This is Playing the Fool, the introduction to a series about tarot in roleplaying games.
What is a tarot game? Does tarocchi count? I'd say: technically, yes, it's a game from which tarot cards spring historically, and it would be difficult to substitute another deck for it because of how it utilizes tarot's hierarchy in play. But I'm not likely to cover tarocchi in this series other than to nod towards it as tarot's roots because it's primarily a trick taking game and doesn't have a storytelling component as far as I'm aware. No, when I say "tarot game" in this series, I'm referring to a roleplaying, storytelling, tabletop, or live action game that heavily utilizes the aesthetics and/or mechanics of tarot.
Ah, but does tarot really count as a gaming device? Sure, there's the Deck of Many Things which is sorta related, and the official D&D Tarot deck is real pretty, and Curse of Strahd has a tarot-like deck it uses once in a while, but does that count? It's still ultimately about rolling dice, right?
If you're asking that right now, I am DELIGHTED you found me. When you look past the offerings of the sword coast to the swarm of brilliant gremlins posting games on itch.io, you will find a true treasure trove. There are games out there that Hasbro would call aberrant, perverse, perhaps even claim that it's "not a game." That's where I live. Welcome to my house of cards.
And what a house it is. Who even am I, to talk on this subject? Well, my name is Sasha Reneau, and in 2017 I started a project called Spindlewheel, an interpretive tarot-like storytelling game where you weave a story from card to card using a completely bespoke 103-card oracle deck. It found modest success on kickstarter and as of this recording has had [TKTK] cumulative downloads and [TKTK] decks and games made using its system. Lin Codega once called it "classic." Jeff Stormer said “It’s one of my favorite gaming accessories.” Spindlewheel derives a ton of its mechanical roots from tarot spreads and reading practices, from the way the cards are designed with an upright and an inverse to the generative spreads that lay the foundation of play.
I've thought about this game a *lot* over the past seven years: what it does well, what it doesn't, and how much of that functionality can be laid at the feet of its roots in tarot and how much it is a result of my own design work. It has led me to form opinions about prompt-driven games, about interpretation and how it's taught to players, how it's used in mechanics, and when it's utilized well in play.
There's one major difference between a Spindlewheel deck and a tarot deck, though, and that's hierarchy. Every card in a tarot deck is numbered from 0 to 21 and from Ace to King, and it's divided into Major and Minor Arcana. Even the orientation of the card has the hierarchy of upright versus inverse. Spindlewheel doesn't have that: the cards aren't numbered, and the art is carefully symmetrical so that either side could be upright or inverse depending on the way you drew it. I took out hierarchy wherever I found it, and I'll tell you why: Spindlewheel is a highly procedural game in which any card can be in any position. It's also, first and foremost, a storytelling game. I did not want, under any condition, for a card to beat out another card based on anything but its narrative importance. If you play Leviathan and I play Tin Penny, it depends entirely on how my card informs what part of the story I'm telling that decides whether or not I "win" that exchange. For this specific game, that's how I like it. For a general-purpose deck, though, I think hierarchy is important for clear-cut communication of success and failure: of one card beating another, or of a quantifiable nature of difference between cards (the difference between the 2 of swords and the 10 of swords being not just symbolic but a numerical distance of 8, versus the difference between plague and blizzard being the quality of bad time they invite to your story). Spindlewheel is uninterested in whether something succeeds or fails, and instead is deeply invested in *how* something occurs--success or failure being a consequence of that how. This makes it feel floaty or murky when used to answer yes or no questions or straightforward contests, where a simple comparison of numbers, suits, or arcana would do the trick. You can hear me talk at length about Spindlewheel's construction, purpose, and design as a deck in this QGCon talk. It's useful context, but not required reading.
My experience with Spindlewheel unavoidably colors my vision as a player and as a critic. I'm not going to hide that, but I'm going to do my best not to center it either. My goal with this series is to explore and celebrate tarot games for everything that they are.
What about the modern, spiritual use of tarot itself? Is that a game? Well, it depends on who you ask. There's a lot of overlap between games, and ritual and practice, but they're not a single circle. Tarot reading absolutely has storytelling components to it. But, while I'm going to talk a lot about the strengths and weaknesses of tarot as a storytelling medium, I'm not going to cover it as a spiritual practice in this series because, while I occasionally use tarot as a meditative exercise, I don't use it in a religious context and cannot speak to that.
And, to be honest, I'm still learning the deck myself. I am not a tarot expert, just a designer with a notable obsession.
So let’s get into it! Over the next few videos I’m going to explore tarot in games from every possible angle I can think of. The Major Arcana themed videos will be, well, like the Major Arcana themselves: tent poles that cover big subjects like history, game types, and mechanics. The Minor Arcana themed videos will be reviews of specific games. Feel free to suggest or submit games for me to cover by emailing me at sasha@teacabbage.com with the subject line: “playing the minor arcana”. I can’t promise I’ll cover every one but there’s absolutely no harm in submitting anyway!
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