Tarot Magic

[Messageboard Golem]

Have you ever wanted to use Tarot cards to cast spells? Have you ever wanted a seer who uses the tarot to glance into the future for your players?

Tarot Magic is a d20 supplement that offers just those things to you in a great 64 page volume. Look for more on this great book soon.

 

[JoeGKushner]

When a company comes out with an odd-magic system, it really has to stand up and make the readers take notice. While Tarot Magic does an admirable job of bringing Tarot reading into the d20 system, it doesn't grab me by the throat or demand that I instantly start using it like some other source books have.

The material starts off with a nice method of using tarot readings in the campaign. Fortunately it doesn't rely on the GM or players actually having the cards, but rather uses two systems. The first is a little more involved and has DC checks for different layouts and purposes. It's very useful for longer, more intense sessions where the players are going to want specific information. Of more immediate use is the simplified readings where the GM rolls a few d20s and lets the players have a quick and dirty telling.

Chapter Two provides the reader with some choices. They can have a Tarot Mage core Class or the Tarot Mage PrC. I found this chapter a little thin. When introducing a new core class, perhaps some more PrCs designed around that class, instead of just a PrC to simulate that class would make the material more useful?

Regardless, the rules provided allow the reader to run a full 20 levels of Tarot Mage. Instead of using a spellbook, these mages use their cards, gaining more cards as they gain levels. The Prestige Class is similar but more standard. They gain the ability to cast the specialized magics, but at a lower pace. Thankfully, there are examples, one of each character, so that the reader can determine which one, if any, bests fits into her campiagn.

Like the Player's Handbook, the majority of this tome is taken up with spells. There are two different systems here, one using Major and Minor Arcana, with specific cards having specific spells, or add the lists to wizards and sorcerers spell list, using the suits to correspond to different arcane schools. The spells flesh out the class nicely and provide a wide range of effects and abilities to those interested in going this route. Thankfully, each spell system has its own separate spell list so the reader doesn't go nuts when determining what spell goes with which two cards.

Those looking for some more things associated with the Tarot Mage has new magic items to play with. This includes new types of inks, quills, cards and even new weapon special abilities. How about a Pleasurable Weapon that makes the user enjoy being hit? Sound familiar? Like an old Palladium Rune Weapon you say? DeathKiss you say? Nah, couldn't be.

The book ends with a bonus chapter, a Foul Local, the Hoodoo. A small location in a family farm with an excellent map by Eb Bourelle, perhaps one of the best cartographers in the gaming business.

The book doesn't use interior covers. Front page is a list of credits with table of contents. Layout is standard two columns with one, small problem. The star where the page number is pokes into the text, misaligning it sometimes. Otherwise, good stuff for the most part. The main body of artwork is done by Scott Purdy, who does an excellent job. I'm not as impressed by the illustrated cards but some, like Death and the Devil, do stick out as good examples.
Perhaps it's just that the Tarot isn't my cup of tea. I looked it over, offered it to my players, none of them were swayed. I may throw a sagely NPC or some other odd ball character into the campaign but probably won't be pulling too much else from the book personally.

The book provides good ground rules for the material as well as a location to quickly add it to the campaign so if you're in the market for a Tarot Magic system, this book has you covered.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

By Glenn Dean, Staff Reviewer d20 Magazine Rack

Sizing Up the Target
Arcane Mysteries: Tarot Magic, by Andrew Thompson, is a 96 page softcover supplement published by Mystic Eye Games. An introduction to Tarot cards and magic that provides a completely new d20 magic system, Tarot Magic retails for $16.99.

First Blood
Sitting in her darkened tent, the pungent smell of incense hanging thickly in the air, the tarot mage slowly reveals the cards of power that will reveal the web of fates spun before a band of hearty adventurers. Arcane Mysteries: Tarot Magic provides the means for players and GMs to “bring magic and spiritualism to a d20 campaign” by introducing the use of the tarot deck and tarot-based magic.

Chapter 1, Tarot Readings, introduces the tarot deck’s history and usage along with the game mechanics used to provide a reading of past, present, and future events for a party of characters. A number of tarot card spread are detailed, each with an associated Difficulty Class to perform a reading that will give insight. The actual insights are determined by a series of tables; using dice rolls the GM determines which cards are played, and what the implications of those cards may be. It is a fairly complicated process to do a full reading, so Tarot Magic also provides an abbreviated means of arriving at a similar result. The approach provides the GM with a much more detailed and flavorful means of providing game divinations – visiting the tarot seer instead of casting a commune spell!

Chapter 2 introduces the Tarot Mage as both a variant core class and as a Prestige Class. This is a useful approach, as it allows the GM to introduce tarot mechanics through two different class methods into the campaign. Both classes function similarly – the Tarot Mage is very similar to a wizard in basic statistics, but has a number of Charisma-based class skills appropriate to performing a tarot reading. The Tarot Mage’s magic is tied to the cards of the tarot deck. Each Tarot Mage begins play with a certain number of cards; each card (or combination) can be used to cast spells of a number of levels, depending upon the level of power the Tarot Mage has attained. The card acts as an arcane focus; the mage casts spells spontaneously. Mechanically, the mage falls somewhere between a wizard and a sorcerer – she has the spontaneous casting of a sorcerer, with a number of spells per day closer to a wizard, and the potential number of spells known depends upon the number and type of tarot cards the mage has been able to secure in her adventures. Several new feats appropriate to the Tarot Mage – such as the crafting of tarot cards – are provided in this chapter as well.

The next chapter provides the meat of the book – the mechanics of tarot magic and the full descriptions of all 194 Tarot Mage Spells. Again, Tarot Magic provides the GM a great deal of flexibility in the introduction of tarot-based magic, as there are two systems that can be used. System One gives the Tarot Mage a completely new spell list of 194 spells ranging from levels zero through nine, each of which is cast through a specific tarot card or combination of cards. The spell list is quite extensive, and is a blend of spell effects from the wizard, cleric, and druid spell lists, along with a number of unique effects ties to tarot readings, many of which provide skill enhancements not found in the traditional spell lists. If the full tarot magic system is too daunting, however, System Two can be used, which provides a list of the tarot combinations required for each spell on the wizard/sorcerer spell list. Using System Two, the Tarot Mage’s spell list would be the same as other wizards, with the different means of acquiring and casting spells.

Chapter 4 provides a wide range of tarot magic items for use in the tarot magic campaign. These range from items to create tarot cards, to unique cards and decks, to magic items whole effects are based upon tarot magic spells – potions, rings, wands, staves, and wondrous items. These items, with the appropriate spell descriptions, could work right along side core items in a more traditional game, should you choose to mine Tarot Magic for its component parts rather than implement the full tarot magic system.

The last chapter, Foul Locales, provides a single ready-to-adventure setting that incorporates Tarot Magic. The haunted farm in this locale includes maps, descriptions, and full-stated tarot magic NPCs that provide good examples of tarot classes in use in the campaign setting.

Critical Hits
Tarot Magic provides some tremendous flexibility to the GM by giving fully developed, balanced options for implementing tarot magic. The tarot system as a whole provides some great flavor and a wonderful twist on the traditional arcane magic system, but for a GM reluctant to add another entire set of spells to his campaign, the option to incorporate the tarot mage using the traditional wizard spell list is a very useful one. Providing the Tarot Mage class as both a variant class and Prestige Class is another great option for the DM – frankly, an approach other publishers could benefit from when introducing new mechanics that are different from the core mechanics.

The tarot magic system itself seems to work quite well, and isn’t so completely different from the core mechanics that one couldn’t simply take the new tarot spells and adapt them to a standard campaign, without adopting the tarot system. I would recommend against this, however – the tarot magic system gains its most exciting flavor from the combination of the mechanical spell list and the accompanying spell list. Using one without the other won’t fully capture the depth and subtle nature of Tarot Magic.

Critical Misses
Mystic Eye Games missed one opportunity with Tarot Magic that perhaps they can capitalize on with a pdf enhancement – the use of tarot cards provides a great opportunity for the GM to introduce props and visual aids into the game. The method of doing tarot readings using dice is a little complicated and clunky, even in the abbreviated version; it would be nice if a method was provided of doing the same with either a standard card deck, or a purpose-built tarot deck. Diagrams of each of the card spreads would be useful for this (and are not currently provided) – a cut-out or downloadable tarot deck even more so. While the dice-based option is useful, using good visual aids with Tarot Magic could make the game even more absorbing.

The GM, too, must be careful how he grants access to new tarot cards. The Tarot Mage has the potential to overshadow other casters, with a casting flexibility akin to the sorcerer but access to spells potentially as broad as a wizard’s, and with a spell list that incorporates clerical and druid spell effects as well as traditional arcane ones. The GM should decide the means and frequency at which the Tarot Mage gains new cards, before implementing the Tarot Mage class in his campaign.

Coup de Grace
Mystic Eye Games provides an extremely original addition to the d20 game that with the exception of some names, characters, and story elements is Open Content. The flexible system allows the GM to implement Tarot Magic in a number of ways, whether as plot devices or a magic system; players will find a uniquely flavored spell-casting class with its own brand of magic. Useful magic items and an adventuring locale top this product off. If you’ve been considering using tarot cards in your campaign, Tarot Magic will provide you with an excellent start.

To see the graded evaluation of this product and to leave comments that the reviewer will respond to, go to The Critic's Corner at www.d20zines.com.

 

[GameWyrd]

Take your copy of Tarot Magic and being careful not to bend the front cover, use your thumb to quickly flick-book the top right hand corner. You’ll see that the cup sidebar graphic jumps up and down and left to right.

That’s about the only distraction in the book. Aside from the dancing cup, Tarot Magic concentrates on giving GMs what they need to use tarot magic in their game and that’s what I like to see from a d20 supplement.

Tarot Magic begins with very large tables designed to emulate tarot card draws and readings by using dice. You don’t need to know anything about tarot to use the book; you certainly don’t need to know the meaning of individual cards. It is a simple matter then to bounce a few dice, consult the table, discover which cards have been drawn in game and what they could mean. The catch, of course, is that the GM doesn’t actually know the future any more than the players do and so needs to make "most-likely" guesses from her notes and couch any predictions in suitably vague terms. If there’s one on-topic area that Tarot Magic is light on then it’s this lack of help for GMs trying to sound oracle-like without actually giving too much away, or sounding oracle-like when they’re as uncertain as what might happen next as the players. There is a knack to it, GMs and professionally fake fortune-tellers all have their own tricks and I would have been over the moon to find even a small sampling in this supplement. There’s none. There is, however, an example reading where a GM elaborates suitable material from game notes for a player visiting a tarot mage.

There are a lot of dice involved. There are more tarot cards than sides on a d20, the interpretation of a tarot card changes depending on which way round its drawn too and so there can be as many as three dice rolled per card. Complex readings can use over fifty different cards (the Tree of Life uses 70 or more) and so a gaming session might see over 150d20s bouncing for one non-combat scene. Thankfully there are attempts to streamline this procedure and provide an alternative but less "accurate" table, but even the culling of one-third of the d20s still could leave a gaming group buried under a pile of plastic polyhedral.

Tarot Mages are more than just fortune-tellers. The Tarot Mage is presented as both a core class and a prestige class and this is a good move by Mystic Eye, it’s the sort of GM empowering option that makes books like this worthwhile. The Tarot Mage uses tarot cards to cast magic. Pretty simple, huh? Wizards use spell books. Tarot Mages use tarot cards. In effect, Tarot Mages are somewhere in between sorcerers and wizards in terms of magical style. I was pleased to see the core class/prestige class option so imagine how chuffed I was to have the choice of two completely different spell systems for the mage. They don’t need to prepare in advance but they do need the right set of cards.

There are 88 pages in Tarot Magic and 50 of them are devoted to the two possible magic systems. The first system suits gaming groups who are willing and able to step away from D&D spell lists. The second magic system, predictably, is a closer match to standard magic rules.

The second system simply requires the Tarot Mage to have the right combination of cards in order to cast standard spells. If the Tarot Mage wants to cast Acid Fog then he’ll need to be Level 6 and have the Seven of Pentacles and the Knight of Pentacles. He needs to be Level 6 in order to have a magical version of the Seven of Pentacles in his deck of cards. A Level 1 Tarot Mage would only be able to have the Two of Pentacles, a Level 4 Tarot Mage would have up to the Five of Pentacles and a Level 9 Tarot Mage could have up to the Ten of Pentacles in his deck. The face cards (Kings, Queen, Knight and Page) in combination with their suit determine the school of magic being used. The Knight of Pentacles equates to the Conjuration school.

The first system of magic doesn’t use standard spells. In many ways the first system is simpler and cleaner, each minor arcana maps directly onto a set of new spells and each major arcana temporarily pumps an attribute. These new spells are slightly subtler and slightly less comic book than typical D&D spells. Low level Tarot Mages can only use the low level spells in each card set and high level Tarot Mages can use all of them. For example, the Three of Cups can access Comfort, Healing Magic and Shared Love. Comfort is a 1st level spell, Healing Magic is a 3rd level spell and so is Shared Love. In order to cast Healing Magic then the Tarot Mage will need to be able to cast 3rd level spells and have the Three of Cups. The Three of Cups isn’t a very "high" tarot card. The Ten of Wands can access Spirit Mastery (9th Level), Spiritual Growth (6th Level) and Test by Fire (6th).

The catch with both systems is that there’s such a thing as "magic" tarot cards and "mundane" tarot cards. There are feats that govern the creation of the magic tarots but if I was a tarot mage I’d have to wonder why some cards could read the future but weren’t magical enough to even cast a weak level one spell.

There is room in the few pages at the end of the book for a section on Tarot Magic items and a Foul Locale encounter.

I liked Tarot Magic. I don’t have too much of a problem with a game where one of the PCs is concerned with collecting magic cards – even if it does sound rather like a cross between Magic: the Gathering and a Saturday morning anime TV show. In fact, collecting magic cards should put the game under no more stress and strain than a wizard trying to maintain a supply of materials for his spells would. I don’t think I could ever face a large tarot reading using the d20 rules but I could certainly see an atmospheric scene where a character turns over three cards in a simple reading and the dice are rolled for all to see. Whereas I’ll not describe the book as %100 killer; I’ll certainly agree that there’s no filler between the covers, it’s all on-topic and valuable content. I like the options Tarot Magic is able to offer; tarot readers may all be charlatans, some might have real skill, tarot magic can be similar to normal spells, entirely different, tarot mages may be a core class in a campaign or a rare prestige class. It’s rather ironic that a book on tarot cards and destiny (albeit in a roleplaying supplement) is so laden with choice – but it’s a good sort of irony.

* This Tarot Magic review was first published by GameWyrd.

 

[Psion]

Tarot Magic

Tarot Magic is a book in Mystic Eye Game's Arcane Mysteries series of books introducing new magic options for the d20 System. Tarot Magic details rules and idead for introducing tarot card themed magic to the d20 System.

Tarot Magic is written by Andrew Thompson, with additional work by Charles W. Plemons III.

A First Look

Tarot Magic is an 88-page perfect bound softcover book priced at $16.99. This is a reasonable price for a book of this size, and is identical to the format of a prior book in this series, Necromancer's Legacy.

The cover of the book is by John Shannon, and depicts a cowled, robed woman with cards in one hand, in front of several illustrated cards against a starry backdrop.

The interior is black-and-white with art by Frank Krug, Todd Morasch, and Scott Purdy. Of these artists, I find Scott Purdy's someone eeries style of artwork to be the strongest in the book.

The interior body text is conservatively sized, but Mystic Eye continues to insist on using a somewhat uncomfortable to read san serif font, and uses annoyingly large indents. Other than this, the layout is nice and modestly compact, with interesting watermarks and stylish sidebar block shading.

A Deeper Look

The table of contents is rather succinct, being stuffed at the bottom of the title page. In fact, I missed that there even was a table of contents on the first pass.

The first chapters covers tarot cards in their more traditional role of divination. At the most basic level it provides some DCs for determining the reliability of tarot reading (if the GM really wants to allow it to have any reliability at all, but I can't imagine if you purchased this book that you wouldn't want to.) This is followed by a rather condensed treatise on the various patterns used in readings and what the significance of various cards are in that pattern. This comes with a table to allow the GM to generate card results with dice.

Overall, this first chapter felt a little stuffed to me. The author tried to give a glimpse into tarot reading methods, but this section really sort of lacks something compared to the 2e Ravenloft Forbidden Lore boxed set, which came with simpler, more flavorful, and more campaign pertinent advice on using "tarokka" cards as a storytelling element in the game.

The second chapter covers a tarot mage class and prestige class for use in the game. For those who aren't too fond of new classes (like me), the prestige class option makes a nice themed "specialization."

The tarot mage core class is something of a blend of a wizard and sorcerer. They do not prepare spells, but can only cast spells that they own magic tarot cards for. Much like a wizard's spell repertoire, tarot mages have to have a certain number of cards at first level and then gain one every level, but have to craft more. Unlike a wizard's, these magic cards require a feat (that the tarot mage gets at third level) to craft further cards, much like a magic item.

The tarot mage prestige class is a bit different from the norm; it does not continue to advance in previous spellcasting classes, but gains access to new levels of tarot spells as they advance rapidly. This lets them cast 9th level spell at 9th level in the prestige class, which could be as early as 14th level.

The third chapter discusses tarot mage spells. It actually uses two different systems of magic using magic tarot cards. The first system allows the tarot mage to access different spells according to the magic tarot cards the character has access to. One card can correspond to different spells of different levels. This system seems perhaps a bit too flexible.

The bulk of the book is new tarot-themed spells for use with the first system.

The second system maps the sorcerer/wizard spell list to specific tarot cards. Each spell requires multiple cards, making it a bit more in-line with the power of standard wizards and sorcerers.

The fourth chapter provides a small miscellany of magic items for use with tarot magic. This includes special cards, as well as special inks a tarot mage can use to enhance their cards.

The fifth chapter is a "foul locale" in the tradition of Mystic Eye's foul locales books. This location provides a tarot mage encounter complete with NPCs and maps.

Conclusion

Tarot magic tackles the issue of bringing tarot cards to the d20 system in a very simple and straightforward way, by tacking it on to the existing magic systems in various ways. Though this provides a little flavor, I feel like it could have done more to play up the mystery of tarot and fortune-reading in general instead of simply using it as a coat of paint on a theme-mage.

Overall Grade: C+

-Alan D. Kohler

 

[Ogma]

I really do think Mystic Eye dropped the ball a bit with this product (as nice as it is) in not providing guidelines for ways to use an ACTUAL deck of Tarot cards during one's game session. Sure the player running the Tarot Mage can simply pull the relevant cards out of a deck and lay them out as props, but I do think a method of selecting or casting using actual cards would have been a really neat addition (based upon unique spreads of even random card draws, etc.)

Certainly props always add to the gaming experience and here, a class and a magic system based upon an easily accessible deck of cards, should definitely have incorporated them into the ruleset.