tarot and narration mechanic idea

[Emily Care]

Hello all,

This weekend I got to take part in a multi-person tarot reading session, which seemed like it might be adaptable for use in rpg.  

One person is the Querent. They shuffle the cards, and fan them out, having all others (there was a group of 5-6 taking part) pick a card randomly. The cards picked are kept secret for the moment.  The Querent then asks each participant in turn to answer a question based on their interpretation of the card in hand, and then reveal the card.  Questions asked included all the usual ones that come up in a tarot reading spread: about the past, present, and future of a situation, obstacles, how to proceed and so on.

How I see this applying to rpg mechanics:
The answers that were given built on one another, and were tied together by the common thread of the Querent.  The narrative surrounding a character, event  or premise could be crafted in the same way.  The narration would be distributed among the participants, but since they all relate to the issue at hand being dealt with by the person in the position of the Querent, they could flow together.

The Tarot cards gave material for each person to spring off from in their responses, so that each person had something interesting to contribute even if they had no idea themselves per se about the Querent's question.  

I offer this as a suggestion that others may use or adapt as they would.  

I know there are other mechanics that use Tarot.  I'd be curious to see how others have integrated it into rpg mechanics.

--Emily Care

[lumpley]

Hi Emily!

I'm having a hard time imagining it.  Can you give a quick player A says, player B says, player C says type example?

-Vincent

[Bob McNamee]

This sounds very interesting to me!

Might bypass some of the 'not sure how to start the narration" that we saw in the playtest of my Tarot-based game.

If everyone playing got a card and got to narrate on the current character or action or scene. Could also give the 'focus character' player the choice of first or last narration. in order to either give the others a beginning narration to rif offof, or, to 'have the last word'.

Be a great way to have an all Player game.

[Jared A. Sorensen]

From the "left field department..."

If I were to do a Tarot game, I'd use the Tarot cards as a game board (placed face down) and have the players move around that board. When you land on a card, flip it over. The card then affects the player in some way...the card stays face up until it's landed on by another player (in which case that card is removed and replaced by another random card).

Or something...again with the "or something" from me!

[Paul Czege]

Hey Em,

I think I see how it's supposed to work, and it's very very cool. It gives the whole group input into the direction that game events will proceed from a given conflict. Seems like powerful fuel for player interest in the narratives of other players. I like it a lot. I like how the GM control over outcomes is softened but still significant, in that he gets to decide what the important questions are. There's lots of room for developing it in potentially productive ways too. Perhaps there are circumstances where the GM can peek at a player's card before deciding what questions he'll ask of the players, or maybe exchange his own drawn card with that of one of the players.

The potential downside is that it relies on all the players having some facility with interpreting tarot. Seem like a big issue?

Paul

[Uncle Dark]

Paul,

I dunno about Emily's experience, but it was an issue in my Everway game.  Everway has a 36 card "Fortune Deck," which is designed after the major arcana of the tarot, and is meant to be used similarly to what Emily outlined.

Problem was, many of the players weren't very good at (or perhaps very comfortable with) interpreting the cards into narration.  Many times, there was an exchange like:

Player: "I leap from the ship's rigging, aiming for the bad guy in the other boat."
[GM draws fortune card]
GM: "The Smith, reversed.  What do you think happened?"
Player: "What the hell does that have to do with anything?"

Lon

[Emily Care]

Paul--you've twigged it exactly.  The person with the focus character (good term, Bob) holds the lead, but everyone gets involved.   And the "softened" narrative control is really powerful in action.

Player: "I leap from the ship's rigging, aiming for the bad guy in the other boat."
[GM draws fortune card]
GM: "The Smith, reversed.  What do you think happened?"
Player: "What the hell does that have to do with anything?"

Yup, I can see that being a real problem. And the players not being familiar with the symbology of Tarot could be a real issue.  Which deck you use matters.
The folks I was with were using the Robin Wood Tarot.  This deck has fairly detailed and elaborate images for every card--unlike the decks that give you just five wands for that card, and nothing else.  Then you are required to know about the history and associations of the card in order to interpret.  Instead, most of the people I was with were actually looking at the image itself and applying what they saw there, or what it implied to them, to describe the results.  

I don't know what the Everway deck looks like.   I would hope it would have enough detail to help you figure it. Some small part of the image might apply. What I'd do in the case Lon describes is first have the player look at the whole image and see if it suggests something to them about the results. If they really have no idea, I'd open it up to more players--get more input, and brainstorm about it.  Maybe draw another card to give another aspect.  

Another possibility is that the card drawn is introducing an element outside of what's being asked about--the Smith might be shown with arm upraised with hammer in hand, just about to strike.  The interpretation could be that lightning strikes the rigging, just as the character jumps.

It's associational interpretation, giving more leeway for the individual to apply their imagination.  But it does take a different approach than people may be used to.  Practice sessions might be in order with your crew in order to make sure everyone feels empowered to do it, rather than simply blocked by it.

Vincent, do you still want a play-by-play? We could even do a little sample of it here with anybody who wants to play.

Takers?

--Emily Care

[bluegargantua]

Hi,

 Wunderland Games makes a "game" called Icehouse.  Icehouse is really just a set of plastic pyramids.  There are 4 groups of 15 (4 different colors) and each subset of 15 comes in 3 different sizes (5 small, medium and large respectively).  These pyramids are used to play a wide range of games.  One of these games is called Gnostica and it uses a Tarot deck to form the playing field.

http://www.wunderland.com/WTS/Ginohn/games/Gnostica/GnosticaRules.html">You can check out the rules here

later
Tom

[Walt Freitag]

The problem Lon describes appears to me as a sort of "bandwidth matching" issue. I think it's actually a pervasive and under-appreciated issue in resolution system design, but this is a particularly stark example.

In essence, tarot is an excellent system for selecting, from a vast range of possibilities, a much smaller (but still relatively large) range of possibilities.

The "what does that have to do with anything?" question arises when you try to use it to select one specific result from an already small range of possibilities, such as whether the character leaping from the rigging lands on the bad guy, on the bad guy's boat, in the water, crashing to the deck, or dangling in mid-air. With some thought I might be able to come up with a dozen or two significantly different possible outcomes. Let's say 20 in all. A tarot deck draw gives me 78 cards * 2 positions * 3 or more (possibly, many more) levels of meaning per card, so the number of possibilities from the tarot draw is more than the number of possible outcomes I'm selecting from. Even more so, if the only outcomes the player is really interested in distinguishing between are "do I make it or not?"

And even after a card is drawn, the number of different possible interpretations of the card will likely still exceed the number of significantly distinct possibilities I'm choosing from. Swinging from the rigging, I draw "XIII Death": does that mean I die in the attempt? Or that my enemy dies?  Or, since the card is really supposed to mean "change," does it mean my plan changes and I don't swing at all? Or the trajectory of my swing changes and I get tangled in the rigging? Or, since the card's image depicts a figure carrying a scythe, perhaps it means a scimitar-wielding enemy will slice the rope I'm swinging from, causing me to crash to the deck of my own ship? Or, since the image also includes an hourglass, does it mean my swing is mis-timed and I land in the water? Or perhaps the hourglass means my timing is perfect? The space in which I must now interpret the meaning of the card is no smaller than the space of possible outcomes was in the first place.

On the other hand, there are some types of mechanism where the tarot could, I believe, be applied very effectively. One example is making concessions. Choosing a concession involves a vast range of possibilities, including many that might not come easily to mind at the instant of play. A "fate" draw of a tarot card which is then applied as a constraint to the concession made (that is, the concession must be consistent with some plausible interpretation of the card) will simultaneously represent the influence of fate by narrowing the range of choices and point out ideas for types of concessions that the player might not have thought of. The leeway for interpretation of the card's specific meaning in the current context is also beneficial, because it means the player is still free to make a meaningful choice of concessions consistent with protagonization of the character or whatever other goals the player has for the scene.

In short, all the faults that applied above when attempting to use a tarot card instead of a die roll, become benefits when using a tarot card (and its subsequent interpretation by the player) instead of an unbounded player choice.

- Walt

[Emily Care]

Walt's post reminds me of Two-Face in Arkham Asylum, I believe.  A friendly doctor helped him normalize by weaning him off of using a coin to choose between actions, and started him using Tarot to make decisions.  Two-Face ends up hopelessly confused by the multiplicity of choices and reverts back to his old, schizophrenically psychopathic self.  

I can see how a choice that requires only two outcomes (failure or success) could be unnecessarily complicated by using Tarot.  I think that's why the natural response to Lon's example was essentially, "Dunno".   The real question that was asked wasn't "what happens?"--which could have a wide range of outcomes--but "Does the character reach the rigging, and if so is the antagonist hit?"  Unless there is room and desire for some other possiblities, why invoke all the possible interpretations of cards?

This type of mechanic may be suited to "open ended" situations: to generate premise in character gen, to come up with plot or complications.  To state the obvious, the Tarot cards here are just a short cut to my contribution to the Lumpley Principle:  Having something to "interpret" be it a die roll or card functions to make whatever the player decides more credible than a bald choice. It also, as Walt says, helps to narrow the field of choices while preserving player choice, which can be great benefits.  



Tom-thanks for the reference. I'll check it out.

Jared--cool idea. The incident that spawned the idea of  this multi-person reading was when someone did a reading for a single person that involved reading all of the cards in a Tarot deck.  Every card was related to the person being read for in a meaningful way.  Also, the major arcana are often seen to form a narrative of the initiates' journey on the path of magic.  And the major arcana and court cards are often seen as symbolizing individual humans.  There's a lot of material here, to form a basis of narrative and plot.

--EC

[Bob McNamee]

The issue of unfamiliarity with the Tarot would be a big drawback.
I agree that the Deck(s) chosen should be imagery heavy. That was one reason for my using the Voyager Tarot as an example for my Tarot game. Each card is composed of a huge number of assembled photographs.

I always wanted to set up a game where each Player had their own Tarot deck. Specifically picked to relate to their character. The player of the Knight is using the Arthurian Tarot, the Wizard a Waite-Rider deck, the Kzinti is using the Cat People Tarot etc

My thought is that a 'round' of cards should be picked at the start of an action by each player, probably with intent stated. "Sinbad leaps from the rigging, aiming for the badguy on the other boat"
This would work well with a customized deck for each player (it should hopefully keep the symbolism more related to the character).


Then either the 'focus characer' goes first (or decides to go last). A short narration occurs incorporating the chosen card in some way,(imagery symbolism, meaning),possibly including flashbacks etc... this continues around the table until all have gone.

I do expect there could be arguments concerning interpretation, and their would be a question of "How much can you narrate with each Card?" With a GM involved there would at least be a control there.

[clehrich]

Hi.

I ran two versions of a campaign that used Tarot cards for a mechanic.  I'm not going to tout it as the correct answer; just some comments on how it worked and what was and was not successful.  Sorry if this is kind of long.

1. Mechanics

We used 2 different systems, one a pure percentile skill system (so we had occasional die-rolling) and one Theatrix (diceless).  At the start of the session, you were dealt a few cards (3 or 4, I think), and then you acquired more essentially in lieu of x.p.  The cards were Rider-Waite, and I shuffled together 4 packs so that it would be pretty random.  I had a lot of copies of the little stock interpretation booklet that comes with the deck available, as well as two copies of Waite's book on the subject.  Not that I love Waite, but it's pretty familiar to people.

During the session, you could at any moment play a card.  You would put it down, give a very quick sketch of the "official" meaning (5-10 words), and then interpret how you thought the card would apply to the current situation.

The group as a whole generated, without real discussion or anything, a kind of "feel" for this interpretation.  That is, a very boring interpretation intended to save your PC's ass tended to get a "ho hum" response; a very nifty interpretation that complicated the situation would get a "cool" response, and so on.  If the play was considered "cool," you got another card immediately; otherwise not, like whimsy cards from Ars Magica.

As GM, I would then determine the actual effect, which would be based on 3 factors:
A. The stated interpretation
B. The needs of the universe and the plot (see below)
C. The group's feel of the interpretation

So if your play was considered way cool, it would generally work just as you said; if your play was considered way boring, it would generally work, sort of, but not too well.

2. The Universe

The universe was an occult one, and the thing was that there were actually 22 archetypal powers out there.  This was a lot like Tim Powers's book Last Call.  So when you played a Major Arcanum, you were actually invoking the Powers, not just playing cards, so there was a fluid mesh between the players' use of cards and the characters' interactions with the occult universe.  Minor Arcana were pretty much purely player stuff, because I didn't want to work out 78 aspects of the universe in enough detail to be able to have a feel for them.

One important point here was that the players really didn't know much about these archetypal powers, and figuring out how they worked was a big part of the game.

My idea was to have the players doing something analogous to what the PC's were doing, in order to help them "do" the occult in the world.

3. Strengths

I thought that a lot of players pretty quickly got the hang of "cool" card play.  They would see a situation happening, and think, "Hey, I could make this really freaky, and get a chance to see the GM really gob-smacked."  This was especially true with Major Arcana, where you'd be going along with a pretty good scene, the tension building, and then someone would say, "I'm playing the Tower," and everyone would kind of go, "oh boy, that's big, oh boy, let's see what happens now, oh boy."

4. Problems

A. Some players could not get out of the habit of playing cards to "describe" a scene rather than act upon it.  So a PC would be having a romance scene with someone, and another player would play an appropriate Cups card (2, for example), to mean "romance."  Okay, but it doesn't change anything.

B. Cards tended to be thrown in flurries.  When one person made a cool play, everyone wanted to get in on the act, and would throw more cards.  You could rapidly go from no cards to five Major Arcana simultaneously.  I tried various rules to stop this, but it was a strong tendency.

C. The more familiar a player was with Tarot, the better he or she could use the system.  As simple as that.  If you knew the things backwards, you could make the cards dance; if you knew nothing, you either never played anything or just threw big "explosion" cards, like the Tower.

D. Some players tried to use the cards instead of roleplaying, kind of like saying, "Well, I have a 900 skill level in seduction, so I seduce her."  So you'd be building up to a good scene, and someone would just say, "Well, I have this powerful card, so I win."  This was very hard to stop, except that many players disapproved strongly.  Peer pressure was about the only thing that worked.

E. Some players, usually those unfamiliar with Tarot and other occult ideas, had a lot of trouble interpreting things smoothly.  As a result, their plays tended to get a "yeah yeah, whatever" from the group, and those players got frustrated.  I tried at one point putting in a mechanical system to undergird things, i.e. where you could just say, "Well, I don't really get Tarot, but I get that this is worth X points toward Y skill, so I do that," but I found that this massively discouraged interesting card interpretation.

F. Some players would dump their cards very fast.  If you think about the cards as not unlike Theatrix Plot Points, or a similar device, the thing is to hold on to them until they're at their very best moment.  But some players would want to throw a card as soon as it seemed remotely appropriate.  I found that this habit corresponded almost 100% to that of using cards purely mechanically.

--------------------
Just my take on it.

[Emily Care]

Very interesting, Clehric.  That's good experience to go on. Did you find that people could acquire more skill/comfort with the cards as time went on? Or did those who had no clue just stay that way?

I still believe there is room for using simply one's intuition based on the images, regardless of knowledge of Tarot symbolism, due to my experiences with the group reading. Few were using the "standard" meanings--they were spinning  based on their take on the pix.  Might have been the group I was with however. They were all people well versed in tapping into their intuitive powers.  

And of course, there's another thread in Indie RPG Design about Tarot based mechanics here.  

--EC