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Made in us
Shadowy Grot Kommittee Memba






https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IvChbTms9dyq6NhsKkFL9x0ahHs9SbXnHj8KfUaxErg/edit?usp=sharing

My DnD group has been doodling around with this mechanic for a little while, and we quite like it. We had a couple of players with an interest in Tarot, and while I wasn't super familiar with Tarot outside of the few things you pick up via osmosis (there's a Death card, there's a Devil card, there's a Fool card etc) I became interested in how you might use them in an RPG, as I had fond memories of the playing card randomization mechanic from Malifaux and we were getting a little bit tired of just how swingy rolling a D20 made DnD.

The basic gist is, we separate the Major arcana (The cards with names) from the Minor arcana (the cards with suits and numbers similar to playing cards) and draw from the minor arcana for our usual rolls, shifting the game over to a base D14 system, but with cards drawn being removed from the deck, so any time you draw a particular number, you're less likely to draw that number for the remainder of the session. If the action you're attempting to perform corresponds to the generally accepted meaning of the suit, then you can choose to substitute the card you've drawn for a Major Arcana card, which are typically either critical successes or critical failures, but with a little bit more of an added roleplaying/improv element.

It works really well, as ultimately, a Tarot deck is intended as an improv tool anyway. The cards and their highly flexible meanings are made for the reader and the subject to 'yes, and' each other, which lends itself quite neatly to an RPG. So if you wanted an excuse to own one of those cool eldritch spooky card decks but you're not big into crystal healing and mystical auras and such, it can be a good excuse.

"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"

"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"

"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"

"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"  
   
Made in us
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MN (Currently in WY)

I love this idea. I also like the "Improv" tool approach and could see this being really cool in a horror/mystical themed game system. There are some good bones to work with here for sure.

We recently introduced a Tarot deck into Curse of Strahd, but it was more of a "Magical item" that we could use to boost or curse various rolls.

It is pretty atmospheric.

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Made in us
Shadowy Grot Kommittee Memba






 Easy E wrote:
I love this idea. I also like the "Improv" tool approach and could see this being really cool in a horror/mystical themed game system. There are some good bones to work with here for sure.

We recently introduced a Tarot deck into Curse of Strahd, but it was more of a "Magical item" that we could use to boost or curse various rolls.

It is pretty atmospheric.


What I like about it the most in a DnD context is that it gives a little more wiggle room to the "dice" than the common solution of the DM handing out advantage or disadvantage willy-nilly when they like or don't like the sound of an idea. 25% of the time or more, some aspect of what you're currently trying to do aligns with the 'aspects' of the suit you've drawn, which gives you the opportunity to fish for a critical if the roll looks bad, and generally even if the action goes from failing to critically failing, critically failing in an interesting way provides a better flow to continuing to roleplay than just 'nope, doesn't work' and also avoids the usual default of 'it doesn't work because your character suddenly becomes a bumbling idiot' that is so often an irritating thing.

Like the last time this came up in a big way a failure to attack an enemy in combat turned into a critical failure with "The Empress" card, which the group opted to interpret as the player recognizing that the enemy he was trying to kill was barely older than a teenager. Your typical DnD fight of 'if the character token says "Bandit" then it's not a real person and you're still the heroes if you kill them outright' was completely derailed and an easy fight became much more difficult as we tried to nonlethally subdue the people attacking us and get away from them rather than the usual 'kill and loot the bodies.'


"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"

"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"

"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"

"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"  
   
Made in us
Battlefield Tourist




MN (Currently in WY)

Well, D&D does have that flaw.....

As a joke, I always ask "How much XP are they worth?" whenever we walk into a tavern full of people. We use Milestone for leveling, but.....


How do you guard rail the "Yes, and" approaches to this system?

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Made in us
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 Easy E wrote:
Well, D&D does have that flaw.....

As a joke, I always ask "How much XP are they worth?" whenever we walk into a tavern full of people. We use Milestone for leveling, but.....


How do you guard rail the "Yes, and" approaches to this system?


In essence, I don't. I made it clear from the onset that I expect, by simple human nature, that most of the time the mechanic is going to get used, it's going to be an attempt to turn an action the player thinks is going to fail into one that may succeed. Nobody's going to draw a 13 and go 'hmm, I should take this extremely good roll and turn it into what is probably a coinflip'. But I also trust our group in particular to not try to ultra-stretch for every possible advantage, and that's the real hazard with this system - the subjectivity of arguing whether your action falls within the aspect of the suits, and the subjectivity of when you draw a major arcana card that offers a critical success and fail outcome, whether your action fits the success outcome.

So far, players stretching to try and get to draw a major arcana card is a slight issue, because everyone is excited to get to use the mechanic, and players stretching to try and twist an action into the success category has been absolutely not an issue at all. So what I've done is adjust the Challenge Rating (or any static defenses) down by -2 instead of down by -3, which would get me the closest to the baseline odds being the same with a random draw of 1-14 rather than 1-20.

This means by default, it's a little harder to get a success just by drawing a good number, which makes up for the major arcana mechanic getting used as a "second chance" for a bad roll what has worked out to be roughly 1/3 of the time.

But so far, the players are really embracing the more detailed critical failures, just as much if not more than the more detailed critical successes. I think there's a natural inclination to, when you try something and fail in an RPG, to drop out of feeling like you're playing a heroic character and often DMs will take any bad roll as an opportunity to do some roasting, taking control of the player's character for a moment to talk about how they do some bumbling slapstick goof.

Mostly what I've been doing is providing a general description of what happens, and allowing the player to determine how their character would play that out. something like

"You're trying something new, that you're not necessarily confident in your skills at, and a moment of hesitation causes your attempt to fail"
"What you're trying to do is delicate and methodical, but you're under a lot of pressure at the moment, and that causes you to try and rush things."

and then typically the player lays out briefly what that looks like, occasionally we discuss some brief extra effect or bonus that the success or failure being critical brings about, and the game moves on as before without being derailed.

Any kind of group that contains elements of players wanting to "win" or wanting every action to succeed regardless, I think this kind of a system would definitely fall apart.

"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"

"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"

"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"

"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"  
   
 
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