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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Karak" data-source="post: 6052661" data-attributes="member: 6700170">I still use the Ravenloft Tarot card deck to identify the identities of people in conspiracies and so forth. It is random and that helps me as it keeps my own mind thinking. The more plotted out I write a conspiracy the worse mine seem to get, and locked down.Instead I go the opposite way of others.I basically decide there are a particular number of people at the head of the table and then use the cards to identify them(normal playing cards could work too). Then I go down from their. For me, that is when I get the really really interesting connections that I would never have created on my own.The cop working with the mortician to hide bodies. The doctor who is also working with them simply because the cop has dirt on his weird sexual excesses. His wife who is sleeping with another man who happens to be the cops best friend.That kind of thing. I tried for years to just make it up. But when I used something random like the Ravenloft cards the worlds just lit up. It made my mind work and when it was working it came up with its own possible clues and they were far less railroady than writing it out.Some examples of card useClubs would have to do with manual labor, physical people, blunt people, action without wordsDiamonds would be the elite. Monied individuals and those who thought themselves above others.Hearts were artists, poets, or in fact people in romancesSpades were the wildcards. The weirdoes, the druggies, the prostitutes, the dark seedy part of life.2-10 on the cards game me ideas like how much influence they had, or perhaps how many contacts they had.So if I got a 4 of hearts. I could create a writer in a town investigating a body selling business with 4 potential contacts in town. Or something really odd like, he runs at 4am before he writes. The cards really let my mind just flow.Cards can be used for businesses as well in almost the same way as above.8 of clubs would be a local gym where a couple of the toughs who help the body selling business "get bodies" work out. All of them wearing an 8 of clubs tattoo.</blockquote>

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