I do love me some sweet, sweet looking Tarot Cards. Are there any cool RPG's that use either the cards themselves as a mechanic, or have Tarot Cards as part of the setting or something like them. I know Amber has the trump cards, and someone made an Imperial Tarot thing for 40k
Mage: The Ascension
The German game Engel had a Tarot-based mechanic, although it was the d20 conversion that was translated to English.
Ravenloft has had its own "Tarokka" deck for fortunetelling. You can find versions in Forbidden Lore or the red-boxed Campaign Setting. (WW did an update for 3rd Edition, but it's pricey as all heck nowadays.) Find the old Dragonlance: Fifth Age game and a copy of DRAGON #240 (and 264 for some improved variants) and you can run the whole game using it as a resolution mechanism. :)
Crimson Cutlass...a truly awesome small press pirate RPG from the late 80s/90s. You used D8s (pieces of 8) and a tarot deck. Sweet memories of great campaigns.
Here's my review
http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/classic/rev_5225.phtml
Here's an old forum post on RPG.net about CC
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?184209-necro-Crimson-Cutlass-rpg
Fortune's fool by Pantheon Press use tarots to resolve actions and power up characters.
It seems a nice fantasy game, though personally I haven't tried it yet (just read the rulebook)
Cadwallon's setting has a deck of Tarot cards that hold mystic power and Tarot Mages who make use of them. IIRC the cards have been scattered and are now in the possession of various powerful NPCs. Given the nature of the game I'm not sure if the details of all the cards has been spelled out... they're powerful artifacts so I'd think they'd see most use as McGuffins to send the PCs after or give them one and see how long they can hold on to it amidst all the power-brokers of the city trying to get it from them.
I use a Tarot-based sanity system for my Mythos investigation games, in lieu of COC's SAN point system. The occult magic system also utilizes the Tarot, although this is still in a state of constant revision.
pathfinder uses a tarrot deck called a harrow deck check the inner sea world guide
Used them from time to time to generate NPC behavior by drawing two random cards from a deck.
The underrated and very short-lived Pre-D&D3 WotC oddity Everway used it's own pseudo-tarot for action resolution. You could easily use a "Real" tarot deck with it instead if you desired.
I dimly remembar that the old RM/MERP module The Court of Ardor had a Tarot-like card game (not the physical thing, just description and card illustrations sprinkled over the whole book).
I don't remember how they were used or integrated in the setting or plot, but they inspired me to "invent" my own set of cards for my second campaign.
The engine of vs. Monsters runs on a regular poker deck, but for more gothic-ness it could switch to Tarot.
(Characters have numbered stats, a check is the draw of [stat] cards, look for the highest card to beat a difficulty - so it's basically a d13 pool system.)
Castle Falkenstein could also be used with a Tarot.
(Characters have stat/skill values, players have a hand of cards and can play one or more cards to add their values to the skill, again trying to beat a difficulty. The system has more bells and whistles, like the card suit has to match the nature of the action, or else the card adds only 1 measly point.)
In both cases you'd have to invent meanings for the High Arcana.
Engel didn't use a proper Tarot but custom cards featuring images and names from the Engel mythos. Also, the game ran only on what would be the High Arcana of a Tarot.
(Cards didn't have numbers. Every action was decided by the draw of a single card which was "read" (= interpreted) in a fortune telling method. This led to results that were hardly ever a simple pass/fail. I honestly don't know why White Wolf chose to ignore the original rules and only translated the d20 part. Maybe they feared that US gamers would find the Engel rules to be more suited for storytelling than the Storyteller system...?)
Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;823637The underrated and very short-lived Pre-D&D3 WotC oddity Everway used it's own pseudo-tarot for action resolution. You could easily use a "Real" tarot deck with it instead if you desired.
I was trying to remember the name of that one. I always thought it looked interesting... if not as a game then as a way to generate ideas (which I've also used a Tarot deck for). For whatever reason I've never seen it in the flesh... so it remains a bit mysterious to me.
Quote from: Simlasa;823695I was trying to remember the name of that one. I always thought it looked interesting... if not as a game then as a way to generate ideas (which I've also used a Tarot deck for). For whatever reason I've never seen it in the flesh... so it remains a bit mysterious to me.
Everway went to the discount bin faster than you could say "Tweet".
WotC killed that game before its release by tying it to the then-recent
MtG release: game stores were required to order a copy of Everway for x Magic display boxes.
So there were shops eager for MtG and they ordered accordingly, but they didn't want that weird RPG. They got rid of it as soon as they received it.
But even proper RPG stores hated the game because it came in a ridiculously oversized box that didn't fit their fixtures.
Add the esoteric design, artwork, and non-traditional mechanics, and you have a game that was bound to fail.
It also didnt help that the box art made it look like a sequel to Myst
Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;823697Everway went to the discount bin faster than you could say "Tweet".
Add the esoteric design, artwork, and non-traditional mechanics, and you have a game that was bound to fail.
Even worse, it had it's own tie-in set of fantasy art cards to use as visual prompts (In play you could ignore them or use any old fantasy art trading cards that you had laying around). This led many role-players to think it was a collectible card game.
Too bad, it was an interesting game, kinda an art student's variant of Amber Diceless.
When Everway came out, I remember not being able to get a seat at any demos of the game at the conventions in SoCal or NorCal. The demos were filled in a flash, but less than a year later the game vanished and I've never seen anybody run it since. Odd.
Over the years, I've heard from people who demo'd the game, but never bought a copy and the general opinion was "weird, but cool" and I get the sense the game was ahead of its time and of course, so poorly marketed.
I own Everway. I hesitate to even call it a game system, since it basically is just "the GM decides what happens", with character traits and the mock-tarot used as a guide or for "inspiration". Still, its a fun read. I picked up the box for $2 on clearance and it was worth the price.
If someone were to go in and create an actual system for playing the game I would like it a whole lot more, because I'm perfectly comfortable using GM fiat as I see fit during a game, but I like some randomization.
There's Sine Requie, an italian-zombie-apocalypse-made-nazy-germany-win-the war RPG, who uses both standard dice resolution and tarots based resolution. I find the latter quite gimicky, but a friend of mine loves it madly.
There's even a themed tarots deck, wich I find quite cool.
(http://www.lokee.it/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/sine_requie_tarocchi.jpg)
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Quote from: TristramEvans;823901I own Everway. I hesitate to even call it a game system, since it basically is just "the GM decides what happens", with character traits and the mock-tarot used as a guide or for "inspiration". Still, its a fun read. I picked up the box for $2 on clearance and it was worth the price.
If someone were to go in and create an actual system for playing the game I would like it a whole lot more, because I'm perfectly comfortable using GM fiat as I see fit during a game, but I like some randomization.
It's very similar to Amber Diceless IMHO. If fact, it's even more "Game-y" than Amber in that the mock-tarot provides at least some minor randomization, whereas Amber IIRC had none.
I need to break Everway out again and re-read it. I'm not sure if it's the kind of game that I would enjoy today, but I recall that I really liked it way back in 1995 (!!! Twenty years ago! Jesus I feel old now) when it came out.
I actually quite liked Everway, and yes, it was similar in many ways to Amber.
I've never run into an RPG that really uses tarot cards. Mind you, I rearranged the Deck of Many Things to match the 22 major arcana of the Tarot, and whenever it's come up in my games, I've used my Visconti tarot's major arcana as a prop for it. The visconti is one of the original Tarot decks and looks totally like it could be a medieval-fantasy magic item.
Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;823959If fact, it's even more "Game-y" than Amber in that the mock-tarot provides at least some minor randomization, whereas Amber IIRC had none.
It really doesn't. Unless "interpreting an unrelated picture on a card however you like" is randomization. I don't really consider it as such.
Quote from: TristramEvans;824440It really doesn't. Unless "interpreting an unrelated picture on a card however you like" is randomization. I don't really consider it as such.
Each character had certain cards that were "Strengths" (Good to pull) and "Flaws" (Bad to pull).
Quote from: TristramEvans;824440It really doesn't. Unless "interpreting an unrelated picture on a card however you like" is randomization. I don't really consider it as such.
In Engel it was important whether a card was drawn upside down, so every draw had a basic "50% negative" chance, in addition to the card name or illustration.
"Reading" Tarot (or Tarot-like cards) is almost the same as rolling on a table to find results like "pay a price". It
is a random result.
My problem with card readings is that it's hard to include or reflect the capabilities of the character.
There's the old Lace & Steel (http://rpggeek.com/rpg/1173/lace-steel) RPG, a swashbuckling adventure game with fantasy elements.
Honestly, though, as much as a devotee of Amber Diceless Roleplaying as I am, I'd love to see a treatment of Amber done with a Tarot/Trump based resolution system. It feels a natural fit.
Quote from: Jason D;824578There's the old Lace & Steel (http://rpggeek.com/rpg/1173/lace-steel) RPG, a swashbuckling adventure game with fantasy elements.
Honestly, though, as much as a devotee of Amber Diceless Roleplaying as I am, I'd love to see a treatment of Amber done with a Tarot/Trump based resolution system. It feels a natural fit.
There was once a magazine that published a character-creation method for Amber that used playing cards, as I recall. That's as close as it got.
Quote from: RPGPundit;824836There was once a magazine that published a character-creation method for Amber that used playing cards, as I recall. That's as close as it got.
Yeah. In
Trump Call we published a small article about using cards for character creation, written by one of Erick's circle of Amber diehards. Unfortunately, Erick's reaction was... extreme enough to convince my co-editor to shut the zine down.
Quote from: Jason D;824838Yeah. In Trump Call we published a small article about using cards for character creation, written by one of Erick's circle of Amber diehards. Unfortunately, Erick's reaction was... extreme enough to convince my co-editor to shut the zine down.
He was a total die-hard for NO-randomization, from what I recall.
Quote from: RPGPundit;825237He was a total die-hard for NO-randomization, from what I recall.
Yeah. The distressing part was that since it had come from someone relatively close to Erick, we thought it was "clear" for publication.
Instead, it resulted in an angry phone call saying that we'd basically destroyed everything the RPG was about.
After that, there was little to do but pull up the tent-stakes, throw the last issue out the door, and call it a day.
I think it's hard to remember just how unbelievably radical an idea an RPG with no randomization was back then. I think Erick was probably worried (overly worried, I'll grant) that adding any option (even as a house-rule written in a fanzine) that would remove the total non-random nature of the game would cause people to turn to that instead.
People often point out that Erick was incredibly humble, and that's kind of true, but more than that, sometimes I get the feeling that he really didn't always get just how great he was; and I'd almost say sometimes he felt kind of insecure about his work. Which is crazy, I mean like 'Eric Clapton worrying people will boo his guitar playing' crazy, but there you are.