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“Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value. It is a process; it’s not random” – Ken Robinson.
As stated in part 1, the primary reasons to use a tarot deck to devise RPG stories is because of the elements of randomness and variety it brings, and the creative challenge that comes from trying to fit random elements into a story. As per the quote at the top of this post, the random draw of the cards provides a new idea, and then you give that idea value in the context of a story.
When starting a new campaign, a random draw of tarot cards can be used to quickly create a landscape of NPCs whose conflicts, goals and motivations will be played out over the course of your campaign.
The steps of this process are detailed below, along with an example from a Shadowrun game devised using this method.
Note: This approach is based on a couple of assumptions about the way people run and play RPGs; primarily, that people engage in ongoing ‘campaign’ style play with a continuous set of player characters, and that campaigns are made up of a series of sub-plots and stories (each usually representing 1-2 sessions of play) that fit within a larger, overarching narrative that develops throughout the course of many sessions. Later posts will detail a variation of this process for devising stand-alone or one-shot story ideas.
Game Concept
First, come up with an overall concept for the game/story you wish to run. This provides some indication of the kinds of characters and scenarios you’ll create and a lens through which to interpret cards drawn as part of the process.
Example: After a few years of running ‘specialised’ games in the Shadowrun universe (all PCs are gang members, elite military, a magical circle, etc), I decided to run a game that went back to the original setting of the game. The characters were to be runners navigating between the big players at the top, and the gangs and hard life of the streets.
For the sake of something different, instead of using one of the mega-corps to be the immediate representation of the ‘big players’, I wanted to focus on the corp-run security and military services of the 6th world.
Initial draw – creating primary NPCs
The first use of the tarot cards is to define the landscape of the campaign, the pattern of key NPCs who will feature in your stories and who will return as primary allies and antagonists for your player’s characters.
Extract the 22 major arcana, shuffle them and randomly draw around 8 cards (more or less depending on the scale and scope of the story you wish to tell). Keep in mind that you can always add to this at a later date if you wish to expand your story.
Each of these cards is used to inform the creation of a major NPC who will feature in the game/campaign. Take time to devise a concept for an NPC based on each of these cards, as appropriate to the overall game concept you’ve chosen.
Example: As I was only expecting to run this game for a handful of sessions, I limited myself to 6 cards.
The cards I drew to start the game were The Emperor, The Hierophant, The Chariot, The Hanged Man, Death, and The Devil (presented here in their numbered order within the deck).
As NPCs, I interpreted these cards as follows:
| Card | Suggested Meaning | NPC |
| The Emperor | Wisdom and power, top of the hierarchy, male ego | A community leader/organiser with significant influence in one of the slums of Seattle. |
| The Hierophant | Knowledge & education, studying higher values, accepting discipline | A senior researcher in a corp-military R&D division. |
| The Chariot | Adventure and risk, mental and physical journeys, desire for victory | A smuggler who brings things into and out of Seattle. |
| The Hanged Man | Transition, limbo, taking a step backwards in order to move forwards | A crime boss whose efforts to grow influence have been stalled. |
| Death | Change, beginnings and endings, getting to the gritty details | The ‘agents of change’ – an elite squad within the corp-military that works alongside The Hierophant. |
| The Devil | Thirst for money or power, obsession, addictive patterns of behaviour, manipulation by others | The crime-boss’ second-in-command, a heavily cybered warrior. |
Determining NPC motivations
The next step of the defining the landscape is to determine the prime motivations of each NPC in the context of the story. To do this, once again take the 22 major arcana, including the ones you’ve already drawn. One card will be drawn per NPC, which will inform their objectives and/or motivations.
This time, when shuffling the cards, lay them face down on a table and swirl them around so that the direction of each card is randomised as well as its order. When a card is drawn upright, that indicates that the character’s goals are a part of their public persona, while if it is inverted (upside down) that means the characters goals are hidden or secretive.
For each inverted card, you may also choose to draw another card to identify what kind of public face the character puts forward to mask their hidden intentions.
Example: For the NPCs identified above, I drew the following cards to define their motivations:
| Character | Card/Motivation |
| Smuggler | The High Priestess |
| Community Organiser | The Hierophant |
| Crime Boss | Temperance |
| Crime Boss’ Lieutenant | The Fool |
| Elite Soldiers | The Magician |
| R&D Agent | The Tower (inverted) + The World |
I interpreted this card draw as follows:
| Character | Motivation |
| Smuggler | Seeks to uncover secrets – believes there is a secret plot connected to some of the jobs they carry out. |
| Community Organiser | Seeks to build a traditional, somewhat nostalgic, community to support people in the slums. |
| Crime Boss | Is seeking to achieve a sense of harmony, and heal themselves. At this point, the interaction between The Hanged Man and Temperance provided the idea of a Crime Boss inflicted with a mental illness. This is what was responsible for their stalled empire, and their current motivation was to overcome those problems in order to get business running again. |
| Crime Boss’ Lieutenant | Seeks experience – is a hedonist. Seeks new challenges and to overcome them. In this case the combination of The Devil and The Fool provided the idea of a figure who revelled in confrontational approaches to building power, yet was unaware of the implications of their boss’ health issues. In the context of Shadowrun, I translated this idea into a fledgling AI that controlled various drones and humanoid forms in the physical world. |
| Elite Soldiers | This unit seeks to elevate their skills and unit tactics. For reasons connected with their past experiences, they volunteered to work with R&D so they could test better equipment & tactics. |
| R&D Agent | This character’s hidden motivation is to transcend humanity. Having worked on cybernetic development for his career, this character wants to move beyond cybernetic enhancement of individuals and create a genuine hybrid entity. The character’s public motivation is to improve military cybernetics in accordance with company policy. |
Determining relationship to PCs
Once you have you list of NPCs, take the cards that represent them, shuffle, and lay them out in a row from left to right, which represents the relationship to the PCs that these characters will have in the game.
Those towards the left are the ones with whom the PCs will be most closely aligned, and those on the right are the antagonists whose machinations will be driving many of the plots and forcing the characters to react.
Example: In this instance the cards came out in the order of: The Chariot, The Emperor, The Hanged Man, The Devil, Death, The Hierophant.
So the primary antagonist of this game will be the military R&D agent, followed closely by the soldiers working with them. The crime boss and their 2IC are more neutral, though the lieutenant is slightly more antagonistic. Finally, the Smuggler will be their greatest ally, and the community organiser will be generally, though not universally, supportive of the characters.
With that process, the social landscape of the campaign is defined and some tensions between characters as well as potential story lines start to emerge. As you progress to develop individual plots and session outlines, these NPCs and their motivations will play a role in interpreting additional cards drawn as part of your story.
Note: As stated in the introduction to this blog, one of the primary elements of my approach to creating RPG scenarios is to create conflicts of values and motivations that the players need to navigate. For this reason, I leave it to last to determine the NPC’s relationship to the players, letting conflict arise out conflicting an overlapping motivations rather than any predetermined concept of being heroes, allies or villains. This way the interpretation of cards to define NPCs and their motivations are free from expectations base don the characters role in the story.
If you wish to run a game that is more closely defined by the genre conventions of the game’s setting, or in a style that requires a more definite sense of heroes and villains, you can complete this step as part of the initial draw to identify NPCs. That way you are interpreting cards knowing what role each characters will play in your story.
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