The Tarot as Encounter Table

Selections from the Tarot de Carlotydes (my personal fave)

I own a bunch of tarot decks and have been meaning to learn to use them for ages now. And I've managed to pick up some of the basics, but it'd probably be easier for me if I could incorporate them into something that's already part of my daily (or at least weekly) routine. Why not games?

I do know some games that use tarot cards, but they often use them more as a flavorful random generator (His Majesty the Worm, for instance) than for their “real” divinatory content. Incidentally, I actually own a D&D-branded tarot deck that was intended to do this for 5E campaigns—offer up quirky random encounters and events that have next to nothing to do with traditional tarot readings—and, although the cards are beautiful, I find it useless both as a tarot deck and as an encounter table. The art, though attractive, doesn't communicate anything about the arcana or its associated random encounter; to glean anything from your draw, you have to look it up in a little booklet. To make matters worse, there are no design elements to distinguish the different suits, so you have to match each minor arcana card individually with the corresponding art in the booklet. What's the point? Just give me a d100 table.

I want my tarot encounter “table” to draw from the traditional interpretations of the cards to begin with, just for my own edification, but in contrast to that mess of a D&D deck, I think there's something to be gained from that in terms of ease of use, too. To be usable at the table without a lot of flipping through booklets and hemming and hawing, we'd want the cards to have easily legible systematic meanings, rather than having each one be a separate, disconnected entry in a table. Luckily, that's pretty how much the minor arcana, at least, already work!

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Let's look at the suits:

Cups are associated with the element of water, and by extension with intuition, emotion, and interpersonal relationships. Traditionally, this suit was associated with the clergy, but we could extend that idea (a large organization at least ostensibly concerned with the common weal) to the magistrates or mandarins of a bureaucratic, rather than theocratic, state.

Swords are associated with the element of air, and by extension with the intellect and the world of ideas, but also with sorrow and violence. There are some obvious associations here—the nobility, mercenaries, and bandits all live by, and are symbolized by, the sword—but scholars, researchers, explorers, and mourners could serve too.

Pentacles are associated with the element of earth, and by extension with money (in other languages the suit is often “coins” or “rings”), natural resources, the home, and health. Again, many associations are obvious: merchants, traders, peddlers, miners, farmers.

Wands are associated with the element of fire, and by extension with willpower, creativity, labor, and ambition. The name of the suit, in a conventional TTRPG context, obviously suggests magic-users, but tradition associates the suit with what we might call the “creative classes,” like artists and artisans, and with the vitality and energy of the common people in general.

For simplicity's sake, we might, in our traditional quasi-medieval TTRPG setting, boil these associations down to the estates of the realm (we're going to divide the lower classes between merchants and workers/peasants, as in Sweden, Russia, Italy, etc. rather than using the Anglo-French rubric where all commoners get lumped together in the third estate and the fourth estate ends up being journalists somehow):

Cups are associated with the element of water and the first estate, the clergy.
Swords are associated with the element of air and the second estate, the nobility.
Pentacles are associated with the element of earth and the third estate, the burghers.
Wands are associated with the element of fire and the fourth estate, the peasantry.

In a different setting, these are easy enough to adapt. In a modern or futuristic game, for instance, the clergy become the civil bureaucracy, the nobility become the military and other security forces (and perhaps organized criminals too), the burghers become corporations (or oligarchs, or just the bourgeoisie), and the peasantry become the urban proletariat.

Encounters don't always have to be with the actual members of each estate, just their representatives or people associated with them. Back in our quasi-medieval setting, for instance, we could have four consecutive encounters with commoners on the road, but have each associated with a different suit: first a group of pilgrims on their way to a holy site, then a company of soldiers mustering for a deployment, then a group of carters carrying goods for their merchant boss, and finally some peasants taking goods to market on their own behalf.

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That's suits sorted. Next, numbers. These have one obvious use—they can just be numbers. Ace of Swords? That's a lone knight riding off on a quest. Six of Pentacles? A traveling merchant and her five guards, or a traders' caravan of six wagons. Four of Cups? A prioress and three novices returning to their monastery. But they also each have associations of their own:

Ace: New beginnings, potential, opportunities. This could represent a proposition or quest.
Two: Partnerships, relationships, balance, choices, duality. This could be a literal or metaphorical fork in the road for the PCs.
Three: Creation, groups, growth, collaboration. This might be an offer of company or a recruitment pitch.
Four: Stability, foundations. This could be a physically sheltered place or otherwise just a good opportunity to rest and recuperate.
Five: Conflict, change. This might be a scene of violence or disaster, or just a place or person experiencing some kind of transition.
Six: Harmony, growth, cooperation. This could be an offer of, or request for, cooperation or aid.
Seven: Achievement, understanding, reflection. This might be some general knowledge gained, or a clue toward some task the PCs are pursuing.
Eight: Action, accomplishment. This might be an obstacle or adversity to overcome.
Nine: Fulfillment, fruition, completion. This could be an encounter with someone or something the PCs have been looking for.
Ten: The ending of a cycle, renewal, wholeness. This might be a reunion, a restoration, or even the opportunity to complete a major quest.

These can be used with or without their suit. Maybe our Ace of Swords has a quest for us. Maybe our Six of Pentacles has a valuable object she's willing to trade to us for something we recently acquired. Or maybe our Four of Cups is just a pleasant grove of trees around a spring by the roadside.

The minor arcana also include “face cards.” These are associated with different stages in an individual's life or career, but also have broader associations. They can represent ranks in the hierarchies associated with the suits, individuals of different ages, or abstract ideas:

Page: A teenager. A seeker or student. News. An apprentice.
Knight: A young adult. An explorer or traveler. Movement. A journeyman.
Queen: A mature adult. A teacher or mentor. Power. An expert.
King: An elder. An authority or virtuoso. Wisdom. A master.

The Page of Cups might be a messenger with word of the new bishop's appointment. The Queen of Swords might be an armsmaster willing to teach one of the PCs a few of her tricks. The Knight of Wands could be a young wizard off to make their mark on the world or just a young farmworker traveling to find work in a foreign land. Alternatively, the Knight of Swords could be a whole army on the march, or the Queen of Cups might be that new bishop and his vast entourage making a procession of great pomp and circumstance.

So we've got a nice, reasonably tidy system for the minor arcana. But what about the major arcana, which make up more than a quarter of the deck?

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When you're reading tarot, the major arcana are usually considered to be more consequential than the minor arcana: major life events, turning points, important lessons. We could take that approach here, but do we want 28% of our random encounter “table” to be serious drama? Probably not. On the other hand, some of them have names that fit perfectly into a traditional TTRPG setting, so why not think about class archetypes, and perhaps a few classic not-necessarily-hostile monsters? (The cards have loads of other associations and interpretations baked in, which we can use when the adventurer/monster doesn't fit.)

The Fool (0): Potential, beginnings, opportunity. A bard, or perhaps a clown or jester, or just an impetuous youth.
The Magician (I): Mastery, skill, artistry, intention, manifestation. A magic-user, of course. More sorcerer than wizard.
The High Priestess (II): Spirituality, intuition, guidance. A cleric—maybe an adventurer, maybe a literal high priestess.
The Empress (III): Decadence, nurturing, beauty. A druid, or simply a noblewoman.
The Emperor (IV): Leadership, authority. A fighter, or a nobleman.
The Hierophant (V): Tradition, conformity, knowledge. A paladin, or an actual hierophant.
The Lovers (VI): Partnership, balance, emotion, bonds. A ranger and their animal companion, or simply a pair of lovers.
The Chariot (VII): Prowess, momentum, determination, free will. A rogue or thief, or an actual chariot, coach, or carriage.
Strength (VIII): Control, fortitude, rigor, dependency. A warrior monk, or just a really burly person. Or a really burly warrior monk!
The Hermit (IX): Solitude, wisdom, guidance, self-reflection. A classic wizard, with a pointy hat and everything, or just a mundane hermit.
The Wheel of Fortune (X): Luck, change, fate. A barbarian, or some playful (or malicious) agent of chaos.
Justice (XI): Fairness, truth, resilience. A lamassu, or a crew of bandits scheming to rob a holy place.
The Hanged Man (XII): Release, acceptance, perspective. A ghost or some other restless undead, or the site of an execution. Maybe both.
Death (XIII): Metamorphosis, release, transition. A vampire or lycanthrope, or a party of hunters in pursuit of one.
Temperance (XIV): Balance, combining, introspection, purity. An elemental, lost or let loose by a sorcerous mishap, or a solitary pilgrim.
The Devil (XV): Excess, attachment, temptation, desire. A dragon in human guise, or an adventuring band of would-be dragonslayers.
The Tower (XVI): Upheaval, chaos, dread. A dybbuk looking for a new body, or a glamoured hag or rakshasa posing as a traveler.
The Star (XVII): Hope, faith. An angel or other agent of divinity, come to deliver tidings to the PCs or compel them to some task.
The Moon (XVIII): Mystery, darkness, duality, regret. An invisible fairy, playing pranks on travelers, or a “naturalist” trying to catch one.
The Sun (XIX): Joy, clarity, happiness, peace of mind. A jinni, meddling in the affairs of passersby, or a charlatan pretending to be one.
Judgement (XX): Decision, reflection. A devil, come to make the PCs an offer they can't refuse, or to collect a debt from an NPC.
The World (XXI): Fulfillment, integration, conclusion, completion. A visionary or prophet, with a portentous message for the PCs.

(Shout-out to Skerples and the ever-fabulous Monster Overhaul for providing good creature inspo.)

So that's that! A rubric for turning the minor arcana into encounters, some sparks for major arcana encounters, and maybe a slightly better sense of what the tarot is about. And hey, if you don't like the result prescribed or suggested by these tables, you can always just look to the art and ad lib something based on vibes. That's half the fun of the tarot in the first place, and what gives different decks their character and makes them fun to collect.