Here it is! At last! The long-awaited Angry Guide to Tarot for Game Masters! Or whatever the f%$& I actually decide to call this nonsense.

And that ain’t me being hyperbolic for marketing purposes. This really is long-awaited. As in, people have actually been demanding this s$&% from me. Loudly. For months.

See, months ago — I don’t remember when, so don’t ask — I made a stupid throwaway remark about how I used to read the Tarot back in my high school and college days. Mainly for funsies. But I also remarked that every GM should consider learning to read the Tarot. Because there were a lot of crossover skills.

Thing is, that was just a throwaway remark. The kind of s$&% my brain just blurts out. I didn’t expect people to even notice it. Let alone demand that I explain myself. Though I should have known. Because soon came the comments. And the e-mails. And private messages. And even questions during the Mostly Monthly Live Chats I host for my site supporters every-ish month.

Funnily enough, that remark was way deeper than I thought. Which is kind of the point I’m going to make later. That your intuitive, unconscious shadow brain is way smarter than you in lots of ways.

Anyway, now that I had something useful — and deeply important — to say, I decided to write the article. And then I realized everyone was gonna hate it. Because when I said, “learn Tarot because it’ll give you insights that’ll help you run better games,” everyone else heard, “learn Tarot and then you can do Tarot readings in your game or use Tarot to generate characters and resolve actions.” Something like that.

And I don’t think any of that s$&%’s a good idea.

But then, I realized that there was one actual, practical way Tarot could be useful as part of the whole GMing thing. And I realized I could probably come up with a pretty cool Tarot-based GMing tool. A system. Maybe even two.

And that’s why this article exists. And why it’s a two-parter.

So… Tarot for GMing Dummies.

Tarot for GMing Dummies

This article exists because I stupidly said Tarot reading’s a useful thing for GMs to learn. If you want to know the long story, read the Long, Rambling Introduction™ above.

Anyway, this article’s about what GMs can learn from Tarot. And how Tarot reading can help you practice some vital GMing skills. It ain’t about how to actually use Tarot cards to play D&D. It ain’t using cartomancy as an action resolution tool. It ain’t about generating a character with a Tarot spread. If you want that s$&%, check out Everway. That’s an out-of-print and failed and nonetheless-kind-of-awesome RPG by Jonathan Tweet and published by Wizards of the Coast before they owned D&D. Basically, it was their third attempt to publish an RPG. Because they tried to make several RPGs before they finally just said, “f$&% it, let’s just buy D&D and publish that.”

And while this article won’t teach you how to read the Tarot, it will explain basically what Tarot is and how it works. And it’ll also show you how to teach yourself how to read the Tarot. If you’re already a Tarot-ist, there’s going to be some remedial s$&% in here. And I’m going to gloss over a few things. But read it anyway. Because it might have some insights for you. Thing is, lots of amateur Tarot-ists learn Tarot wrong. And they make a lot of the same mistakes amateur GMs make before they come to me.

That said, I ain’t any kind of Tarot expert. I taught myself. I did it for fun. And I learned it almost thirty years ago. And I’m really rusty and out of practice. And I ain’t saying that lots of Tarot-ists get the Tarot wrong. I’m saying they learned wrong. That is, specifically, the method by which they learned Tarot was very difficult and constraining. And it probably took years to undo the habits accidentally ingrained by the wrong learning.

I guess I am claiming to be an expert. F$&% it. I don’t care. I know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, as a reward for reading all this high-concept and theory and background bulls$&%, I’m going to follow this article up with another. In that one, I’ll demonstrate two cool ways to read a D&D adventure from a Tarot spread. Because I know that’s the kind of practical s$&% you really want.

Even though the concept-and-theory crap is way more valuable.

On Magical Mysticism

Let me make this clear: I don’t believe there’s anything magical or mystical about the Tarot. I just don’t. Maybe you do. That’s fine. I won’t say you’re wrong. Hell, I admit you might be right. We’re looking at the same evidence and interpreting it differently.

Evidence? Yeah. Evidence.

See, I do believe — firmly — that the Tarot’s useful and valuable. That it provides actual, useful insights. Because I’ve seen it work. Firsthand. As a Reader and as a Querent and as a bystander. And in talking to others who are involved in the Tarot. Personally, I think it’s all to do with psychology and brain wiring. Some of which I’ll touch on below. Because that’s the s$&% that makes Tarot a useful skill for GMs. And I believe that partially because of the parallels between Tarot and s$&% like Jungian archetypes and the Campbellian monomyth. Basically, the s$&% that makes stories and symbols resonate with human brains.

Frankly, I don’t give a crap what the mechanism is. Maybe it’s magic. Maybe it’s psychology. Maybe it’s both. Maybe it’s some third thing. Whatever. I like it. It helps people and it helps me. So it’s cool.

That said, I know some of you take the magical mysticism seriously. And I respect that. Hell, I take proper care of my cards. Keep them wrapped and stored and don’t let people who aren’t me touch them. I’m a sucker for rituals and traditions. They have psychological value too. But that aside, I know some of you take Tarot seriously. It’s a spiritual thing. And I get that. If the idea of using Tarot to make and run better pretend elf games bothers you, feel free to get off here.

I mean no disrespect to the medium and intend to treat it fairly, but I understand some people won’t think I’m treating it right.

Okay…

Part I: Understanding Tarot

Before I try to explain why this Tarot s$&%’s a useful skill for GMs to have, I’ve got to make sure we’re all on the same page about what Tarot actually is. What the cards are, how they’re read, s$&% like that.

Tarot is a specific tradition of cartomancy. A kind of divination. It uses cards to gain insight into s$&%. Situations, mental states, mystical forces, the future, whatever. Believe what you want. Point is, cartomancy’s about using cards to get insights.

Tarot is a specific kind of cartomancy. It uses a specific deck of illustrated cards. No one knows the True and Real History of the Tarot. People say they do. But historical evidence is sketchy. It’s obviously connected to playing cards. Which have been around for ages. And the playing cards we’re used to today were definitely used by the well-to-do to play parlor games back in the late medieval period.

Around the same time, wealthy aristocrats in France and Italy also liked to hire illustrators to paint family trading cards. I s$&% you not. They’d pay artists to paint family members, important events, great deeds, and s$&% like that onto cards. They were called Triumph Cards. Or Trump Cards.

For those in the know, there’s your Major and Minor Arcana right there. Triumph Cards and Playing Cards.

At some point, someone got the idea of using playing cards to predict the future the same way people use rune stones, coins, sticks, tea leaves, and chicken entrails to predict the future. But until the printing press existed, illustrated cards were too damned expensive. So they probably just used playing cards.

Then, the history of the Tarot was invented. Seriously. In 1781, this dude — a minister and a Freemason — named Antoine Court de Gebelin published the definitive work on card reading. He explained his exhaustive research showed that card-reading techniques were derived from Egyptian magic and therefore had the same roots as Jewish Kabbalistic mysticism, alchemy, astrology, hermeticism, and all that crap. It was all connected. Do you want to see his historical evidence? Well, shut up. You can’t. But de Gebelin assures you it is very exhaustive and evidentiary.

And that’s why no one knows the real history of the Tarot but lots of people think they do.

It wasn’t until ten years later that a French occultist named Jean Baptiste-Alliette designed the first deck of cards specifically made for future-predicting. The first Tarot deck. It was mostly based on de Gebelin’s work. And so Tarot caught on. Especially among the wealthy. Then, in 1909, an occultist named Arthur Waite and an illustrator named Pamela Colman Smith designed the Rider-Waite Tarot. Which is basically the most popular, most well-known, most ubiquitous Tarot deck ever. And it’s still in use today.

It’s the one that looks like this:

Does this s$&% matter? Is it on the test? No. But it does explain why Tarot cards have a mishmash of symbols. Everything from alchemy and astrology and hermeticism to Judeo-Christian symbolism.

How Do Tarot Cards Mean Things?

So, how the hell does one get insight from a bunch of weird picture cards? What does it mean to actually read the Tarot? Putting aside all the magical claims of de Gebelin and all the rest?

Tarot cards speak the language of Symbolism. And I know I’m going to lose a lot of you. Because you rational, logical gamers hate symbolism and intuition almost as much as you hate the idea that Tarot cards might be magical. But stick with me. Because this is important.

It’s been established often enough by enough PhDs to be a psychological fact that the vast majority of the s$&% you think, say, and do is influenced by mysterious, ancient, and completely inaccessible parts of your brain. The definitive work’s Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. And it’s got all the citations you could ever want. He’s the dude that made this s$&% popular knowledge.

Point is, you ain’t aware of most of the s$&% that influences your decisions. And it’s mostly intuitive and emotional. Take that s$&% away — as studies on people with brain injuries have shown many times — and you’re left with a wholly logical brain that can’t make even simple decisions. That’s because your brain evolved to make snap judgments to keep you alive based on very limited information — was that noise something I can eat or something that’ll eat me — and to help you navigate social situations. And those two things have been keeping humans alive since before humans were humans.

Your conscious, thinking, reasoning brain — the voice in your head you can hear — is a pretty new design. And it’s really slow. Inefficient. It’s always playing catchup. Mostly, its job is to figure out what the hell the unconscious part of your brain actually knows so you can use that s$&% to plan your future. Your unconscious brain’s amazingly good — mostly — at reading situations. Especially subjective and social situations. And it’s good at teasing information from your senses. And your conscious brain trusts that after 50,000 years of staying alive, your unconscious brain knows what it knows. So it tries to figure out what specific details the unconscious is picking up on to give it its read on things. That way, you can seek those details — or avoid them — in the future. Or construct situations to bring them about.

Point is, your unconscious brain is really smart in lots of ways. Yes, it’s dumb in some ways. But it’s mostly very smart. Especially when it comes to subjective, emotional, and social situations. Like, say, playing pretend elf games with your friends. Note the subtle emphasis.

Problem is the unconscious brain doesn’t speak language. Language belongs to the conscious brain. And the unconscious brain doesn’t speak in concrete specifics. It speaks in impressions. Which create emotions. And those emotions flavor your decisions and actions. Which your conscious brain then tries to understand. Or sometimes, to argue with.

Tarot speaks in symbols. In images that, together, give impressions. Tarot does draw on ancient symbols that resonate with people. And over the centuries, artists and occultists have continued to refine those images. Basically, they use the symbols they use because those symbols give them impressions. And other people get similar impressions when they look at the symbols. Mostly.

Tarot’s imagery mostly deals with archetypal human life experiences. They’re like scenes in a story. Or, rather, the basic template of the human story of mental and social development. Does that sound Jungian to you? Campbellian? It’s all the same crap.

Tarot’s just pulling a deeply emotional, deeply human story from a bunch of images that resonate deeply with the human unconscious.

What’s in a Deck?

A traditional Tarot deck’s got 78 cards. And it’s divided into two different little subdecks. 22 cards make up the Major Arcana. And 56 cards make up the Minor Arcana.

On the left is the first card of the Major Arcana. Or the last. Technically, it’s the zeroth. But different Tarot decks arrange s$%& a little differently. Doesn’t matter. Because Tarot’s about cycles. So first is last is first again.

On the right’s one of my favorite cards from the Minor Arcana — don’t read into that and don’t ask me why it’s one of my favorites, that’s my stupid unconscious brain at work — on the right’s a card from the Minor Arcana. The Five of Cups.

The Major Arcana: Where Fools Dare to Tread

There’s 22 named cards in the Major Arcana. And they’re the cards most people think of when they hear Tarot. They’re cards like the Fool above. And like the Death card. Which everyone’s heard of and which everyone knows means transformation and not literal death. Except in Curse of Monkey Island. And cards like the Lightning-Struck Tower — except it’s just called the Tower — that predicted Dumbledore’s death in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Together, the cards in the Major Arcana tell a story. A symbolic story. Actually, they tell the story. The symbolic story. Of life. The universe. Everything. Seriously. They depict archetypal life experiences and events. Mostly, inner experiences and events. New beginnings, the discovery of different dimensions of personality, mastering impulses, dealing with change and conflict, understanding your place in the world, finding meaning and perspective, all that s$&%.

These things play out in macrocosm across an entire human life, but they also play out countless times in microcosm all the time. Starting a new job, moving to a new city, or even just deciding to make a lifestyle change? It’s all the same. Cycles in cycles.

The Major Arcana’s often called the Fool’s Journey because the first card — the Fool — represents the start of the journey. Each other card’s a step on that journey.

The Minor Arcana: Got Any Fives?

The Minor Arcana comprises 56 cards and they’re a lot like normal playing cards. There’s four suits — Cups, Pentacles, Swords, and Wands. There’s ten numbered cards in each suit — Ace through Ten — and four court cards — Page, Knight, Queen, and King. Sometimes Wands are called Staves. And sometimes Pentacles are called Coins. And that’s important because they’re much more to do with material stuff than summoning magic.

And Cups are Hearts, Pentacles are Diamonds, Swords are Spades, and Wands are Clubs. Just in case you were wondering.

Each suit of the Minor Arcana represents a journey. Much like the Major Arcana. But they represent smaller journeys. Or more specific journeys. The suits correspond to different dimensions of inner and outer life. Cups have to do with emotions and relationships. Pentacles deal with material and family matters. Swords deal with intellect and reason and ideas. And often, for several reasons, conflict and strife. Because swords and brains are double-edged. Wands represent motivation, passion, creativity, and action.

By the way, in hermeticism, Cups are Water, Pentacles are Earth, Swords are Air, and Wands are Fire. Just in case you were wondering.

See? This s$&% all interconnects.

And I’m being really rough here.

Anyway, the numbered cards represent archetypal events and forces on the journey from budding potential — the Ace — through completion and satisfaction — the Ten. The Court Cards are a bit different. And every Tarot-ist has their own idea. I’ve seen a crapton of different explanations for the general meanings of the Court Cards. Me? I just remember the Court Cards represent inner dimensions and developmental stages. Either in oneself or in others. The Page is an experienced kid, full of energy. The Knight’s an idealistic teen or young adult, full of brash action. The Queen is wise and patient and nurturing like a mother. The King is authoritative and inspiring like a father.

But you’ll figure this s$%& out for yourself if you keep at it.

Deck Design: I Don’t Know Art But I Know What I Like

If you start looking into this Tarot s$&%, the first thing you’ll notice is there’s approximately ten million f$&%ing Tarot decks to choose from. Everything from nice, traditional takes on the Rider-Waite designs to new-agey, abstract crap, to licensed cartoon characters, to fantasy art. There’s even a licensed Dungeons & Dragons Tarot deck. Seriously.

And it sucks. I bought it. And I hate it.

How do you pick out a good deck? Well, it mostly doesn’t matter. Pretty much every Tarot deck’s put together the same way. There’s some slight variations sometimes. Some cards reordered. Some cards renamed. But the differences don’t matter much. Anything that calls itself a Tarot deck probably follows the basic Tarot traditions that have been established over the last three centuries.

That said, there’s some decidedly bad decks out there. And mostly, that’s down to either the richness of the imagery or the lack of traditional symbolism. That’s where the D&D deck fails. It’s just a collection of pretty fantasy picture cards. There’s a few cards that are okay. Mainly because they imitate the Rider-Waite designs. But the vast majority of them are just pictures of D&D stuff that have nothing to do with anything.

Point is, it’s okay for Tarot decks to reorder cards or rename them or even present different images and symbols. But if there ain’t enough on the cards to speak symbolically — or if the cards are speaking symbological gibberish — it’s worthless as a Tarot deck.

The important thing’s that the deck speaks to the Reader. You. The one who owns the cards. I personally use a deck called The Mythic Tarot. It was originally designed by Juliet Sharman-Burke in 1986 and illustrated by Giovanni Caselli. And it’s been reprinted and revised a few times. All the images derive from Greek mythology. And since I know my Greek mythology, the symbolism really speaks to me.

Here’s what my deck’s Fool and Five of Cups look like next to the Rider-Waite versions.

Note the similarities. Similar symbols, though there’s decided differences. I get some extra meaning though because I know the Fool is Dionysus as a primal youth and the Five of Cups shows the moment when Psyche betrays her promise to Eros not to look upon his face and thereby drives him into the night.

Thing is, even silly, novelty decks can work if they’re well designed. I mean, look at this s$&%.

Not only is there a Hello Kitty deck, it’s actually very well designed. The cards keep the same intuitive, emotional themes. Pretty f$&%ing cool? Huh?

Reading the Tarot: What a Spread

Now, I ain’t going to teach you how to read the Tarot. But I will help you teach yourself. In fact, I’ll tell you the best way to teach yourself how to read the Tarot. Especially if you want to run better pretend elf games. Seriously. Practicing Tarot will make you a better GM. I s$&% you not.

Especially if you approach the Tarot right.

First, let’s talk about how a Tarot reading usually works.

The person reading the Tarot’s called the Reader. There’s other names too. But that’s the one I like. The Reader might be consulting the Tarot for their own benefit. Or they might be reading the cards for someone else. That someone else is called a Questioner. Or Querent. Or Subject. Or something else. I like Querent. The Reader draws some number of cards randomly from the deck and lays them out in a specific pattern. That pattern’s called a Spread. As each card’s revealed, the Reader interprets the card.

And that’s how a Tarot reading works. Very generally. Because there’s lots of specifics that vary from Reader to Reader and tradition to tradition. S$&% like how the cards are drawn, who touches the cards, whether the Querent is looking for a specific answer or just general insight, whether the Querent shares the question, the specifics of the Spread, whether the cards are revealed as they’re drawn or after all the cards are drawn, and whether to interpret the cards differently depending on whether they’re revealed upside-down or right-side-up.

What’s important is that each card’s interpretated not just based on its symbolic meaning, but also its position in the Spread, the other cards in the Spread, and whether the Querent is looking for specific insights and has voiced them.

Say I’m doing a reading and out comes the Five of Cups.

Generally, I interpret the Five of Cups as having to do with emotional loss, heartbreak, and sadness. In isolation, that’s what I see in the Five of Cups.

If that Five shows up in a spot in the Spread that corresponds to past events, I’d interpret it as moving on from a loss or getting over emotional pain. And if it’s next to the Fool, it might represent a necessary moving-on to make room for something new. Bittersweet and optimistic.

But suppose that Five shows up in a place to do with fears and worries. And suppose the Querent’s revealed there’s some trouble in the home. And suppose the Spread’s loaded with Pentacles cards. I might ask the Querent whether there are money or household management troubles. If there are, I might suggest that maybe the Querent’s worried that those stresses might be threatening a relationship. S$&% like that.

Point is, a good reading’s about symbolism and context. The more context you’ve got — from the spread, the other cards, and the Querent — the richer the reading. Nothing sucks more than giving a reading to a stony-faced a$& who doesn’t want to be there and won’t talk to you. Usually, they’re trying to prove you a fraud. The best readings are conversations between the Reader and the Querent about the Cards and the Spread. And what they might suggest.

Which brings me to…

What Each and Every Card Means

This is the big thing. Whenever anyone talks about reading the Tarot or learning the Tarot, it’s all down to what the cards mean, right? This card means this. That card means that. And that means learning the Tarot’s about learning what the cards mean. Right?

Well, that’s pretty much the worst way to learn — and read — the Tarot.

The Awful Little Book

Every Tarot deck comes with a little book. Sometimes, it’s a big book. The Mythic Tarot has a huge book. But it’s actually better than most. For reasons.

Anyway, the Book. The book that defines all the cards and explains the concrete meaning of each and every last one. The book every new Tarot-ist picks up and starts memorizing. Because that’s how you Tarot, right?

Except, that’s really f$&%ing hard to do. There’s 78 cards and the meanings are all as vague as f$&%. And no two Tarot designers agree on the precise meanings anyway. And because I explained s$&% the way I did, you probably already know why that’s the case. It’s because Tarot cards speak to the unconscious. And they speak in symbols. Not words. Not language. And because nine-tenths of Tarot readings involve all the context around the symbols.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t read the little book. Everyone does. I read mine. I’ve read several other books since then. They’re interesting. But they won’t teach you jack s$&% about reading Tarot. Interpreting Tarot. They’re just lists to memorize. This is why the best readers — the most insightful and entertaining readers — don’t waste their energy memorizing fixed, concrete meanings for every card.

Instead, they read intuitively.

Intuition: What a Show!

The best way to start reading Tarot is to start reading Tarot. Or at least, to start studying the cards. Studying them very closely. Because every card’s loaded with symbols. And those symbols will speak to your intuitive, unconscious mind. If you let them.

Look at the Fool again. Whichever you want. Look at all three. Just study the cards for a little while. And then describe the card. What’s happening there? What’s the story?

The Rider Fool has a bindle over his shoulder. The Mythic Fool is emerging from a cave. Kitty is setting off on a balloon ride. Notice they’re all setting out? Departing? Heading off on a journey?

Did you notice there’s a cliff? They’re all at the edge of a cliff. They don’t seem to notice the cliff. Though, that’s harder to see. Kitty’s face is a weird mix of expressive and non-expressive. That’s just her character design. But Kitty’s moving up. And the Rider and Mythic Fools are looking up. What does up suggest to you? And what’s the cliff about?

And what might that have to do with the word Fool? The name of the card’s part of the symbolism, after all.

Most people interpret the Fool as a setting out. They usually see optimism and hope, but also naivete. A lack of awareness. Heading out on an adventure without a sense of the danger that might befall. Or without knowing what pitfalls might wait ahead.

Every little thing’s important. Some of these cards can be a kind of hidden picture game. Did you notice each Fool has an animal friend? Rider has a doggy. Dionysus has an Eagle. That’s his daddy Zeus. And Kitty has a magic butterfly. What might that s$&% mean?

Now, look at those Fives of Cups again.

There’s a lot more variation here. But, thematically, there’s a lot of similarities too. Rider is mourning a pile of spilled cups. Alone. Under a dark sky. Psyche’s being left alone. In the dark. By an angelic figure. There’s a bed there. And spilled cups. Keropippi — yes, I know my Sanrio characters; don’t judge — Keropippi is crying because his picnic’s ruined. Dark clouds, rain, ants, bees. And he’s spilled his cups.

The Five of Cups is usually associated with loss — especially emotional loss — separation, and sadness. Which you can see in the pictures. But the hidden picture game still applies. Notice anything about the cups. Are they all spilled. No. They’re not. What might that mean?

Intuitive reading is a great way to start the Tarot journey. It entails looking at the images and interpreting them fresh every time you see them. Trusting your intuition to clue you in. Which will help you dump the rational, logical, and wholly incorrect notion that the cards have fixed, concrete, specific, linguistic, and isolated meanings. They don’t. They have intuitive meanings based on piles of symbols that change depending on the context.

Intuitive reading ain’t easy. Some cards will leave you saying, “just what the f$&% am I looking at?” That’s fine. Sometimes, the card’s meaning won’t click into place without more context. Without other cards around it. Sometimes, it takes a while for this s$&% to click. Sometimes, you just have to move past a card. Ignore it.

Running Back to the Little Book

When you hit a difficult card, your impulse will be to check that damned Book. Don’t. If a card baffles you when you’re doing a reading, just move past it. Move on. It might reveal itself to you later. If it doesn’t, look it up after the reading’s done. Hell, after you do a practice reading — after you’ve intuitively read the cards — go ahead and look up the cards. Just to see what that adds to your interpretation. Just don’t think of the book as an answer key. It’s just another viewpoint.

But you should also read through the book. Don’t try to memorize it. Don’t refer back to it during readings. But do read it. Why? Because Tarot’s based on cycles and patterns. Repeated patterns. And those cycles and patterns can give you extra context during a reading.

For instance, when you read the book, you might notice all the Fives in the Minor Arcana deal with struggle, loss, and hardship. You might notice the Pages and Queens tend to focus on inner qualities, while the Knights and Kings are outward-directed s$&%. These patterns are really useful to notice. Especially with the Minor Arcana. Because there’s so many f$&%ing cards there.

Lots of readers rely on keywords. Or build cheat sheets. That’s not the same as memorizing meanings. It’s noticing patterns and writing them down. Just don’t refer to those cheat sheets during a reading either. Trust your intuition. And if your intuition reveals a pattern that’s different from your cheat sheet? Assume the cheat sheet is wrong and correct it.

So, I know Cups are to do with emotions and relationships. And I know sixes are usually about effort and work and persistence. So, let’s say this…

… shows up in a place in the spread that suggests it’s some kind of Root Cause of something. And suppose the Querent has revealed they’re struggling with a new job. They just don’t feel settled. What might you make of that?

Look at the card. Consider what Cups and sixes usually have to do with. Consider the idea of Root Causes. And consider the Querent’s problem. What might you ask the Querent?

I might ask, “how is your relationship with your coworkers? Have you made an effort to get to know everyone?”

And that’s how to learn Tarot.

Part II: Embettering Your Pretend Elf Games with Tarot

That’s your Tarot primer. Everything you never wanted to know about Tarot and how to get good at it. But why the f$&% should you bother? Well, first, because it’s fun. And second, because it’s insightful. And third, because learning new skills is always a joy.

But I ain’t trying to sell you on Tarot for its own sake am I? I made the bold claim that getting good at Tarot would also make you a better GM. And that’s got nothing to do with using Tarot as a game mechanic. Because I’m not telling you to do that s$&%.

I mean, I will. In Part III of this article, I’ll share a couple of Tarot-based adventure- and dungeon-building systems I invented. But you’ll have to wait for that s$&%. Because Part III of this article is an entire article of its own.

Right now, though, I want to make you see how practicing Tarot as Tarot will help your mad GMing skillz.

Trusting Your Gut

Tabletop RPGs are games. Things done for fun. And they’re social games. Things done with other people. Problem is that most GMs focus all their mental energy on concrete rules, math, and mechanical s$&%. Probabilities, game balance, game rules. And even outside the mechanics, GMs think in terms of the right way to do s$&%. The best way to give people the most fun. The way you should run the game.

I ain’t going to say that s$&%’s unimportant. I mean, at the core of the MDA approach — the game design philosophy I never f$&%ing shut up about — is the idea that mechanics are all the GMs got to work with. But it’s still the play experience — the emotional, subjective, social experience — that actually determines whether the game works or not.

Meanwhile, most of what GMs do? It’s making snap decisions. How should this play out? How should I interpret that die roll? What’s this NPC’s name and why do the players care? How can I resolve that inconsistency in the rules? Every moment counts there. Too much time ruminating, too much time looking s$&% up in books, that’ll kill your game. A quick, intuitive decision’s always better than a correct decision. As if correct means anything in terms of emotional, subjective, social pretend elf games.

A GM’s intuitive brain is actually very smart. And with every game, it gets smarter. As a GM, you get a feel for what works. And what doesn’t. Or you would. If you’d trust your intuition. I’ve been on this crusade for a while to get you to think less and trust yourself more. To stop overthinking, overplanning, overanalyzing, and overpreparing. And to stay the hell away from self-censorship.

Trust your intuition? Believe what you’re doing is intuitive? Don’t try to memorize s$&%? Don’t stop to check the rulebooks? Don’t trick yourself into thinking there’s correct, concrete, right answers? Sound familiar?

Tarot’s about feeling your way through every reading. Because every reading’s subjective and context-sensitive. And because there’s too much to memorize and because the rules aren’t really fixed. And if you try to approach it as a problem of memorization and recall, you’ll suck at it.

Point is, reading the Tarot’s like dodging a wrench. If you can dodge a wrench, you can run an RPG.

Flexing Your Creative Muscle

Creativity’s high on the list of necessary GMing skills. Because GMing’s about pulling s$&% out of nowhere whenever you need it. Most people don’t think about it this way, but creativity’s a skill. Or, at least, it’s a muscle. You can train it.

Creativity is actually about forming associations and connections in your brain. Your brain’s full of crap. Monsters, characters, plot elements, trap ideas, weird bits of lore, and so on. And creativity’s not the act of inventing wholly new stuff. It’s just connecting s$&% in interesting ways. Pulling s$&% out as you need it and smashing it into other s$&%.

Tarot’s all about connecting ideas, symbols, and impressions together. Making quick associations. When you interpret a card, your brain’s taking in the imagery and then scrambling to find all the things connected to that imagery already stored away. And then sort through that s$&% for the actually useful stuff. The more you use that searching-and-sorting algorithm, the more efficient it gets.

Moreover, the Tarot wires ideas together. Every time you see a card with a sword and intuit a meaning, those meanings get more interconnected. Just by reading the cards, you’ll start associating swords with hermetic air and with conflict and with cunning and with intellect. This means the next time you’ve got to run a game with air elementals or a magic sword or a wizard, you’ve got a pile of ready-made connections to help you pull out other game elements. The wiring’s already there.

What weapons do air archons carry? What does a potion of intellect look like? What artifact is the wizard of wind on the hunt for?

Point is Tarot’s creativity training on steroids. It literally trains your brain to make quick associations. And the ideas it’s associating? They’re not just any ideas. They’re archetypal ideas that resonate strongly with human beings. They’re the ideas that make stories engaging and interesting and resonant.

Recontextualization

So, maybe you believe Tarot really can help you trust your intuitive gut. And maybe you believe it’ll really help train your creative brain bits. But so what? Lots of s$&% can help your creativity and intuition. Why’s Tarot so much better than any of that other s$&%?

Let’s talk about recontextualization. It’s a pretty esoteric skill. But it’s also amazingly useful.

Running a game’s about building a story from the inside, right? Building it as it unfolds. Problem is that a GM can’t control the unfolding story. Because players. F$&%ing players. And yet, a good GM’s still expected to take whatever happens and bend that s$&% into a good story. A satisfying, well-paced, well-structured narrative with setups and payoffs and internal consistency and all the s$&% that makes good stories good. All the stuff that’s missing from modern Hollywood crap.

The ability to do that? A lot of it’s down to recontextualization. Recontextualization is what happens when you discover something that changes everything that came before it. When a character’s revealed as a traitor, suddenly everything they did before the revelation has a different meaning. What they said, who they talked to, what they did, what they didn’t do. Suddenly you see it all differently, right?

Recontextualization’s about reinterpreting past events to fit new information. It’s what makes those surprise revelations in stories so f$&%ing engaging. If they’re written properly. It’s what makes every powerup in a Metroidvania game feel like a big deal. And it’s also what lets a GM build an interconnected world as events unfold. It’s what lets GMs make meaningless things meaningful later. Even when they haven’t planned that s%$& in advance.

Guess what? A Tarot reading is one long exercise in recontextualization. Because readings are so context-sensitive, every revealed card requires the Reader to reinterpret every other card in the Spread. Basically, the meaning of the Spread changes with every card. And the Reader’s got to keep up.

Really, when you get down to it, Tarot’s about pulling a story out of a bunch of disparate, jumbled images that are gradually revealed. And incorporating the input from the Questioner.

Speaking of…

Part III: Pulling a Story Out of a Tarot Spread

Because of all the s$&% I said above, it’s actually possible to create game content with a deck of Tarot cards. That is, you can do a lot of adventure plotting and planning just by dealing yourself a handful of Tarot cards. And I’m going to give you two different ways to pull that s$&% off. One’s for writing adventure and campaign stories. And the other’s useful for mapping and planning dungeons.

At least, that’s what I’d be saying if I wasn’t already way over my word count. So, that’s where we’ll pick this up in two weeks.

Until then, maybe buy yourself a Tarot deck and do a few practice readings. No, you don’t have to memorize the rules first.

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Recommendations

If you’re actually interested in learning the Tarot, here’s some quick links to some useful s$&%. Just FYI, these are commissioned Amazon links. So if you use them, you help support the site.

The Rider Tarot Deck is the traditional deck I’ve been sharing pictures of.

The New Mythic Tarot is that alternative deck I used based on Greek mythology.

2-Hour Tarot Tutor is a great book by Wilma Carroll that walks you through learning Tarot by intuitive reading.