Tarot Encounter Decks

[Dean]

I had a really good idea today about Tarot card based encounter generation. I wanted to farm out to the community if people have seen/made anything like that I could take a look at. Ideally without sending anyone money. If you own anything of the like feel free to PM me about it as well.

I think it could be a good method to create all sorts of content as long as you added some writing to the cards to make it more clear than "3 of Wands" or whatever. You'd keep the tarot card overall vibe but we could just print "Ambition, Greed, Monster" on it to make it clear what you were generating.

[...You Lost Me]

I don't really understand what you mean. Like a d78 where you pull a card and get a themed monster encounter? That sounds like a fun thing for an adventure module at least.

[Orca]

Pathfinder has its own off-brand tarot, a 54-card deck called the harrow. There's at least one module based on that.

[OgreBattle]

I had a really good idea today about Tarot card based encounter generation. I wanted to farm out to the community if people have seen/made anything like that I could take a look at. Ideally without sending anyone money. If you own anything of the like feel free to PM me about it as well.

I think it could be a good method to create all sorts of content as long as you added some writing to the cards to make it more clear than "3 of Wands" or whatever. You'd keep the tarot card overall vibe but we could just print "Ambition, Greed, Monster" on it to make it clear what you were generating.

There's different ways to do a tarot spread, each card usually has a thematic link like "past present future" "obstacle solution", "finance, love, muscles, peer opinion" etc.

Trying to remember how I've had it read...

1 card at the north is "The Past"
1 card at the center is "Obstacle",
1 card laid on top of it is "Key"
1 card at the south is "The future"

So for an encounter you can use that as what kind of obstacle is in the way, what kind of key is needed to bypass it, but also info on how that obstacle came to be and what lies beyond the obstacle.

There are various websites with the various Major Arcana readings. I'd suggest not using minor arcana as they're not as evocative, just numbers. Here's some spreads:
https://psychiclibrary.com/tarot-card-spreads/

You can make up spreads for dungeoneering, like let's say "5 Room Dungeon" is a spread
Card 1: Entrance & Guardian
Card 2: Puzzle or Roleplay challenge (non combat basically)
Card 3: Combat or Puzzle or Roleplay OR a trick/setback false victory
Card 4: Boss fight
Card 5: Treasure Room and hook to next adventure

I'm drawing some cards here: https://randomtarotcard.com/TheTower.html so...

1: Tower (Crisis, Danger), heroes must find entrance to magic tower, gargoyle guardians
2: Magician (Skill), encounter another adventurer who barely made it in
3: Fool (New Beginning), turns out this tower is actually entrance to great underground labyrinth
4: Hermit (Solitude, Introspection), builder of the tower to seal the labyrinth
5: Hanged Man (Sacrifice, Stasis), rescue a man that was to be sacrificed or get some time magic mystery thingy

That's a pretty neat adventure, has a lonely feel. Someone else would come up with a different adventure. Having very specific outcomes is something that various random tables and online adventure generators already do, so the fun of tarot is seeing what you see in the cards.

[erik]

So take every tarot card and give them 4 options each depending upon their location? Or do you want further interaction where death as key and tower as obstacle have special meaning? Probably not tenable to do that with all cards but you could have a few special symbols that cause something weird when they show up together on a “reading”. I’d be tempted to design the tarot cards as squares bisected into 4 squares themselves. Then you can just rotate them to the appropriate corner for their location.

It’s not in keeping with laying the key on top of the obstacle but you could instead lay them as diamonds on the table in 4 cardinal directions like a hazmat warning for easy reading.

[GnomeWorks]

Pathfinder has its own off-brand tarot, a 54-card deck called the harrow. There's at least one module based on that.

Having played through that module, I don't recommend it. The premise is... not great, and it's kind of a slog, especially if you don't care about their tarot-knockoff.

[Dean]

So take every tarot card and give them 4 options each depending upon their location? Or do you want further interaction where death as key and tower as obstacle have special meaning?

Yes to the former, spot on, no to the latter. Ogrebattle's stuff is super helpful too. Let me sketch out my idea.

Imagine you have a tarot card, it means some bullshit that tarot card people have decided where 2 of Wands means "An upcoming journey" or whatever the fuck. But we also make it so that the imagery on the card indicates the following things

Threat: How far above or below your CR is this threat
Number: How many threats and/or scope and breadth of your opposition
Type: Humanoid, Animal, Undead?
Encounter Type: A combat encounter, a social encounter, a fortified foe, an ambush, a stealth encounter?

So that's 4 things. Threat level, number, type of being, and type of encounter. To imagine it in a completely sterile way imagine it just looks like this...

2 of Wands
Threat: -2 CR
Number: 2
Type of Foe: Flying
Type of Encounter: Ambush

To generate an encounter you would draw cards based on how much information you want the cards to generate. Imagine you drew 5 cards to generate an encounter for your group. If they were all 2 of Wands then that encounter would be an ambush by a duo of flying creatures who are each -2CR below you whilst you were preparing for a journey. With lots of different cards you could create a kind of combinatorial encounter creator. The tarot element allows it to be used for free-form roleplaying suggestions and the game information elements allow it to be used for concrete information.

Finally, and arguably most importantly, you would not just list a bunch of numbers on a boring ass garbage card. You would make an art piece that the DM was informed how to read. Where the word "Flying" is on the border in one quadrant along and in that same quadrant of the image there's a flying creature. And "Ambush" is written on the border in another quadrant along with a picture that looks like an ambush. In this way the players could see the DM flipping tarot cards and seemingly reading meaning from the art pieces in a way they can sort of get intuitively, even if they haven't learned the system. It's a very intuitive and beautiful way to do encounter generation.

[PhoneLobster]

So to be clear.

Your plan is to do something that is mechanically the same as, except for where it is objectively strictly inferior to, rolling on encounter tables.

Only its Tarot. Only it's not because it doesn't really work like that, nor do you really particularly seem to care for the whole tarot thing and its meanings.

And also the cards are not actually Tarot cards they are cards with words and pictures unrelated to Tarot on them.

And also it will be spooky and mystical for players as they watch the GM "mysteriously" take the meaning of "flying creature" from the word flying and a picture of a god damn pegasus.

Lets just say right. Lets just say. I'm... unimpressed with this concept on every level.

[Dean]

That's cool. I've had you on ignore for years. Stop posting in my threads, you haven't said anything valuable in years. Thanks for the input, fuck off now.

[PhoneLobster]

And at that I'd normally just walk and let this die from it's own dumb.

But I want to ask. Is this the current standard of the Den?

[Dean]

PL, I didn't read whatever you wrote, I won't read the next one. Fuck off. You don't need to deliver a parting speech about me ignoring your advice. Lets show you've grown and don't need direct instructions from Forum Daddy to take a pretty obvious cue. Lets see if you can go one thread without needing to get kicked out in the title. Fuck off, thanks. Bye.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Jesus christ, man. Chill out.

[Dean]

You should be clearer who you’re speaking to, but if it is me I will say only that this thread has a goal incompatible with another discussion of why everything should be Mousetrap. It could be described as a thread that desires to...

I dunno, produce new content?

[virgil]

I can't contribute much, since I've spent enough time in my life being on the edge of turning into a bitter atheist (glad I haven't) that I reflexively avoid even thinking about tarot cards. I don't have that urge anymore, but it's left my mental background kind of empty of considerations about it.

However, a quick Google search is giving me something that might help you.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheSc ... tor_tarot/

[deaddmwalking]

So if you try to put everything into a single card, you have to actually learn the cards, and that's both pretty difficult and pretty limiting.

If you make the 2 of wands represent:

Threat: -2 CR
Number: 2
Type of Foe: Flying
Type of Encounter: Ambush

You need to do something like that for every single card in the deck. In a standard Tarot reading, the placement of the cards in conjunction with the card determines the reading - a 2 of wand represents future planning (or reversed fear of the unknown/lack of planning), but that means something a little different if it refers to your past or your future.

A full Tarot reading would be overkill, but I think having four cards might work, keeping the tarot idea that cards that are upside down effectively reverse their meaning.

I'd suggest something like

Party Circumstances
Nature/Power of Opposition
Outside influences

So if you pull 'Castle' for Party Circumstances, they have some type of defensive advantage, while if it is reversed, the enemy does. Using suits for type with major arcana as specific encounters can work - ie, a 5 of Pentacles could represent a CR 5 undead encounter, while a 5 of Cups could represent an CR Aberration. Using two cards (one for power and one for type) might be worthwhile, too... Rather than making it equal to the CR, I'd probably use something like a 6 is equal to the party CR, with every step above or below equal to +1/-1 CR (ie, a 10 would be CR +4 versus the party level.

In just one Monster Manual, there are more than 70 creatures, and if you consider combinations it's far more than you can create with a 1:1 correspondence to cards. If there are two cards for opposition, that can mean something if the two match suit versus different suits - ie, one type of opposition or multiple types of creatures. If wands mean 'natural creatures' and swords means 'humanoids', opposition that has humanoids and natural creatures could be wolf-riding goblins. You still wouldn't be able to say 'this card plus this card is ALWAYS goblins and wolves', but knowing the CR that it is supposed to correspond to and the general type should stimulate your thinking...

Ultimately, that's what I'd see this tool as doing - helping you develop an encounter based on themes rather than specific opposition. It would be difficult to use 'on the fly' - unless you're very familiar with the monsters and their tactics, it might be difficult to run a detailed encounter without preparation in advance. Consequently, I think this would work best as an informal DM session planning tool - it adds some random chance and some interpretation, so laying it out will lead you to create creative situations that you probably wouldn't do otherwise... They're effectively creative writing prompts - when you, as the DM, could do ANYTHING it's easy to get analysis paralysis - using this as a tool to start deciding what is going to drive the next story could be worthwhile.

Tarot can suggest things like 'a person from the past' or 'a difficult choice among only bad options'. Those might not be things you'd create from scratch, but once the cards suggest you use one of those things, you may have some ideas based on things the PCs have already done. In that sense, it offers more than a simple encounter table could.

[Dean]

I can't contribute much, since I've spent enough time in my life being on the edge of turning into a bitter atheist
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheSc ... tor_tarot/

First of all this is bonkers helpful and I'm gonna be working my way through it. Second, as a bitter atheist let me make a spoiler about that

IMO, lean into it baby! There's much more enjoyment in religiosity once you're an absolute atheist. I consistently find I have more interest and love and joy for a given religious mythos than the followers I try to talk to about it. The religion didn't come attached to people pointing guns at me in mosques or priests demand I love a being that hates me so there's no negativity when I read about it. There's beautiful things in the bible or in hindu myth or greek myth or whatever the fuck and many of those things are very important to me but the religious don't know them cause they're not allowed to talk about their thing except in the one way their tribe allows. If you can look at them as myth and completely separate your studies of them from the people demanding you to dress like they do and hand them your money and let them fuck your wife then it's all actually pretty awesome stuff. If you want to enjoy religious or supernatural material more then I might recommend intaking some beautiful religiously styled texts like Thus Spake Zarathustra or Creature of Light and Darkness or even some Yung. Once you realize religion is secular and the divide is just hokum there's no more bite in it.

To Deaddm I really like that framing of circumstances and themes along with reversals. I particularly like the sort of "Humanoids" "Animals" thing where you're allowed to interpret that as warg riding goblins, or hunters with dogs, or werewolves. That was exactly how I was thinking of it. If we give people prompts then they will interpret those prompts to fit the narrative and then we don't have to have the 2E D&D thing where swamps, forests, backroads, mountains, and fens all have different d100 lists of monsters. Human+Animal is hunters near a town, werewolves in a haunted woods, and warg riders in the fens.

I'm gonna hack together a test case of this and play with it a little at home so that while we're talking a concrete example can be created and shown.

[Thaluikhain]

I'm a bit vague on what you are trying to do and why you are using a modified tarot deck. What's wrong with random encounter tables? I mean, that would be less wrong this way, there's often a lot wrong.

Is this to be cool, or because it has mechanical or thematic links to other things in the game?

[Eikre]

I think I can see more merit in playing with this idea than just "well it's basically just like rolling on an encounter table using a d78."

I'm imagining a campaign where the players are the ones pulling the cards, but the DM is the only one that actually knows what's on the encounter table. Now the tarot deck is genuinely casting vague portents for the players to interpret. If you winnow the deck down a little bit so that they can expect to see repeat draws over the course of the campaign then they can establish a little pattern recognition in addition to their intuitive expectations based on the cards' nominal themes. They might never realize that your 7 of Swords represents an anti-hero who can actually be bargained with instead of fought, but they might pick up on the fact that the guy who shows up when you pull that shit always seems to have sneak attack dice.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

How is that different from making players roll a die with some funny-looking symbols on it?

[Dean]

Because UI is massively important and, all things considered, contributes more to people's enjoyment of a product than the mechanical underpinnings. Would you feel the same way about the pokemon franchise if all the mechanics were identical but it lacked beautiful ui? Would you have enjoyed picking between the Entity 1, Entity 2, and Entity 3 at the start of the game after reading through their statistics about how each entities damage profiles double against entities of +1 number to them? No you wouldn't, you would have turned the game off and never cared about the underlying mechanics because you only care about the mathematical underpinnings because the UI was beautiful enough to make you willing to read through all the bullshit stats and charts that make the engine go. You loved the beauty, the art, not the numbers.

We're not math designers we're game designers. We design games here, games. A human pastime, often social, to be spent in enjoyment and fun. There is absolutely a difference to the human beings playing your game if you generate their random encounter with a d78 and one where you draw and lay down a beautiful card for "Priest" and then another for "Death" and another for "Ritual" and then, because you've drawn Priest/Death/Ritual your players come upon a clearing where a Dread Necromancer stands surrounded by cultists on a dais, preparing to perform a ritual sacrifice to ascend to Lichdom.

There will be a moment among the actual human entities you are playing the game with when you draw the DEATH card because they know that, besides undead or spooky thematics, it also means +6CR for the encounter. They will have the same sort of reactions they have when someone rolls a nat 20 or any of that shit. Where something happens and they experience emotions through the medium of your collective storytelling. Y'know, the fucking reason we show up to play.

Yes this is fucking different than rolling a d78 behind a screen and then telling your players they've been eaten by a grue.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

You're being a little presumptive, but I see what you're getting at. People like looking at pretty art, so we should have more of it. Makes sense.