Canon: TCG — The Liberal Arts Trading Card Game
Discover, collect, and play the liberal arts canon. Canon: TCG is a trading card game built from the ground up to be played, traded, and lived with, the way Lorcana or Magic: The Gathering players build decks as a serious hobby. The difference is what's on the cards.
Instead of fantasy creatures, you're playing with the actual figures, texts, concepts, and discoveries of the liberal arts canon. Plato. Shakespeare. Hildegard of Bingen. Karl Marx. Jane Austen. Einstein. Dostoevsky.
The Kickstarter funds two things: original card art by real human artists, and the first print run, a selection of philosophers from the canon. The figures, texts, and concepts on this site are the wider canon in development for future sets, and not everything shown is part of the Kickstarter.
Who is Canon: TCG for?
Parents and homeschoolers. Teachers. Tabletop gamers. Lifelong learners. Anyone who thinks learning should be a social pastime.
The Kickstarter more than doubled its goal in 12 hours
The Canon: TCG Kickstarter went live on October 3, 2026 and more than doubled its funding goal in the first 12 hours. The campaign is still open for backers at kickstarter.com/projects/canontcg/canon-tcg.
The rules are written and the game is playtested. CanonFest 2026 on McKerracher Family Farm put promotional prototype cards on the table and ran the first tournament. Now the campaign is paying for original human-made art and the first print run.
Featured Historical Figures
Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) — Military and Political History. Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) — Theology, Natural Philosophy, Music. Karl Marx (1818-1883) — Philosophy, Political Economy. Plato (c. 428-348 BC) — Philosophy. Aristotle (384-322 BC) — Philosophy, Natural Science. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) — Philosophy. Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) — Philosophy. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) — Theology, Philosophy. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) — Philosophy. William Shakespeare (1564-1616) — Literature, Drama.
Six Historical Eras
Ancient (Pre 200 AD), Medieval (200-1400), Early Modern (1400-1760), Industrial (The 1800s), Imperial (20th Century), Cyber (1992-Present).
Canon: TCG is designed by David McKerracher, founder of Theory Underground and author of Timenergy: Why You Have No Time or Energy (Foreword by Slavoj Žižek).
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