  • extending texture of back of card image for bleed
• rembg (https://huggingface.co/spaces/KenjieDec/RemBG)
  • removing backgrounds of generated duck images
• Inkscape
  • graphic design of cards
• Make Playing Cards (https://www.makeplayingcards.com/design/custom-blank-card-traditional-size.html)
  • printing of the final product

Cards

• 9 (x1)
  • 
  • name:
    • the king
  • power:
    • abdicate
    • if you discard this card, you are out of the round
  • note:
    • 9 instead of the traditional 8, so that the 0 can be unambiguously next in line
    • first to generate art for and the basis of everything else (although, eventually I generated new art for him; kept the original art as reference for prompting)
• 7 (x 1)
  • 
  • name:
    • the queen
  • power:
    • caught red handed (considered also: scheme)
    • if you have also have the Wizard or Jester in your hand, you must discard this card
  • note:
    • head-canon that she's scheming/cavorting with one or the other
    • Macbeth allusion
• 6 (x 1)
  • 
  • name
    • the fool (considered also: the jester)
  • power:
    • topsy turvy
    • trade hands with another player
  • note:
    • A fool next in line after the Queen? Above the Wizard? But it thematically fit the power so well, that I had to do it (I head-canon that the Fool is actually the King's brother or uncle)
• 5 (x 2)
  • 
  • name:
    • the wizard
  • power:
    • transmogrify (considered also: hex, enchant)
    • choose another player - or yourself - to discard their hand and draw a new card
• 4 (x 2)
  • 
  • name:
    • the knight (considered also: royal guard)
  • power:
    • hold the line (considered also: protect, guard)
    • Ignore effects from other players' cards until your next turn.
• 3 (x 2)
  • 
  • name:
    • rogue (considered also: swashbuckler)
  • power:
    • duel
    • Secretly compare hands with another player. The player with the lower value card is out of the round.
  • note:
    • was there a time when metal-clad-knights and rapier-wielders co-existed? shhhhhhhh, don't let truth get in the way of awesome
    • ChatGPT had the hardest time with this one. The sword would often float in mid air. Even the final version has a minor glitch (why is that brown thing on only one of his legs?)
• 2 (x 2)
  • 
  • name:
    • the abbot ("priest" seemed too bland)
  • power:
    • confession (considered also: inquisition)
    • Look at another player's hand without revealing it to anyone else.
  • note:
    • originally re-themed as a spy, but this ended up looking too similar to the assassin; art for the spy became the minion
    • art does imply a protestant minister, which is probably anachronistic; but a friar-like character kept turning out like the minion
• 1 (x5)
  • 
  • name:
    • the minion
  • power
    • stab in the dark
    • Guess another player's card. If you are correct, that player is out the round. You may not guess Minion.
  • note:
    • I couldn't help not use a double entendre, this power's name alone made we want to keep the action names around on the cards
    • was an assassin at some point, but was worried this would seem "too violent / scary"
    • there was a point in the process in which 2 was "the spy", but after bring back the "priest/abbot", this could have probably been "spy"
• 0 - (x1)
  • 
  • name:
    • the princeling (considered also: the child, innocent, lost child, heir)
  • power:
    • coming of age
    • At the end of the round, this card's value is 8
  • note:
    • researched a bunch of Love Letter variants for something to fill my final card slot; settled on the One Ring card from the Hobbit edition because the power fit so well for a "bastard child" of the king secretly eligible for the throne (head canon: it's a swan baby, aka ugly duckling)

Duck Dynasty © 2025 by Rafal Dittwald is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0