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I find tarot cards to be an invaluable tool for generating interesting RPG stories, or even individual session plots. The idea of using tarot cards as a way to generate story ideas or as a mechanism in RPGs is hardly new, however the purpose of this series of posts is to detail some of the ways I use tarot cards as a GM, particularly to help quickly generate new and interesting story ideas for characters, campaigns, stories, individual sessions and even single scenes.
‘The GM & the tarot’ series
Why TAROT?
The primary reason I use a tarot deck is for randomness and variety.
When writing stories for a game session you can create interesting and unexpected subplots and scenes by allowing an element of randomness to determine key story elements. Responding to that randomness by incorporating a new ideas into your game’s story can also be a fun creative challenge and break you out of those personal patterns of style or story structure that you may not even be conscious of.
Then there’s the variety of ideas represented by the number of cards and their various interpretations. Once you move past any ideas of mysticism, most tarot decks-which originated as playing cards before being co-opted by fortune tellers-are built around representations of human experiences and struggles, with cards and images imbued with symbolism to depict many aspects of those struggles. With 78 cards (usually) made up of 22 trump cards plus 56 cards divided into 4 suits, there are more possible card combinations to generate ideas than you’ll ever be able to incorporate into a lifetime of games.
This makes them a handy way to quickly devise interesting and original characters, motives and plot hooks for role playing games, or to add additional depth and nuance to an existing story line.
For those unfamiliar with tarot cards, here’s a quick summary of the way most decks are structured:
Major Arcana: 22 cards (also known as Trump cards) – each card depicts an archetype or ideal, and when taken in sequence the cards tell a story of the journey from innocence to worldly experience. Even if you do nothing else, these cards provide a structure for milestones of an extended campaign.
Minor Arcana: 56 cards divided into 4 suits-common suits are Pentacles, Cups, Swords, Rods/Staves-and each suit has 10 cards plus 4 court cards-Page, Knight, Queen, King.
Each of the suits has its ‘traditional’ meaning and associations, but if those don’t work for you, you can give them whatever meaning is appropriate to your game in order to make individual cards more relevant to the stories you wish to tell. For example, in games with a more Eurocentric mythology, you may wish to associate each suit with it’s primary elemental association, or associate suits with significant factions, houses or families within your game.
Finally, while purchasing tarot decks can be a costly exercise, there are plenty of free online resources including random card selectors, or sites with full decks and card meanings. You can even buy tarot deck apps for phones and tablets at a fraction of the price of a physical deck. I won’t link to any directly as many of them are associated with attempts to sell online tarot readings, so if you find such a site, I would encourage you to use of what free resources they have and view with extreme scepticism any other offers or promises they may make.
Bragrmans Sidequests 
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