Tarot Wizardry

Character Creation

To generate a character, draw six tarot cards and lay them out as follows.

Place the first card in the middle of the spread. This card represents your character’s personality, attitude towards the world, and present state of mind.

Place the second card horizontally across the first card, and interpret it upright. This card represents an obstacle in their life that is so great they believe only magic can address it.

Place the third card to the west of the first card. This card represents why and how your character became a wizard. Write down a skill associated with this part of your character’s life.

Place the fourth card to the east of the first card. This card represents your character’s near future if they do not act to prevent it.

Place the fifth card to the north of the first card. This card represents what your character uses magic to achieve, or how they channel their occult prowess. Write down a skill associated with this part of your character’s life.

Place the sixth card to the south of the first card. This card represents their equipment, trappings, and resources. Write down a skill associated with this part of your character’s life.

Once you have established your character, build your character’s magical Practice. For each suit of the tarot, choose an aspect or element of the world associated with that suit. When your character casts a spell with a card of that suit, their spell manifests as an effect in that chosen medium. For example, a character with the Swords aspect of Perception could use Swords cards to obscure themselves from others, create illusions, scry over great distances, or identify the nature of magical effects.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: See Aspects & Practices below to get ideas. There is no comprehensive list.

Finally, designate one of your character’s Aspects as their Prime Aspect (also called their Home Demesne, Favoured Sphere, Chosen School, etc.). Your character has a special affinity for this aspect of reality, which empowers their spells in that suit.

Play

At the start of each session, each player draws 5 cards from the shared tarot deck. The cards in each player’s hand represent the spells that they can cast this session. The GM draws 7 cards, which represent the challenges they can bring to bear against the player characters.  Whenever the GM runs out of cards in their hand, they draw back up to 7.

To cast a spell, play a tarot card from your hand and interpret its meaning in the context of your character’s magic abilities. After determining the outcome of your spell, put it in the communal discard pile. Magic always affects the world unless explicitly counterspelled, so use magic wisely (or at least prepare yourself for the consequences of failure).

AUTHOR’S NOTE: If you can't narratively apply a card's meaning to a challenge, you can't use it to overcome that challenge. Don’t let this discourage you: twist meanings and wield wordplay to make your will manifest.

When you cast a spell, if the difficulty of the challenge has not already been set, the GM plays a card from their hand or reveals the top card of the deck to determine the task’s challenge rating. If you play a card in the Minor Arcana, you succeed if your spell’s value meets or beats the challenge’s rating (Court cards are 11s, Aces are 12). If you play a card in the Major Arcana, it always succeeds unless opposed by another Major Arcanum, but you suffer a Wound for channeling such a powerful magical effect.

Challenges have a visible rating between 0 (utterly inconsequential) and 15 (impossible without the strongest magic). If you have a relevant skill, whether chosen at character creation or acquired during play, reduce the CR by 2. To achieve a difficult task with mundane efforts, roll 1d10. You succeed if you meet or beat the challenge’s rating. If you fail, the GM narrates the consequences of your actions. You may attempt to save yourself from mundane failure by taking a Wound to cast a spell before the consequences take full effect.

When a player runs out of cards in their hand, their magic is temporarily exhausted until the next session. During the session, if they rest for at least an in-game day and have cleared all of their Wounds, they draw a new hand of 5 cards.

If the deck runs out of cards, you have strained magic itself to a breaking point. Call the session, even if you’re in the middle of something important.

Wounds and Scars

A player character can suffer 3 Wounds before becoming Incapacitated. Any Wound past the third also immediately incapacitates the character. An Incapacitated character cannot make rolls or cast spells until the end of the scene.

If you have 1 Wound, you need a day of rest to clear your wounds. If you have 2 Wounds, you need a week of rest instead. If you have 3 or more Wounds, you need a month of rest to clear your wounds, and one Wound is converted into a permanent Scar. Scars cannot be healed and count towards your total Wounds for the purpose of Incapacitation (but not rest durations). When you take your third Scar, you die.

Removing a wound without resting is a rating 9 challenge. If you fail to remove a Wound, it immediately becomes a Scar.

Wounds and Scars can be physical, mental, occult, spiritual, or even reputational. With cosmic power comes cosmic vulnerability — hexes, curses, and geases all function within the Wound and Scar system.

Enemies

Mundane enemies are represented with static challenge ratings and are handled through narrative play.

Supernatural enemies are represented by a pile of up to 3 face-down cards. When a supernatural enemy threatens a character or a character attempts to overcome the enemy, if that enemy has no face-up cards, the GM reveals the top card of the pile. That card sets the rating for a challenge associated with that enemy. Once all of the enemy’s cards have been overcome, the enemy is defeated.

An enemy wizard has their own hand of 5 cards, their own practice and aspects, and can suffer up to 3 Wounds just like a player character.

Spells

When you play a tarot card to solve a problem, describe how you work magic to address the situation. This description must take two things into consideration: the meaning of the card itself, and your character’s Aspects.

Your character associates an aspect of reality with each suit. When you play a card of a suit, your magic expresses itself through that aspect. Minor Works in your Prime Aspect are called Prime Works, and count their value at +2.

Minor Works

When you play a card in the Minor Arcana, perform a Minor Work. Describe the spell that you cast by interpreting the meaning of the card you played through the lens of your aspect for its suit. For example, if your aspect for Swords is Fire, when you play the Two of Swords, interpret its meanings (such as Avoidance) through that lens. Perhaps you erect a barrier of flame between yourself and an enemy, or you temporarily quell a raging inferno.

Minor Works cannot last longer than the scene, though their effects on the mundane world may linger.

Court cards (traditionally the Page, Knight, Queen, and King of each suit) are part of the Minor Arcana, but share a value of 11 and have an additional suit based on their seat at Court. The Page is associated with Earth, and therefore with Pentacles. The same is true for Knights with Fire and Wands, Queens with Water and Cups, and Kings with Air and Swords. Spells cast with Court cards are Prime Works if either their printed or associated suit match your Prime Aspect.

Furthermore, as Court cards are often used to represent people, they are an effective tool to influence, target, or even summon beings represented by the card in question.

When two Minor Works oppose each other, the spell with the higher value wins out and its caster narrates the ultimate result. Resolve ties between Minor Workings of equivalent value by referencing the suits’ respective elemental dignities.

Support (Wands vs. Swords, or Cups vs. Pentacles): Combine. The spells synthesize into a greater whole. If only one of the constituent spells is a Prime Work, that caster gains control of the gestalt spell; if neither or both of the spells are Prime, the spell becomes uncontrolled.

Weaken (Wands vs. Cups, or Swords vs. Pentacles): Counterspell. Both spells fizzle in their casters’ hands, and inflict damage

Neutral (Wands vs. Pentacles, or Swords vs. Cups): Ships passing. If only one of the spells is a Prime Work, its caster wins. Otherwise, both spells take effect but cannot affect each other.

Strengthen (A suit vs. itself): The Price of Hubris. The spells combine into a Major Work with value equal to their sum and run Rampant. Roll on the Magnum Opus table. This is only possible if a card is played against itself, which shouldn’t happen if you’re only playing with a single deck, but magic oft refuses such mundane strictures.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: These only happen on ties. Don’t worry about the mechanical effects of elemental dignities in other circumstances.

Major Works

When you play a card in the Major Arcana, perform a Major Work. Major Works obviate any mundane challenge and surmount any Minor Work. Furthermore, Major Arcana do not have suits — their effects are so powerful that they can only be channeled through your Prime Aspect. They are not, however, Prime Works — they are something greater.

Major works cannot last longer than the session, and their effects on the mundane world will reverberate.

    A Major Work is also taxing on its caster. To cast a Major Work, you must suffer a Wound. The nature and narrative impact of the Wound are dictated by the card’s meaning and your ultimate intentions for the spell.

When two Major Works clash, roll 2d6 on the Magnum Opus table. An even result means that the Major work with the higher value wins; an odd result means that the Major work with the lower value wins. Before the work resolves, the Magnum Opus result takes effect.

Magnum Opus

12. Projection (As Above). All of your Minor Works for the rest of the session are Prime Works, regardless of their suit or aspect.
11. Exaltation. An angel of your Prime Aspect arrives to deliver your spell in person. It will hang around until the end of the scene.
10. Congelation. Choose one of your non-Prime Aspects. Until the end of the session, that Aspect becomes your Prime Aspect.
9. Multiplication. Until the end of the scene, Minor Arcana may be played as previous Minor Arcana that have been played (and resolved) this scene.
8. Conjunction. Reveal the top card of the deck.
7. Cibation. Draw a card.
6. Dissolution. Discard your hand, then draw 3 cards.
5. Calcination. The spell sets everything it touches on fire, even and especially things that are impervious to mundane flames.
4. Separation. Your skin splits with uncontainable magic power. Take a Wound, and your spell runs Rampant.
3. Putrefaction. Everything nearby begins to wilt, wither, and rot. Everyone in the scene suffers a Wound.
2. Sublimation (So Below). For the rest of the session, all cards are played reversed.

Rampant spells become NPCs under the GM’s control. They may take the form of elementals, spirits, demons, daemons, daimons, or other supernatural beings with inscrutable and orthogonal goals. While they dissipate at the end of the scene or session in accordance with their power, they may return of their own volition or be summoned by an enterprising practitioner.

Aspects & Practices

A practice is a set of correspondences between tarot suits and aspects of reality. These are not mandatory (you can always modify, mix-and-match, or wholly ignore them), but cultural contexts and established occult orders make it easier to find people who use these combinations of aspects.

A Practitioner may select any Aspect of their Practice as their Prime Aspect. A Daemonic practitioner focused on Commanding will behave very differently from one whose Prime is Contracts, Communing, or Calling; while their Minor workings are similar, their Major workings are entirely different.

Practice: Technomancy
Swords — Machines
Wands — Creation
Cups — Data
Pentacles — Money

Practice: Daemonic
Swords — Calling
Wands — Commanding
Cups — Communing
Pentacles — Contracts

Practice: Elementalism
Swords — Air
Wands — Fire
Cups — Water
Pentacles — Earth

Practice: Psychic
Swords — Perception
Wands — Instinct
Cups — Emotion
Pentacles — Memory

Practice: Traveling
Swords — Motion
Wands — Impulse
Cups — Time
Pentacles — Resistance

Practice: Witchcraft
Swords — Hexes
Wands — Animation
Cups — Divination
Pentacles — Healing

Practice: The World
Swords — Weather
Wands — Growth
Cups — Dreams
Pentacles — Flora & Fauna

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I referenced the Rider-Waite-Smith deck when writing this system due to its ubiquity, but these rules should work for even nonstandard decks — homebrew as necessary.

Advanced Workings

With an hour of proper preparations and focus, you may discard a card to perform Divination and look at the top card of the deck.

You may use an evening without distractions or discomfort to Meditate. At the end of your Meditation, discard a card of your choice and draw a replacement. You cannot Meditate in this way more than once a day.

With a night of hard work, concentration, and precise preparations, you may perform Ritual Magic. Describe the spell you are preparing to cast, then draw a card, then play a card from your hand. If the card you play does not have an appropriate meaning for the spell, the spell will act unpredictably even on a success.

When several wizards work together, they may create a spread of multiple cards that imparts greater meaning, versatility, and/or specificity to the resulting spell. Each wizard may only contribute a single card to a spread, and the spread’s value is the highest value of a minor arcana within it. Spreads cannot be Prime Works, but spreads comprised of exclusively Major Arcana are some of the most powerful and dangerous Workings a wizard can wield.