Tarot Crawling

I've uploaded a new set of rules to itch.io that use Tarot cards to prep and then run a wilderness area for exploration. The reason I'm linking it here is that the last page of the zine describes the primary function of bells within Gelgelim.

I've written about bells before. As a quick recap, bells ward off bad things (thieves, storms, spirits, witches, bad luck, demons, etc.), but it is difficult to model that at the table unless these warded-against forces actually plague the characters. And I'm not interested in making my players' lives more stressful in their urban interactions. However, by assigning 'bad luck' types of events to Tarot cards, which I present in the zine as an alternative to random(ish) encounters, I find a use for bells.

Bells make traveling more safe by reducing the chances of bad things happening. Different modalities and melodies ward off different things, and better bellringers can choose to weave together these modalities and melodies to abjure against more things at once. At the table, the player chooses some number of cards to avoid from a pre-selected list (boginky, spirits, delaying circumstances, catastrophe, traveling accident, and a few others). If I would reveal that card while the characters travel, I instead shuffle it back into the deck. If I draw that card again, the bells have no effect.

Silver bells repel boginky, both the card that invokes them and, if encountered anyways, will keep them at bay as long as the bells sound.

An Addendum for Character Creation

When I was first looking at the wealth of material on Alexis’ blog, I was struck by the detail in the character background generator, which compares a d20 roll to a character’s attributes, filling in part of the character’s history (with accompanying mechanical impacts). I loved the concept, but implementing it in my own game was rather difficult, as I have 5 ability scores, ranging from 1 to 6. When I started using cards for hirelings, I also removed dice rolling, instead placing cards in a 5x3 grid, summing the rows to generate a number between 3 and 30 that I converted to 1-6 in a bell curve.

It struck me recently that I could use tarot cards to accomplish a similar result, with some added interpretive benefits. I present the following set of rules as an add-on to the character creation process. They flesh out a character’s personal relationships and history with enough vagueness for the Facilitator and players to come to a mutual understanding about the impacts of this history on the game. The cards identify 5-6 individuals important to the character. For games that avoid inter-player conflicts like Prodigy and most D&D-adjacent games, I recommend allowing different characters to have NPCs in common but have another person’s character as one of these 5-6 individuals. For more storytelling-focused games, do what you will.

The mechanical implications of this are simple. Each character has a heart card that typifies them. Whenever that heart card appears in a card mechanic later in the game, it means that the character has a personal stake in the events transpiring. If the heart card appears in the player’s hand, this personal connection works in their favor and grants a benefit. If it is played against them, the character immediately loses or takes some penalty.

The Deck: one tarot deck (78 cards)

Shuffle the deck and have the player draw 1 card at a time. One character can be generated at a time from one deck (shuffle between readings).

The first card is the Heart card. This determines how others perceive your character at first glance. It also determines the character’s birth month. I use 13 lunar cycles in my world and have assigned them accordingly. Each lunar cycle shares the first letter with the solar month it resembles, with Equivocation as the 13th month (the change between wet and dry seasons happens halfway through Equivocation).

We next lay out a 5x3 grid:

We sum each row to get our attributes. Most Tarot cards have a number (aces are 1). Court cards are assigned a value based upon their station: Page is 1, Knight is 2, Queen is 4, and King is 8. We convert these sums to attributes as following:

From this point forward, we interpret the cards to infer a character’s personal background. This reading is performed as the character reaches adulthood, before they choose a trade. It does not force a character down a certain path, but players should feel free to let the cards suggest a profession.

Cards 3, 8, 13 represent the character’s past, present, and goals, respectively.

Cards 1, 6, and 11 reflect the character’s social circle, their kin (chosen family or biological relationships). The first card describes this network overall. The second corresponds to the character’s connection with the social circle. Card 11 indicates the person in this social circle with which the character is closest.

Cards 2, 7, and 12 further explore the social circle. Card 2 personifies the leader of the group. Card 7 reflects the group’s emotional core, and card 12 typifies a member of the group lurking on the group’s fringes.

The social circle has at least 3 members (as card 11 might correspond to cards 2, 7, or 12). Its full size is equal to the number of adjacent pairs of cards in the spread of the same suit (major arcana acts as its own suit). Adjacency works along a grid axis, so no diagonals.


Cards 4, 9, and 14 correspond to a mentor or guiding figure, someone who has had a large impact on the character but remains distant. Card 4 describes this person as they relate to the character, while card 9 indicates their occupation. Card 14 details this figure’s current status – their goals and life circumstances.


Cards 5, 10, and 15 encompass a long-standing and significant relationship. Card 5 describes a formative shared experience that bonded the character to this person. Card 10 explicates the current relationship between the character and this person, while card 15 indicates this person’s current goals.

Expanding the Card Mechanic

After teaching my players the Persuasion rules and having them come up several times during the running, I'm pleased to say they worked exactly how I wanted them to, with a few adjustments.

During our discussion after the fact about the new mechanic, one of my players suggested I find other uses for it, other skills that's resolution could best be determined through this card process. We brainstormed a list, and I've now a table that lists each skill and the unique failure conditions for each suite and face card (except for Artist, which will need its own table).

	Caravanner	Mechanist	Persuasion	Ritual Mishaps	Wildcrafter	Wrangler
Hearts	Social	Jam	Bitterness	Changed	Tainted food	Defiant
Ace	4 ranks principle	Lock sealed	New enemy	roll 2d4+2d6	Half inedible	Cannot be trained
King	3 ranks principle	4 people to unstick	Followers, hirelings accosted	roll 2d4+1d6	Third inedible	4x time to retry
Queen	2 ranks principle	3 people to unstick	Party waylaid	roll 1d4+1d6	Quarter inedible	3x time to retry
Jack	1 rank principle	2 people to unstick	Reputation tarnished	roll 1d6	Quarter inedible	2x time to retry
Diamonds	Add card	Break pick	Bribery	Greedy	Misidentified	As hearts
Ace	ranks +2	Break 4	Bribe as 14	4x	All weeds	Unbroken
King	ranks +1	Break 3	Bribe as 13	3x	75% weeds	4x time
Queen	ranks +1	Break 2	Bribe as 12	3x	50% weeds	3x time
Jack	ranks +1	Break 2	Bribe as 11	2x	50% weeds	2x time
Clubs	Physical	Noise	Violence	Drained	Broken gear	Feral
Ace	4 ranks principle	6d6 yards	All-out assault	1 injury	8 pieces	Eats people
King	3 ranks principle	6d4 yards	Kidnapping	Take 3 damage	6 pieces	Attacks people
Queen	2 ranks principle	4d6 yards	New faction involved	Take 2 damage	4 pieces	Afraid of people
Jack	1 rank principle	4d4 yards	Lodgings assaulted	Take 2 damage	2 pieces	Retry +1 cards
Spades	Mental	Slowed	Negation	Flawed	Infected	As clubs
Ace	4 ranks principle	Quadruple time spent	Negate and duplicate	Higher tier ritual	Take 1 injury	Eats people
King	3 ranks principle	Triple time spent	Negates 3	All random	Take 3 damage	Attacks people
Queen	2 ranks principle	Double time spent	Negates 2	Random ritual	Take 2 damage	Afraid of people
Jack	1 rank principle	Double time spent	Negates 2	Random focus	Take 1 damage	Retry +1 cards

We'll integrate these into our game the next time we play and see how things turn out.

Persuasion, redux

I wrote previously about my rules on persuasion, a set of rules designed around brokering deals. In my last running, the party was asked to relieve the sadness of the inhabitant of a mysterious tower. My players were unaware of the rules, and I totally neglected to teach them to my players. As I was thinking about it, I came up with a different approach that feels cleaner, well-differentiated from combat, and also far more specific.

I already have a deck of cards as part of my running materials, as we play blackjack whenever my players gamble. That let me to think about other ways I could use the cards during play, and the application to persuasion came in one of those post-midnight flashes of insight. The following approach is indebted to the Russian card game дурак and Zak Sabbath's use of the tarot deck in Demon City.

These rules come into effect whenever the players make a reasonable request of an NPC. Reasonable here means the request is not inherently absurd, impossible, etc. Asking a city watch member to let the party pass is a reasonable request, while asking an innkeeper to believe the party are incarnated gods is not.

Representing the NPC's resistance to the suggestion, the Facilitator will draw, facedown, a number of cards from the deck equal to the NPC's Ascetic tier (1 for Novice, 2 for Apprentice, and so on). The first card drawn represents the NPC's fundamental resistance to the request. If an ace, the attempt fails. If not an ace, the card's suit determines the trump for that person. The player's Grokist skill then allows them to flip cards over, in the order the Facilitator drew them (one card revealed per Grokist tier).

The requesting player will then draw a number of cards equal to their Orator tier, reflecting the arguments available to them at the moment. The player must then choose a number of their cards to play against the NPC's resistance. If they can't match the number of NPC cards, the check immediately fails. If they can match the number of cards, the Facilitator will reveal all of the NPC's cards. In order to succeed, the player must be able to "beat" every displayed card.

In order to beat a card, the player's card must match suit and have equal or greater numerical value (aces are high) or belong to the trump suite.

Each suite corresponds to a persuasion tactic, and the trump suite reflects the strategy to which the NPC is most vulnerable.
Hearts - charm or seduce
Diamonds - bribe
Spades - rationalize
Clubs - threaten

Accordingly, the players can modify some of their cards.
Hearts and Spades values are immutable, but the player may discard a card (either played or unplayed) to change the suite of a card within color (heart to diamond) or to raise an immutable card's value as though it were the other suite (increasing a spade through the mechanic used to increase a club).
Diamond values are increased through spending money. Playing a diamond card requires an initial investment based upon the day rate of the current city, and doubling that amount increases the value of the diamond by 1.
Club values are increased by the persuading character's companions. Each companion with at least 1 rank in Combatant can be used to increase a club's value by 1, once (that is, if the player needs to increase two different clubs by 1, their character need two companions, one per card). However, the number of companions unused must always exceed the NPC's number of companions (if attempting to persuade 4 guards, the persuading character must have more than 4 companions to spend them increasing club values).

If the player beats the NPC's cards, the NPC accedes to the request. If the player fails, the consequences depend upon the undefeated cards.

Hearts leave the NPC embittered towards the PC, and the value on the card represents the feeling's intensity. A number card (2-10) indicates the number of days the NPC will remember the incident - anytime the party encounters the NPC's faction, that NPC will be present and interfere as much as possible (all tests are hard).
Jack: the NPC hires a band of imposters to tarnish the party's reputation.
Queen: the NPC hires a band of brigands to waylay the party and take their stuff.
King: the NPC targets the party's followers and hirelings, forcing them to make a morale roll. If they fail, their morale increases by 1.
Ace: the NPC allies with an enemy of the party or becomes a new antagonist.
Diamond failures require the party to pay through the nose to avoid the Hearts result. The value on the card equals the number of doublings of the daily rate required to assuage the NPC (so, a 4 of Diamonds means the players must pay 16 * the daily rate). The Jack, Queen, King, and Ace are equal in value to 11, 12, 13, and 14, respectively.
Clubs make the NPC belligerent. For number cards (2-10), if the NPC has Combatant ranks, roll 1d10. If the result is less than the number, the NPC and their group attacks until someone has taken an injury or another group of individuals intervenes. If the NPC does not have Combatant ranks, they will find someone who does. The number on the card equals the number of people they find interested in teaching the party a lesson.
Jack: the NPC trashes the party's lodgings.
Queen: the NPC motivates a new faction to take action against the party.
King:the NPC attempts to kidnap someone about whom the party cares.
Ace: the NPC commits everything they have into subduing the party.
Undefeated spades neutralize the player's cards. A number card removes a player's card of lesser numerical value (player's choice).
Jack: neutralizes two cards below Jack
Queen: neutralizes three cards below Queen
King: neutralizes four cards below Queen
Ace: neutralizes all cards and copies the penalty of the highest red card.

Final notes
If there are multiple failures of the same suit, all penalties stack if possible. For clubs, roll for each card. Each additional roll indicating combat attracts an additional fighter to the fray.
NPCs with no ranks in Ascetic cannot defend with face cards or aces - if such a card is drawn, return it to the deck and draw again. This ensures there aren't inordinate penalties to interacting someone without the actual capacity to hinder the party.
Shuffle the Jokers into the deck. If the Joker is trump, the NPC agrees to the request immediately. Any card defeats a defending Joker, and Jokers cannot be played to defeat other cards.
Until the consequence of the persuasion attempt has occurred and a new day has begun, the party may not attempt to persuade the same person(s) again.