D&D 5E Tarot / Tarokka Character Generation

Introduction

The thought of using tarot cards to generate characters occurred to me the other day, but Google did not quite find what I was looking for. I wanted a spread that yielded a complete 5e character, and I knew that using the tarot in this way (as opposed to an online text-based randomizer) could produce characters with complex stories and decent builds. So I made it myself.

This method requires an interpretation of tarot cards. This is ideal for people who are good with their intuition and creativity; it may not please people looking for a concrete randomization. (Ask a computer for that.) Since all the cards work together in their interpretation, it is difficult not to produce a cogent character. The character may contain contradictions, but that makes the character vibrant. That is to say that unlike direct numerical randomizations, this method produces characters with just the perfect blend of bottom-up chaos and top-down order.

The steps are simple: Perform the spread, collect your first reading, reference your rulebooks, then finalize. The process is more art than science, so often steps 2 through 4 may blur. Whatever your gut tells you feels right is right.

Even though I present the method using tarot cards, as you will see the method is easily translated for use with tarokka cards.

[Thread open!] Enjoy!

Step 1: The Spread

First, choose from your tarot deck a focus card. This card may be any face card -- or any of the Major Arcana, if you’re feeling adventurous! Place your focus card in the center of your reading area. [If you’re using the variant mentioned below, skip this step.]

Shuffle your tarot deck, however you deem fit. (Be sure to decide whether “reversed” cards are significant to you or not; some folks have no time for that!) Then perform the rest of the following twelve card spread.



Each card position represents a significant aspect of the character.

Center diamond (Core Aspects):
1 - Focus Card
2 - Class
3 - Race
4 - Background

Left diamond (Ability Scores):
5 - Array type
6 - Highest Ability
7 - Medium Ability
8 - Lowest Ability

Right diamond (Background/Persona):
9 - Personality Trait
10 - Ideal
11 - Bond
12 - Flaw

VARIANT
If you don’t want to pick a focus card, replace it with a randomly determined “flavor card.” A flavor card helps determine your character’s overall theme in moments of ambiguity. Instead of determining that with a focus card, you’ve left it to fate.
In this spread, the center diamond cards will instead be 1 - Class, 2 - Flavor Card

Step 2: The Reading

Reflect on your character’s campaign world. Then, starting with the center diamond, look at all the revealed cards and try to discern what they may represent in context of their mechanical slot. Sometimes reading up on the card’s meaning is useful, but other times a spontaneous impulse or inspiration from the card works best.

When looking at the center diamond, you should begin to get a sense of what kind of person your character is. If race, class, and background don’t immediately come to you, jot down the impressions you get card by card. That way, once you’ve performed your entire reading, you can make an informed over-all interpretation.

Repeat this step for each of the other two diamonds. Consider what each of these diamonds might mean in light of the center diamond. For example, each card in the right diamond will utterly depend on the background you determine in the center diamond. You probably will also wish to let your ability scores speak well of your race and class choices.

Most cards have a particular section on the character sheet to fill in, but three require definition.

• The focus card provides unity to your over-all interpretation. Use it if you know what kind of character you want (role, gender, etc), or to settle ambiguities.
• A variant of this is the flavor card, which instead of being determined intentionally is determined randomly.
• In the left triangle, card 5 determines what array the character has. This card determines which suite of numbers the other cards in the diamond conscribe. The array card might point to the standard array (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8), the savant array (15, 15, 15, 8, 8, 8), or the dilettante array (13, 13, 13, 12, 12, 12).

For all of the above aspects, you don’t have to lock into an interpretation right away (unless you want to). If you have a vague idea about what a collection of cards means, write down your impressions and wait to decide.

INTERPRETATION HELP
While even a lesser tarot codex will provide more substantial information, you can use the following advice to form quick impressions about a card’s meanings.

Major Arcana
Look to the card’s imagery and name to form an impression.

Cups
Element: water
Keywords: emotion, subconscious, love, trust, femininity
RPG terms: Divinity, healing, charisma, social, motivation

Pentacles
Element: earth
Keywords: practicality, thrift, money, solidarity
RPG terms: Constitution, defense, armor, artifice, city, crafting

Swords
Element: air
Keywords: intelligence, determination, force of will, conscious thought
RPG Terms: Warrior, weapon, damage, combat

Wands
Element: fire
Keywords: magic, creativity, growth, masculinity
RPG Terms: Mage, art, ritual, exploration, nature

Reversed Card
Cards revealed upside-down do not so much mean “opposite” as they mean “interrupted.” Instead of manifesting normally, some fundamental blockage inverts the card’s potential. Honor may become subterfuge, and love may become jealousy. Windfalls may be delayed, and creativity stymied by stress. In many cases, a reversed card embodies some form of pain or dishonesty.
Not everyone reads with reversed cards.

Step 3: Reference Rulebooks

As you collect your impressions from your reading, reference your rulebooks and supplements for additional inspiration. Sometimes flipping through the pages for visual inspiration can be just what you need to decypher an unclear reading.

Referencing the rulebook is most useful when dealing with background details. Each of the four cards of the right diamond utterly depend on the interpretation of the background card in the center diamond. While you can supply a persona aspect on your own based on the card, reading the card in light of the background’s entry can also provide thrilling combinations.

When a class or race has multiple build options, refer once again to the cards to make an informed interpretation. When in doubt, refer back to your focus or flavor card.


Step 4: Finalize

This step speaks for itself. Print your character sheet and start filling in the details as they come to you. As you do, review again the cards in front of you, and try to discern this person’s story and inner life. Some will find it easier to weave a character’s story with the tarot than with a random computer generation.

And, oh yeah! Fill in the three unspecified ability scores with the remaining array options as you see fit.

EXAMPLE 1: Using a Focus Card

In this example, we use a focus card. I choose the King of Wands, because he suits me personally. I like characters with warm personalities, or barring that to be badass mages.



Let’s start by looking at the center diamond. The class card is the Ace of Wands, which represents raw creative force. Yes, I will play a mage! I won’t decide what kind until I see my ability score spread. What about my race? Reverse Five of Cups. This card represents some form of emotional pain, specifically regret. The book says “knowing a dream is beyond reach.” This screams tiefling to me. (Admittedly, if I were playing Zeitgeist I might also choose either eladrin or Risurian human.) The background card is the Five of Swords. This has a martial bent to me, so I’ll lock in for soldier.

What about my ability scores? Looking to the left triangle, I see it is defined by the array card The Tower. WTF. This represents the chaos of revolution and the shifting tides of luck, kind of in a bad way. So probably the best fit would be the savant array (15, 15, 15, 8, 8, 8). High ability score: Reverse Page of Wands. Lots of wands; why reversed? PoW tells us to embrace novelty, and reversed tells us to create opportunity through manipulation and misinformation. Wow. Charisma. My medium ability score is… The Wheel of Fortune. Luck again? D&D has no luck stat. Yet I’m suddenly reminded of Hermione, who uses smarts to make her own luck. So, Intelligence. Int is a tiefling stat, and since it’s in the middle I can choose 15 or 8, so obviously 15. The final card in this diamond is Five of Pentacles. So many fives! Pentacles are about finances, and the 5P says “poverty and financial worries.” Probably overspends due to poor self-restraint. Low wisdom.

Reflecting on the ability scores I chose, I think the mage class that best fits is sorcerer. Given the King of Wands and the Ace of Wands guiding him (and low wisdom), Wild Magic works.

So what kind of persona does a military tiefling sorcerer have? Well first of all, since he is guided by the King of Wands, his military role was officer. And the reverse Six of Pentacles tells me he is stingy! Ironic. The Emperor in the ideal slot tells me this fella loves his country and is lawful. Also ironic, but not unpleasantly so. His bond is the Nine of Swords: grief, or a “dreadful time of anxiety and stress.” So he had a crushing military defeat. His flaw is the reverse Queen of Cups, and at first I wanted to give him hatred over an unfaithful wife. But what if… This card instead embodies his cruelty and love for attention. He always obeys the law, no matter how cruel.

Now, I look over my cards and character sheet. I have three ability scores to fill in, and in light of his military background my last 15 will go to Constitution. Now to ruminate on his story…

Arxus is a mercenary sorcerer who insists he is worth every copper you spend on him, and more. During his military days, he quickly rose up the chain of command for his tactical mind, domineering presence, and sheer firepower. For his loyalty and capacity at executing the literal word of the law, he was given a mission nobody else would take. That’s all he says on the matter; clearly, it is a sore spot for him. He eventually retired, and now sells his spells in service to the most lucrative operations.

Is this the only character he could have been? No. He could have been a human-turned-tiefling via wild magic, which ruined his chances with the love of his life. He could have also been a Risurian human Yerasol veteran. Or an eladrin terrorist pact-bound to a mighty fey titan.

EXAMPLE 2: Using a Flavor Card

In this example, I’m using the variant spread to essentially let the cards choose my supporting flavor for me.



For my class, I have Eight of Cups. I see the emotional element of cups, and my mind jumps to some sort of divine class. Either cleric or paladin. Race is Five of Swords, which represents a bit of a martial bent. A dwarf, dragonborn, or half-orc. In the background slot we have the Seven of Pentacles. Seeing money I think noble, but that card represents a milestone - “potential expansion and success, but your continued effort is essential if the seeds of the future are to be realized.” So somehow, this character’s background has set her on a journey. I wonder if the flavor card has any insight. Four of Wands: Culmination, sociality, freedom. I think this is very interesting, because 5Swords means “selfishness” and 8Cups means “concluding established relationships in order to safeguard the future.” These cards are all connected, but it remains unclear.

I’ll let my ability scores settle the argument. Highest ability score: Strength. Wow cards, way to be subtle. High strength it is. Given my above reading and my primary ability score, I’d say that this character is a dragonborn paladin. Background? I’m getting this sort of “going renegade” and “knight errant” feeling from these cards, so maybe she was an acolyte before.

As for the rest of the ability scores, we have an array represented by the Ace of Swords. This represents sheer mental power. The smart thing to do would be to choose the standard array. Our middling ability score is the Page of Swords and the lowest is Ten of Swords. Huh. One of these is INT, to be sure. But which? Page is described as “a shrewd judge of character,” whereas 10 represents the full embodiment of a suit. Middling wisdom, low intelligence. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the cards were powergaming! (wink wink)

Background. Three of Pentacles means cooperation, making her the peacemaking type. Her ideal is the King of Swords. Ambition. Interesting! I love how it vibes with the paladin thing. In that case let’s go with the acolyte’s Change ideal. Chaotic alignment; puts the “errant” in “knight-errant!” Unexpected, but very fun! Bond: Ace of Cups, raw emotional force. What “raw emotion” would drive a peacemaking acolyte to quit the temple and go beat people up? Outrage. She hates the corrupt clergy of her temple. And her flaw? The Emperor. My knee-jerk reaction is to say “Patriarchy!” but that doesn’t fit well with the rest of her story. The Emperor can be wise but also stubborn, so maybe she is inflexible in her thinking. That would certainly explain her storming off like that!

This is Sora Delmirev, knight-errant. At least, that is what she calls herself. She served in a temple to the gods through childhood, becoming a disciple and then assuming other responsibilities. She felt the gods in her heart and loved to serve others, be it in household chores, manual labor, settling disputes, or religious rites. Such was her calling: to be a little light in the world. But when she realized the darkness of her superiors, she quit the temple and began a crusade against them. She puts her father’s martial training training to use, and though she is outcast from her spiritual home she still feels the gods in her heart.

Is this the only character she could have been? No. She could have been a dwarf cleric who left her cloister to enact holy war. She could have also been a savage halfling druid making her way to the city for the first time. Or perhaps he could have been a half-orc bard-arian whose chiseled physique and animal magnetism draws in discreet admirers wherever he goes.

Would this work with a tarokka deck? I lack a tarot deck, but would love to use this character generation method.

Edit: did research on tarot decks. Looks like a no.

- Zynx, from the EN World mobile app

userZynx_name said:

Would this work with a tarokka deck? I lack a tarot deck, but would love to use this character generation method.

Edit: did research on tarot decks. Looks like a no.

Click to expand...

(First of all, random tarot generators are available online.)

I was actually going to mention the tarokka in my OP. I don't see why you can't, but it will take a little imagination.

The Tarokka deck has 54 cards, which is more than enough to randomize 12 slots. In many ways, having directly-related RPG themes will make a lot of readings easier with a tarokka.

A word of caution: not all interpretations need be literal. Whereas in tarot all meanings are ambiguous, with the tarokka it may be easy to mistake the reference for the referent. For example, if we have Dictator in the personality trait slot, what does that mean? The card name refers to a tyrant, but the image refers to martyrdom. What if we have the Abjurer in the class slot? We can look at it at face value, or we can read into it. Abjuration is the school of magical defense, which requires incredible mystical insight. This character could as easily also be a paladin or a defense-based cleric. In legalase, to abjure means to renouce -- what kind of class makes a profession of using words to break others? Bard? Truenamer?

On the other hand, playing cards "straight" and embracing contradictions is one of the strengths of this method. Try to strike a good balance!

Some sites sort the tarokka cards into the major arcana and the four suits of the minor arcana. I am not sure what the origional source on these are, but here is at least one resource , complete with basic meanings!

Anyway, I think using this method with the tarokka sounds badass. Please post your results!

This is pretty cool. It strikes a really nice balance between completely random character generation and the player coming up with everything on their own. It's like a randomly guided creative exercise.

With player buy-in and having an entire party put together like this, I think it'd be really fun. I'd just probably do the individual readings separate so that players don't let what someone else is already playing influence their interpretation of their own reading. It could even be cool to do something like shared readings if you had players interested in playing siblings or other characters with a strong bond prior to the start of the campaign. There's a lot of potential here.

Anyway, cool stuff. Thanks for sharing

So I found an online Tarot reading site, and made a character. The cards have lead me to quite an emo character. I shall list the cards I got for each section and then the resultant character:

Class: 6 of Wands, reversed
Race: The Tower
Background: Page of Swords, reversed
Flavour: 4 of Pentacles, reversed

Array: 10 of Wands
Highest: 3 of Wands, reversed
Middle: 3 of Pentacles
Low: King of Pentacles

Personality: The Emperor
Ideal: King of Swords, reversed
Bond: King of Cups, reversed
Flaw: 8 of Wands

-------------

So based on what the "Pictorial Key to the Tarot / A.E. Waite", this reading lead me to the following character:

Class: Paladin (Conquest) - while the divinatory meanings of a reversed 6W call out treachery, I decided that the treachery paladin was a bad fit,  and that conquest fit the idea of a victorious enemy (of good) better.
Race: The Tower calls out calamity, ruin, and catastrophe. This screamed Scourge Aasimar to me, even though the fallen one has better synergy with the class.
Background: Unforeseen, sickness. The only thing close to this is the Haunted One, and it also fits the flavour.
Flavour: Suspense, delay, and opposition are what this card can mean when reversed, so I focused on opposition, as the existing cards indicated a similar theme.

Array: This card means both fortune and success, and the oppression of these things, so the savant array seems appropriate. It also gives me a bit of a backstory idea later.
High Ability: I really wasn't sure with this one. The meaning gave me no clue, and the regular version (non reversed) seems to promote Charisma. As I saw no other possibilities within this card, I chose Charisma, but am open to suggestions.
Middle Ability: I based it off the picture in this one, as there was little else to go off for an ability score. The manual Dexterity required to create a statue lead me to choose Dexterity.
Low Ability: Intelligence is what this card symbolises, so Intelligence is my dump stat.

Personality Trait: Conviction and will. The Haunted one traits that best symbolise these are "I don't run from evil. Evil runs from me" and "I refuse to become a victim, and I will not allow others to be victimised" (though I may drop the latter)
Ideal: The reversed King of Swords can mean cruelty and evil intent. "I'm a monster that destroys other monsters, and anything else that gets in my way." So this guy is evil, huh?
Bond: Injustice and loss... "My torment drove away the person I love. I strive to win back the love I've lost."
Flaw: This one seemed like it lead to addiction... "I have an addiction"

So here we have Thazar-De Sepret, born to Mulan parents. As a child he desired to be a wizard, but lacked the natural talent required. As he grew older he joined the mages guild regardless, though his talent for magic was still low. Soon after he joined, there was an incident involuntary a failed devil summoning, and he swore to the demon to further its goals, becoming a paladin of conquest.

His then girlfriend noticed his change in demeanour and promptly dumped him. This turned him to drinking. He uses his powers to destroy demons, and he calls his angelic guide "Conscience" as it constantly pushes him to do good despite his hatred of the good that curses his devil commander.

I typed this last night, and will do a tarokka one later today

- Zynx, from the EN World mobile app