White Wolf also did a Tarokka Deck, art by Talon Dunning.



Equally hard to come by.

Tarokka decks are silly, they should just have used Tarot decks.

Quote from: RPGPundit;876045Tarokka decks are silly, they should just have used Tarot decks.

Yeah it's just a hold over from when D&D was trying to avoid the whole satanism thing

Quote from: RPGPundit;876045Tarokka decks are silly, they should just have used Tarot decks.

Wait, you want gamers to accept something DIFFERENT?  Are you mad?

Quote from: Christopher Brady;876064Wait, you want gamers to accept something DIFFERENT?  Are you mad?

No no. He wants gamers to accept something NOT different. Obviously TSR did it wrong by coming up with their own version. :rolleyes:

Quote from: Omega;876080No no. He wants gamers to accept something NOT different. Obviously TSR did it wrong by coming up with their own version. :rolleyes:

Personally, as someone who picked up a deck of Pathfinder's Harrow cards, I don't mind new versions of playing cards.

There are loads of really nice mystical card decks to be had at reasonable prices... couldn't be that hard to translate any of them into Tarokka for game purposes.

Quote from: Omega;876080No no. He wants gamers to accept something NOT different. Obviously TSR did it wrong by coming up with their own version. :rolleyes:

If they used a standard tarot deck instead of their own deck, I could go to a store or online and have my pick of hundreds of different styles for $25 or less.  I could buy multiple new decks for different campaigns with different tones or different cultures in the setting for a fraction of what I would have to pay for one used tarroka deck.  I could use the tarot deck I already own.  It's not just their own version either.  It's a different thing.  It has different cards from the standard tarot deck.

I think that might have been the point? Something like. But not. You cant put a (TM) on Tarot. But you can on Tarokka.

And lessens the chance someone is going to point at the thing and scream "TSR IS TEACHING KIDS BLACK MAGIC!" because you know someone would. This was the "Appease the religious loons" and "market branding" era of TSR afterall.

Addendum: And they may have been leery of legal issues as there allready was an RPG out that came with and used a Tarot deck.

Quote from: Orphan81;876063Yeah it's just a hold over from when D&D was trying to avoid the whole satanism thing

No doubt that's why they didn't switch to using Tarot decks, but if you look back earlier, before the Tarokka, they missed a similar opportunity with the Deck of Many Things, which was perfectly set up to be usable with an actual Tarot deck, and was before "satanic panic" had really set in.  I think the more likely answer at that time was concern about the potential availability of Tarot decks, which in the late 70s were still hard to come by in some parts of the U.S.

But yes, by the time Ravenloft rolled around it was practically impossible that TSR would fan the flames of the religious right by incorporating a Tarot deck into their module. More fools they, every time some preacher talked about the evils of D&D he created a dozen new D&D groups.

My biggest hope is this adventure has just enough crunch to let me run a Ravenloft adventure away from it's core material.

Quote from: RPGPundit;876331No doubt that's why they didn't switch to using Tarot decks, but if you look back earlier, before the Tarokka, they missed a similar opportunity with the Deck of Many Things, which was perfectly set up to be usable with an actual Tarot deck, and was before "satanic panic" had really set in.  I think the more likely answer at that time was concern about the potential availability of Tarot decks, which in the late 70s were still hard to come by in some parts of the U.S.

The Deck of Many Things at least can be played with a standard deck of poker cards. Not sure about the Tarokka deck. Cant find mine so not sure how much maps or does not to a poker or tarot respectively?

As for availibility. Depends on where you lived. Some areas seemed more common than polyhedral dice. In others was non-existent. I do not recall ever seeing them in my hometown shops.

Quote from: Omega;876371The Deck of Many Things at least can be played with a standard deck of poker cards. Not sure about the Tarokka deck. Cant find mine so not sure how much maps or does not to a poker or tarot respectively?

As for availibility. Depends on where you lived. Some areas seemed more common than polyhedral dice. In others was non-existent. I do not recall ever seeing them in my hometown shops.

They were made to work with a standard deck of playing cards. But they steered clear of any mention of real world tarot as I recall (i would need to re-read the origin entry to be sure).

Tarot were pretty common in stores around here. I had one GM who used them instead of Tarroka.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;876373They were made to work with a standard deck of playing cards. But they steered clear of any mention of real world tarot as I recall (i would need to re-read the origin entry to be sure).

Tarot were pretty common in stores around here. I had one GM who used them instead of Tarroka.

By the mid-80s, probably. But not so much in the mid/late 70s.

Quote from: Omega;876371The Deck of Many Things at least can be played with a standard deck of poker cards. Not sure about the Tarokka deck. Cant find mine so not sure how much maps or does not to a poker or tarot respectively?

The original Ravenloft module gives equivalent using ordinary cards, if I recall correctly.