Tarot Motifs / Tabletop Games

• In Exalted, the Raksha have their Graces modeled on the four suits instead of the typical Exalted stats: the Sword (Valor), the Stave (Conviction), the Cup (Compassion), and the Ring (Temperance).
• Delta Green: The "The King in Yellow" Tarot Deck in Delta Green: Countdown. As the name implies, it is a tarot set after the King in Yellow and Hastur. Featuring unique descriptions for the art of both Major and Minor Arcanas cryptically themed after the Hastur Mythos. The most major change is that card IV (The Emperor) has become card XXI and is instead named Le Roi en Jaune. The book gives tips on how the Handler can invoke this trope and use the King in Yellow tarot in the games. The Deck has been defictionalized with a artstyle pastiche to the iconic Rider–Waite set and turned into Delta Green's own Themed Tarot Deck.
• Dungeons & Dragons
  • Had the minor artifacts called Decks of Many Things, which are obviously tarot decks (though equivalent playing cards are also included). The deck can bring good things or bad, such as enough experience to gain a level, or a powerful enemy. Or large amounts of wealth. Or poverty. Or wishes. Or instant and (almost) irreversible death. If you come across such a deck and you're not mid-to-high level, your DM is insane and you'd best not touch it.
  • In the classic Castle Ravenloft adventure, the DM is supposed to make a tarot reading to decide elements of the adventure (including Strahd's motivation). This led to the Tarokka deck; the cards used by the Vistani in the wider Ravenloft setting.
  • The 2nd Edition supplement Encyclopedia Magica Volume 1 listed a complete set of instructions for magical effects based on all cards, upright and reversed, in the "Tarot Deck of Many Things". Usually, upright cards were good news and reversed cards were bad news, but with effects ranging from "You will soon have a castle of your very own" to "Die, burst into flames, and be reborn in 5d5 minutes as another race".
  • Generally, these decks are really best used when the campaign is getting boring and you feel like stirring things up.
• The fact that humanity occasionally consults the Emperor's Tarot for advice in Warhammer 40,000 says a lot about the setting. The fact that the readings are almost always some variation of "we're screwed" says even more.
• There was a tarot for Mage: The Ascension which features the four essences (Dynamism, Stasis, Entropy, and Questing) as the suits of the minor arcana. The meaning of the major arcana was changed to suit the setting (The Moon, for instance, has two werewolves howling as the goddess Luna emerges from a pool of blood).
  • Mage: The Awakening, the new-edition reboot, has the five separate mage paths each identified with a particular card: Acanthus (the Fool), Mastigos (the Devil), Moros (Death), Obrimos (Strength), and Thyrsus (the Moon). One of its sourcebooks, Keys to the Supernal Tarot, explores the Tarot, using its symbolism as inspiration for plot hooks and story ideas. Like Ascension, it has its own tarot deck. Mages are also able to learn how to use the Tarot to enhance their powers, essentially drawing a card and determining if it indicates that the spell they want to cast is fated to succeed (or fail).
• KULT has the Tarotica, which is pretty much Tarot based on its cosmology. The minor arcana are changed to five suits: Skull (death), rose (passion), hourglass (time & space), eye (madness) and moon (dream).
• In the Nephilim RPG, Major Arcana play an important role in the game's cosmology. All nephilim 'belong' to one particular Arcanum that defines the personality of that character.
• In Golarion, the world of Pathfinder, the Harrow is a card deck used by the Varisian people for fortune telling, clearly inspired by the real-world Tarot. It has 54 cards, divided among six suits and nine alignments. The six suits correspond to the six ability scores present in the Pathfinder system— Hammers for Strength, Keys for Dexterity, Shields for Constitution, Books for Intelligence, Stars for Wisdom and Crowns for Charisma— while the alignments are the classic nine Character Alignment options. Each card also has a proper name relating to its significance, like The Rakshasa, The Midwife and The Cyclone. Pathfinder's creators, Paizo, actually produced physical Harrow decks, complete with guidelines for using them both for in-game fortune telling and for various gambling games. The Curse of the Crimson Throne adventure path features the Harrow as a major element, with a ghostly Harrower named Zellara as one of the characters' first allies, who performs a reading for them at the start of each adventure, granting various bonuses depending on the cards drawn.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! GX introduces the "Arcana Force" series of monsters, each one representing one of the Major Arcana. Their gimmick is that you must toss a coin every time you summon one and, depending on the result, you either get a useful effect or a detrimental one. Noticeably, while quite a few of the numbers are absent (only the ones to feature in the anime got adapted, and even then, not all of them), and two new ones were created (EX - The Light Ruler and EX - The Dark Ruler).
  • After the "Arcana Force" archetype, there is now the "Prophecy" archetype ("Magical" in Japanese), also based on the major arcana. Their Japanese names are based on the Swiss Troccas deck, and follow the journey of the Fool of Prophecy as he opens a spellbook that unleashes a dark power that transforms him into the Reaper of Prophecy. He's later purified by the Spellbook of Judgment and becomes The World of Prophecy.
• The Villains & Vigilantes sourcebook Opponents Unlimited included the villain team the Tarot Masters, who were split into the Minor Arcana (non-powered underlings grouped into the four suits and issued special weapons resembling their suit), and the Major Arcana (which was made up of supervillains resembling one of the 22 trumps). They were even the villains of The Pentacle Plot, an adventure booklet outside of the sourcebook where they first appeared, almost unheard of for that game.
• Due to a licensing problem regarding SPECTRE, the James Bond 007 RPG replaced the evil organization with TAROT. Which has a tarot card motif, naturally.
• Call of Cthulhu The Fungi from Yuggoth campaign, section "Castle Dark". The PCs can encounter a Gypsy Fortune Teller and her son. The woman attempts a reading using Tarot cards but it foretells only death and disaster for the PCs.
• Anima: Beyond Fantasy uses the Tarot cards (just the Major Arcana, both the normal ("pure") and the reversed ("dark") ones) as summons. You must first make a contract with them, and you can summon them in their normal or reversed state (although making a contract with the reversed Arcana forbids you from doing it with it's counterpart and vice versa, and reversed ones are usually not very nice on what they want). They're described as being embodiments of the passions and spirits of the Man, changing their aspect depending of the ideas and beliefs of the summoner, follow the Rider-Waite interpretation^note Inexplicably, the Magician has been renamed there "The Hierophant" less in aspect and more in what they represent, and with the reversed ones have a darker significance. Due to their high cost, they can fall anywhere between Awesome, but Impractical at early levels or with summoners not specialized in Invocation to simply Awesome with medium-to-high level summoners.
• Lace & Steel uses a Rider-Waite deck to spice up character creation with special bonuses, as well as to randomly generate potential adventure hooks.
• In Mysterium, one of the clairvoyants, Jessalyn Smith, is able to communicate with spirits by reading tarot cards.
• The "Royal Road" is the equivalent of the earthly Tarot in BlueRose and is not only used within the setting for divination, but also included is advice for the narrator (game master) for how to use the Royal Road to guide the narrative of the game.

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