What is This?
Many games and game systems use the Tarot deck as a conflict resolution mechanism, and many new game masters — and writers — like to turn to the Tarot for inspiration.
The reason for this seems pretty clear: the Tarot deck contains a lot of bold, memorable archetypes. It’s like a hundred-year-old miniaturized version of TvTropes1 that you can roll out in order to generate ideas on the fly. It’s a starting point to help stave off the tyranny of the blank page.
This book is intended to serve as a starting-off point: what do these cards mean? How might I use them in a role-playing game or as writing inspiration?
For each card I try my best to describe the card’s interpretation, as well as lay out some characters, hooks, locations, treasures, and names that might be associated with that card in specific. A lot of these interpretations are also very broad: I’m not here to write your stories for you, just to give you some ideas to riff on.
There are some other considerations you might considerate while drawing these cards:
You can draw more than one card and try to figure out how these concepts work together. Oh, I’ve drawn the Ten of Pentacles and Temperance. An inheritance of self control? Oh, that’s an NPC with a hereditary werewolf curse who is very careful to lock themselves up every full moon. Or a vast cellar full of very expensive wine.
Each card has both an interpretation and a slightly different, “upside-down” interpretation. If drawn upside-down, you’re expected to take the card’s interpretation and give it a dark or nasty twist. The thing is: as a game-master you’re generally expected to be providing a steady supply of dark or nasty twists, so I encourage you to always consider both the positive and negative connotations of a card’s interpretation.