Pteridomania

Enter Pteridomania and be transported back to Victorian fern hunting and botanical exploration. Players embody four characters all with different play-styles, each uniquely driven to expand their fern collection.

Pteridomania Research

Areas of Focus

Research was focuses around the general Victorian era and the period’s ‘fern craze’. Focusing on aspects such as class, fern species, geography, plant cultivation, and superstitions. Investigating these aspects of Victorian life heavily informed the motives, mechanics, and variables of Pteridomania’s gameplay and player interactions.

Vintage black and white illustration of two women in garden, one seated with flowers and the other standing holding a basket, titled 'Fern Gatherers'.

Pteridomania Pieces

A series of decorative, ornate circular and square designs in black, red, gold, and blue, with intricate patterns.

Pteridomania Player Pieces

Using botanical data bases, Pteridomania uses regional data to accurately place different species of ferns across the United Kingdom. Regionally distributed ferns are traded to other regions, consumed, or discarded creating scarcity. These mechanics simulate the environmental impacts, collection process, and lucrative markets surrounding the Victorian fern craze.

Multiple decorated invitation cards with wax seals and a glass perfume bottle on a black background.
Colorful decorative plant tags with intricate patterns, each representing different fern species and their scientific names.
Information about Pteridomania, the Victorian Era fascination with ferns, with a map of Ireland and Britain at the bottom and icons indicating players, age range, and game duration.
Game setup instructions with a map board and color-coded character cards for a game, including character selection, map board setup, and individual character setup.
Page from a game guide titled 'Gameplay Overview' explaining the game mechanics of 'Peridomania', including navigation, interaction, scoring, and section markers, with decorative border.
Page from a guide titled 'Shared Concepts' explaining traveling across a map and foraging in a game, with detailed instructions and a note about the Witch's incantation.
Page from a rulebook explaining Fern Cards. The page features two illustrated fern cards labeled A and C, with descriptive text about their components and significance in the game.
Page discussing the character concepts of a game called 'The Soirée,' describing the event's purpose, showing before and after maps, and displaying four types of tokens: Aristocrat, Botanist, Merchant, and Witch.
Instruction page about potions and incantations, showing tokens and a map hex for in-game use, with descriptions of how to use incantations and enchantments in gameplay.
A page from a botanical guide titled 'The Botanist' by Ewan Drummond, with instructions on character setup, playstyle, and objectives for studying ferns, featuring a decorative border and a circular botanical emblem.
Page from a research and experiments manual with instructions and diagram for studying ferns, featuring decorative borders and a beige background.
Page from a guide titled 'Field Guide Pages' explaining methods for scoring points and discarding ferns, with sections on travel, foraging, activation, research, experimenting, and discarding ferns.
Instructions for a game called The Aristocrat, featuring character setup, playstyle, character objectives, and a courier token, all set on a decorative beige background with a red seal.
Page from a gardening guide titled "Garden Arrangements" with illustrated examples of two garden layout arrangements, including placement of red, purple, yellow, and blue tokens, and instructions for completing and hosting garden arrangements.
Instructional page explaining the Wardian Case, a tool for aristocrats to combine and grow ferns. Shows a diagram of stacking ferns in the case, with a check mark indicating the correct method and an X the incorrect. Includes instructions for morning
Page 14 of a game rulebook titled "The Witch" by Madam Bella, describing character setup, gameplay, and objectives for a witch-themed game, with decorative borders and a game complexity indicator of three dots.
Page from a book titled 'Crafting Recipes' providing instructions on crafting recipes in Witchcraft, including discarding cards, keeping track of recipes, and exchanging recipe cards, with diagrams illustrating the process.
A page from a game rulebook titled "Enchantment" with detailed instructions for potion and incantation recipes, tokens, and actions for Morning Matters and Evening Affairs, including tasks like drawing, discarding, and replacing tokens, with specific
A page from a board game rulebook titled "The Merchant" by Evelina Fairweather, detailing character setup, gameplay, and objectives related to buying and selling ferns in a market setting.
Page from a game rulebook explaining scoring with token symbols, a table showing amounts of rare ferns for different character types and token values, and instructions on how to influence game scores.
Page from a game rulebook or guide detailing trading instructions for an in-game activity involving tokens, fern cards, and specific actions for morning and evening affairs.
Page from a game rulebook titled 'End of the game' with instructions and scoring table, featuring types of tokens and point values.
An instruction page for a fantasy board game showing a list of components including game boards, cards, tokens, player aide cards, courier, estate, and wardian cases, with an illustration of the game board at the top.
A chart titled 'Iconography' displaying symbols for different regions of Britain and Ireland and their meanings. Regions include Lower Scotland, Upper Scotland, Upper Ireland, Upper Britain, Lower Ireland, Central Britain, Wales, and Lower Britain. S
A collection of eight illustrated cards, each with a different color and pattern, labeled with regions of the United Kingdom: Lower Scotland, Upper Scotland, Upper Ireland, Upper Britain, Lower Ireland, Central Britain, Wales, and Lower Britain, on a
A blank map with a decorative border and pastel colors, showing parts of Ireland and England.
A colorful map of Europe with decorative borders and a grid at the bottom. The map highlights the regions of the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Scandinavia, and parts of northern Europe, with routes marked by numbered dots connecting various locati
Screenshot of a collection or research application interface with instructions for specimen collection and research steps, including sections labeled 'Morning Matters' and 'Evening Affairs', and research spaces.
Screenshot of a game instructions page titled "The Witch: Madam Belinda Rosewood". Contains sections on actions such as Forage, Travel, Enchant, Convert, Activate, Craft, Store, Draw, and Discard, with detailed descriptions. There is a setup section
Screenshot of a digital board game called "The Aristocrat" with game instructions, setup steps, and game phases like Morning Matters and Evening Affairs. The background is red with decorative patterns.
Screenshot of a game setup page titled 'The Merchant: Evelina Fairweather'. The page includes instructions for drawing and trading for rare ferns, with a grid showing token types and quantities. There are sections labeled 'Setup', 'Morning Matters',