More good times with the Rancid Vibes Cards!
Having a deck of Kipperkarten and a deck of Zigeunerwahrsagekarten and a deck of Rancid Vibes Cards, and a 1-metre cutting mat to work on, I am comparing my decks:
First, the cards in all three decks, either with the exact same names or with very very close names (eg "Falsehoods" and "A false person")
I also threw in some Lenormands with the same names, where they really stood out to me, and then I gave up because the board is only so big and my patience is only so finite:
Geschenk//gift, Tod//death, Kind//child, Richter//judge, Falschheit//falsehood, Traurigkeit//sadness, Glück//luck, Reise//journey, Offizier//officer, Haus//house (I will ramble about this later!), Gedank//thoughts, Brief//letter
Then the cards in two decks, with the same or similar names and a couple of interesting thematic contrasts:
The Zigeunerwahrsagekarten and Rancid Vibes Cards share the following:
Geld//cash, Liebe//love, Eifersucht//jealousy, Treue//truth, Frohlichkeit//Happiness, Botschäft//message, Witwe//widow (And then the Zigeunerwahrsagekarten also has Witwer//widower)
Kipperkarten and Rancid Vibes Cards share only (Wohn)Zimmer//parlour uncomplicatedly, without the card also appearing in the ZWK.
And Kipperkarten and Zigeunerwahrsagekarten share Dieb//thief, Krankheit//sickness and Hoffnung//hope (using the same anchor/water motif as the Lenormand too)
But then there's these interesting half-shares:
Both Rancid Vibes and Kipper have a "Change" card where the Zigeunerwahrsagekarten have a "Stability" card: Unbestandigkeit//bestandigkeit//Veränderung
And then the Money cards in Rancid Vibes and Kipper - There was already a Geld card in both, but Reichtum//riches and "Unverhofftes Geld//Unexpected Money" and "Viel Geld Gewinnen//Winning a lot of money" feel very different - Riches could be anything, could be the result of a plan working out, but both of the ones in Kipper sound like just unexpected passive luck.
And finally, in this section, the love cards:
Rancid Vibes' "Liebesverhältnis//Love affair" is very different from both Zigeunerwahrsagekarten and Kipperkarten's Ehestandigskarte//Wedlock Card and Heirat//Marriage, but is maybe closer to Kipper's "Gute ausgang in der Liebe//Good Outcome In Love" and "Zusammenkunft//togetherness" - That's another thing that points me towards this being a Weimar era deck: The fashionable thing to want isn't marriage and a baby, it's a passionate affair. Notably absent is any card explicitly about marriage, at all, even though there is Love, Jealousy and Affair.
More of the near-matches and conversations:
Baldigst//Soon and the Lange Weg//Long Way and Erwartung//Waiting - The Rancid Vibes' promise of something imminent and fast, feels like the opposite of the Kipperkarten's reminder to be patient.
Likewise Geschäft//Business, contrasted with the blue collar Arbeit//work, illustrated with farmers digging the earth, and The ambiguous Gericht//Focus on a business in a town.
And finally Haus/house, of both Rancid Vibes and Zigeunerwahrsagekarten, which I keep mentally relating to the Big House, the Gefangnis//prison of Kipper in contrast to the comfort or privacy of the Zimmer//room.
And the querents, or the other people who might appear in the Große Tafel: The Lover and Beloved or Hauptperson 1&2, the Querent and their other half, are consistent, but the others aren't, exactly - The ZWK don't have more cards for more people, other than the Widow and Widower, but both the RVC and the Kipper both have six total people:
The Witwe//widow in RVC and ZWK, which also has Witwer//widower, but then the RVC has the Alte Dame//Old Lady - Is the Blonde Dame the twin of the Rich Girl or the Good Lady, or neither? Likewise the Grosser Herr - Is he a Guter Herr//Good Man or a Reiches Herr//Rich Man?
Then there's the cards that don't quite match up at all between decks:
In the Kipper: Kummer//Grief, Traube Gedanken//Cloudy thoughts (Which could be related to the Gedanken that all three decks already have), and "Zu hohes Ehren kommen//To come into hogh honours"
In the Rancid Vibes: The very ambiguous Gewinn//Win and Schicksal//Fate
And the Zigeunerwahrsagekarten has eight: Loss, Desire, Visit, Unexpected Joy (Potentially related to the Unverhofftes Geld//Unexpected Money of the Kipper?), Misfortune (One possible reading of that Schicksal//Fate above, actually), Enemy, Ecclesiastic (Perhaps he's a spiritual Judge?) and Anger.
In total:
The RVC has more cards in common with the ZWK than with the Kipper, but the setup of the Querents and people is more like in the Kipper, and then the ZWK has more cards that completely don't match either the Kipper or the RVC.
So... I still don't know! I'd expected to find that it would be very similar to one of the existing two decks, just missing a few cards, not that it would be a weird synthesis of the two. I wish I had the instruction book that came with it, to explain how it was meant to be read - I assume a Große Tafel, reading all the cards at once in a grid, because of all those people cards, but I just don't know.
If anyone else does - or can think of other decks to compare it to - Give me a shout!
