Having
laboured through the production of a complete deck of Deep One themed tarot
cards, I thought it would be of benefit to discuss how these sorts of cards can
be useful when running an ongoing roleplaying campaign, especially a “Call of Cthulhu” one.
A
major problem that most Keepers have when conducting a session is that things
will happen on the spur of the moment for which no preparation has been made. A
random NPC – a small child; a postman; a reception clerk – will attract the
attention of one of your players and, the next thing you know, they have
acquired a sudden and exaggerated importance in the tale which you’re
unfolding. On the fly, you have to flesh them out with myriad minor details
appropriate to a figure of greater narrative importance, much of which you
never intended. This is all part of the fact that plans never survive contact
with the enemy (ie, your players) and you can never anticipate what will
suddenly attract their attention.
A
Keeper in whose game I used to play would meet these situations in a novel and
interesting way. When he realised that a mere cipher was now in the spotlight,
he would shuffle his tarot deck, draw three cards at random and place them in a
row on the tabletop: the central card informed him of the NPCs current
disposition; the card to the left told him what circumstances the character had
just emerged from, and the right-hand card expressed the NPC’s hopes, goals and
aspirations. With a good knowledge of the card interpretations, it meant that
he could flesh out the character effectively and also see how the character
fitted – or could be fitted - into the ongoing plot. This was especially useful
since we mostly played the Steve Jackson game “In Nomine”, a game in which every character, player or otherwise,
needs to have a fully-formed interiority that we angels and demons could read.
The
three-card method is useful when the character needs a bit of depth, but just
drawing one card can be enough to kickstart a character concept, depending on
the type of game that you’re playing.
Using
this method can add extra spice to a session where little of interest is
happening or if the Keeper is just feeling ornery. Are the players buying train
tickets? Flip some cards to see if the ticket seller is having a bad day or
not. Did one of your players treat a bellhop with casual rudeness? Check the
cards to see if he swallows his pride and takes the guests’ bags to their room...
or not. When a game is rolling along smoothly towards its logical conclusion
and your team seems a little too comfortable with it all, this is a good way to
randomly throw a spanner into their cosy little worldview...
*****
Some
of you who might have been following the last few tarot card posts will have
noticed that they’ve been presented in the form of a set-up for a “Call of Cthulhu” adventure. Along with
the cards themselves, there is a bunch of background material outlining the
consequences of a naive academic dabbling in things better left alone. If you
have players who romp around Arkham and its neighbourhood, you could take the
background for this material and turn it into a search for the missing
professor and the miscreants who have abducted her.
First
of all, statistics would need to be generated, for the Professor, her staff,
the interns and the other University personnel. Then there’s the team at the
art therapy studio and the print-shop, and the local members of the emergency
services. If your taste runs more to the “Delta
Green” side of things, shadowy members of Homeland Security and the FBI
could have your players getting paranoid in no time. Finally of course, there
are the presumed cultists and other Innsmouth denizens to flesh out. Various
splat-books and other supplements (Chaosium or otherwise) are out there from
which most of this type of information can be pillaged.
As
to what’s happening, you can take the situation in a number of directions: is
Rhonda Wilmarth actually an unwilling abductee? Are the Innsmouth folk
responsible after all? Is this a Government conspiracy to justify another
attack upon Devil Reef? Given the simple premise, your story could go in any
number of interesting directions...
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