Campaign Concept: All In The Cards

 What Are We Making?

I wrote a tweet the other day about how a crazy idea came to me, and I thought to myself, "but wait... that's actually amazing." Well... here we are, I guess!

Over the past month or so, I've actually been learning to read tarot cards, and that's where this idea stems from. I was shuffling my deck of cards last night when this idea for a larger campaign hit me. I decided that I wanted to make a game where tarot cards played a large part, specifically the 22 cards in the major arcana deck. Each of these cards has a person, object, or creature on it and each card has a meaning.

The 22 Major Arcana Cards
Smith-Waite Tarot Deck

Game Masters wishing to run a game like this should definitely do their research on tarot beforehand, or already know the basics of reading tarot. I'm using my personal deck of tarot cards, which is the Smith-Waite deck, and The Ultimate Guide to Tarot Card Meanings by Brigit Esselmont as my basis for this concept. I'm also only using the major arcana cards, but Game Masters may choose to find ways to fit in the minor arcana cards as well.

The Setting & Basic Lore

I can see this game taking one of two settings: within the world of the tarot cards themselves, or in a world that just happens to have personified beings for all of the people, creatures, or objects within the cards.

Let's take the first setting: the world of the tarot cards themselves. In this scenario, we take the pictures of the cards very literally. Those people there are going to be the people that the characters meet. Additionally, they are literally in a deck of tarot cards, so someone has to have put them there. You're going to need a very powerful NPC - good or evil - who has done so. I like this setting for the comedic potential because... the players can just... talk to the Moon. Or the Sun. It's different, and I like that about it a lot; it's not something you see in D&D often.

In the second scenario, you can homebrew your own fantasy world or play in one that's pre-established, as long as there are people, objects, or beings that can fit into the roles of the cards. This gives the Game Master more freedom when it comes to character art and description. In fact, I personally like this setting more, just because of the potential of getting commissioned art of NPCs as tarot cards. That is a super fun idea.

A Game Master can also choose to use the tarot cards as a basis for character personalities, when it comes to the cards they represent. For example, in the Smith-Waite deck, the Justice card represents justice (of course), fairness, truth, and law. So the NPC representing Justice (the card) would act in that way. The Chariot card represents control, success, action, and determination. So, the Chariot NPC might be a literal charioteer, who always seems in control of his actions and determined to win.

Minor Arcana Cards, Ace - 10
All four suits
Smith-Waite Tarot Deck

If you want to use the minor arcana cards, there are ways to do that too. In simplest explanation, the minor arcana cards operate almost like playing cards: four suits, running ace to 10, and then there are four "face cards" (page, knight, queen, and king.) The suits are typically cups, pentacles, swords, and wands (rather than hearts, diamonds, spades, and clubs.) Here are my personal recommendations:

- You can make four smaller kingdoms around this "empire" ruled by the Empress and Emperor that have kings and queens of their own that the party will have to go through, in order to complete the plot (which we'll get to in a moment.)

- You can use the suits - cups, pentacles, swords, and wands - as four magic items. This works especially well with four players; tailor each of the items to one of them.

- You can make finding them into something of a side quest. Sure, the major arcana is the main focus, but if they collect all of a certain suit, they get a reward or something. By "all of a certain suit" I mean that they would need 59 cups, pentacles, swords, and wands to complete the deck. That's a wand for each number on the card (ace has 1, 2 has 2, 3 has 3, etc.), and then 1 for the page, knight, queen, and king of that suit. This would be a long one, but good if you want a really long-form campaign.

The Plot

So, in my mind, all of this starts with a powerful spellcasting NPC. This can be an adventure patron, or a BBEG. Doesn't matter. 

The first setting works really well with the BBEG idea. He would already have a tarot deck, and the players are trapped inside it. To get out, they need something from each of the major arcana cards. It could be a riddle, piece of a poem, or even another card of some kind. They get those things, and they're able to leave the realm of the cards. They fight the mage who trapped them as their final boss.

In the second setting, this NPC does not have tarot cards, but he's trying to make them: "a deck of cards that can see into the future and determine fate" or something along those lines. To do that, he needs... pieces of certain types of people that the party will have to locate. Game Masters can determine what exactly these "pieces" are, if their use is benevolent or malevolent, etc. Again, these NPCs that are going into the cards embody the meanings of the major arcana cards. At the end, the players receive some kind of great reward from a friendly NPC, or they have to fight the guy whose deck they made. Do they know it better than him, because they were the ones who actually met the people inside it? Are the people in the deck happy to be there? All of that is totally up to the GM.

The thing that I love about this idea is the diversity of the NPCs and how you might play them, just because of what reading tarot is like. You can put your own twists on the meanings of the cards, especially if the cards have double meanings for whatever reason, or if you interpret the cards differently. A huge part of reading tarot, as I've learned, is trusting your intuition and determining what the cards mean to you as well. The imagery on the card is just as important as the description given by the meaning, and that opens up a whole possibility for commissioned art, if that's something you can afford as a GM.

This is the type of concept that could be done by two GMs in a very different way, and that's part of the reason why I love it so much.