Obsession: Promotional Cards

About this expansion

Obsession: Promotional Cards is a 2019 addition for 1–4 players that adds two user-designed guests to the base game Obsession, with play lasting about 90 minutes.

These promotional cards feature two Victorian personalities, also described as gentry, each with a distinctive in-game benefit. Lady Mary Shelton is a stunning and eligible prestige guest who lets players add an additional male guest to any activity she attends.

Aston Webb is a renowned architect with a different advantage: he allows players to acquire an improvement from the marketplace at no charge. Together, the cards introduce two clearly different ways to support a player’s plans during the game.

• Lady Mary Shelton: Add an additional male guest to any activity she attends.
• Aston Webb: Acquire an improvement from the marketplace at no charge.

The cards originated in a five-month BoardGameGeek user design project. Users submitted ideas for Victorian personalities with novel benefits, eighteen prototypes were developed, and a vote selected these two cards from among the top vote-getters.

The project was connected to two errata in the base game’s player aids. Rather than provide an online print-file correction, the publisher reprinted the two affected player aids, four copies of each. While preparing the card template, the publisher invited backers to develop their own cards as an apology for the error, resulting in the two contest-winning cards included in Obsession: Promotional Cards.