Use Tarot Cards to Generate an Adventure Using the Magic Square

Tarot cards are just about the most versatile GM tool you can bring to your gaming table. A good tarot deck is a lot like a good random table—neither will come even close to doing all the work for you, but any random generation method can be immensely helpful for focusing and shaping your imagination. Although Tarot cards can be a bit vague and take some practice to learn to read, the advantage of Tarot cards over a normal random table is in their flexibility. Anytime you need a random element, draw a card or three for instant inspiration. Tarot cards are pretty, fun to collect, and sorely underutilized in the RPG scene—let’s explore tarot cards together!

I have developed a number of GM tools using Tarot cards, but the method I will outline below, called The Magic Square, is probably my favorite and most reliable. The Magic Square generates the core NPC’s, situations, and history around which you can build an adventure. It won’t generate an entire adventure for you, but it will give you a solid starting point so that filling in the details, keying in maps, etc. is easy and fun. In my experience, Magic Square adventures tend to be quite “talky” and usually take around 1-3 sessions to complete, which is to my taste anyway. On average, this whole process usually takes around 30 minutes.


So without further blabber, here are the steps of the magic square method:

1.  Start with a “spark”—this can be a cool title, an image, or some kind of loose idea that you want to develop into an adventure. If you’re starting from a completely blank slate, you can pull three cards to generate an idea.
2. Lay out nine tarot cards in a 3x3 square.
3. Start by reading the top three cards—these cards signify the first major NPC or faction. This person or group will usually end up being the major antagonist.
4.  Read the rightmost column. This will be the history of your dungeon. How did the dungeon come to be? If the top row is not being cooperative, sometimes I will read this column first.
5.  Read the middle row. This represents another NPC or faction. This person or group should be directly opposed to the party generated in step 3.
6.  Read the middle column. This represents the current situation in the dungeon.
7.  Read the bottom row. The bottom row represents a third NPC or faction, and is normally a neutral or “wildcard” faction.
8.  Read the leftmost column. This is the only group of three cards that is read individually, each card representing either a hook, a specific dungeon room, a treasure, or a location.Start with a “spark”—this can be a cool title, an image, or some kind of loose idea that you want to develop into an adventure. If you’re starting from a completely blank slate, you can pull three cards to generate an idea.

Let’s try using this method to generate an adventure together!


Step 1: Generate a spark


I use the term “spark” to mean a very loose idea that you can then use the tarot cards to develop. I usually start with just a sentence (e.g. potato people take over farm) or the idea of an image ( e.g. A ghostly white stag with hands on the ends of its antlers). I’ve used this method without a spark and it works fine, but I find that using a spark gives you more focused results. In our case, I don’t really have an idea in mind, so let’s just grab three cards from the top:







Reading the cards takes a little bit of imaginative eye-squinting. This method mostly uses “clumps” of cards because I like the way that cards talk to each other in interesting ways when read in a group. I don’t use reversed or upside-down cards, and I don’t really have the “official” meanings memorized—I kind of just go by the picture and the situation I’m reading. In this case, the IV of Cups makes me think of a tree offering something, a fruit of some kind? Because of the VII of wands, the tree’s motives are aggressive. We’re not sure just why yet, but XI Justice shows that the tree’s presence is causing an imbalance. Put it all together, and we have this spark, “A tree produces a fruit, resulting in an imbalance.”


This is a very loose idea, exactly what we’re looking for. What is this tree? What kind of fruit is it offering? Why does this cause an imbalance? Why would the players want to investigate this and what benefit would they gain? Hopefully, all these questions will be answered by the rest of the process.


Step 2: Layout the cards

Not much to say about this step. I shuffle our three “spark” cards back into the deck (it’s always interesting when one of the original spark cards shows back up in this step) and deal out the cards in a 3x3 pattern like so:





Step 3: Generate the first NPC or faction

For this step, we’ll read just the top three cards of our layout, XV The Devil, Knight of Cups, and V of Coins. Usually, but not always, this NPC becomes the main antagonist of the adventure. The Knight of Cups seems like our NPC, idealistic and headstrong. Because of the church windows in the V of Coins, I will make him a priest, and I’ll use the chains on XV The Devil to say that the priest has become enslaved by the tree.

Note that we still don’t know a lot about this priest, his motivations, or how he has become enslaved by the tree, but we will develop this more as we go along. In fact, usually it’s good not to get too detailed with the NPCs—just the barest amount necessary to keep the players involved and invested. If I get really stuck, sometimes I will draw an extra card for clarification, but I don’t think it’s necessary in this case. We’ll figure it out as we go along.

Step 4: Adventure History

Now we’ll read the right-most column of our layout for the history of our adventure, XV The Devil, XIII Death, and the Page of Cups. The bishop-looking dude in XIII Death looks like a wizard to me. Because of Death’s floral banner in that card, the wizard turned himself into the tree that we generated in our spark. But why did the wizard turn himself into a tree? Using XV The Devil again,the wizard turned himself into a tree to escape the clutches of death, transforming into a tree to gain eternal, arboreal life. XV The Devil represents the forest spirit from whom the wizard stole the secret that allowed the wizard to become a tree. The Page of Cups is a tricky one to read. Firstly, because the Pages are actually feminine cards, I will upgrade our wizard to a sorceress. This is a bit of a stretch, but I’ll say that all the water in the Page of Cups represents a “spreading” or “flowing” of the sorceress’s consciousness. Her consciousness spreads through the fruit (the cup) that the Page of Cups holds in her hand. By the time our adventure begins, the sorceress’s consciousness must have spread out to become a whole grove of trees, all of which bear her consciousness in their fruit. Our priest from step 3 must have stumbled on the grove, ate the fruit, and became infected with the sorceress’s consciousness.


Step 5: Generate the second NPC or faction

The second NPC uses the middle row in our layout, XIII Death, II of Wands, and the King of Wands. In the last step, we found that the sorceress stole secrets from a forest spirit. The King of Wands looks like he could be our forest spirit, stern and cold. Again a bit of a stretch, but I’ll use skeletal figure in XIII Death to represent the spirit’s emissary whom he has sent to steal the secret back. I’ll combine the lion on the back of the King of Wands’ throne and the skeleton on XIII Death to say that the emissary takes the form of a lion with the sickly pale head of a human skeleton, a powerful monster in his own right. The figure on II of Wands holds a bauble in his hands—I’ll say that the secret the sorceress stole is a small marble, the source of the spirit’s great power. The figure in this card looks contemplative and maybe even forlorn. I want to say that the emissary longs to be free of the spirit, but is forced into servitude because the spirit holds the emissary’s name.


The second NPC for this step is usually directly opposed to the first NPC from step 3. In this case, we generated a faction, the spirit and his emissary, to oppose the priest, whom we now know has been infected by the sorceress. Already this adventure is coming together! It looks like this adventure is going to be a wilderness point-crawl that will take place in a single hex. The last three steps are there to generate flavor and give our adventure just a little extra pizzazz.


Step 6: Current Situation

For this step, we will look at the middle column of our layout, the Knight of Cups, the Two of Wands, and the VIII of Cups. This row doesn’t seem to be telling us much we don’t already know. Two of Wands, the emissary, is trying to retrieve the marble, but is foiled by the Knight of Cups, the priest. We should put some traps laid by the priest to taunt the emissary in our pointcrawl for the party to stumble on. The little island in the VIII of Cups is the hidden island in the middle of the lake where the sorceress actually hid the marble.

For this step, make sure that the current situation is something that the players can interact with. Before moving on to the next step, this is also a good point to check that the two factions generated in steps three and five have some clear, gameable goals.

Step 7: Generate the “Wildcard” NPC or faction

This last group is generated using the bottom three cards of our layout, the Page of Cups, the VIII of Cups, and XVIII The Moon. XVIII look like a group of supplicants worshipping something. Because of the little fish in the Page of Cups, I will make these supplicants fishpeople. VIII of Cups has our island again, so the fishpeople live on the island and worship the marble that gave them sentience.

This last NPC or faction is usually fun to generate and should be a neutral party that the players can choose to leverage...or not. I like to make this group kind of funny or weird just to give the adventure more color.

Step 8: Generate Hooks/Rooms/Locations/Treasure

Alright! So this adventure is pretty much ready to set pen to paper and actually write the darn thing. We have some gameable NPCs, a basic idea of the adventure’s structure (a pointcrawl), and an interesting situation ripe for player intervention. This last step will generate three different, individual hooks, rooms, locations, and/or treasures that we can use to jumpstart the process.


For this step, we’ll use the leftmost column of our layout, V of Coins, King of Wands, and XVIII Moon:

V of Coins—This card would make a good hook. Two figures from the church approach the party to ask them to look for their missing priest. To make it relevant to the party, the priest belongs to the same religion as the party’s cleric. The two figures might have noticed that the priest was acting strangely before his disappearance.


King of Wands—This card strikes me as an interesting treasure. The forest spirit has a magnificent wooden throne made from a still living wood. Anyone who sits in the throne can shape wood.

XVIII Moon—I like another hook for this one. The fishpeople from the island raiding the nearby village or may attempt to steal from the party.


Putting it all together

At the end of this process, we know the who, what, where, when, why, and how of our adventure. It’s not going to win us any Ennies, but it looks like it could be developed into something quite playable with some work.


If you have a deck of Tarot cards laying around, I would recommend giving it a try to see if this method works for your GM’ing style. If you don’t have tarot cards, you could use Dixit cards, Rory’s story cubes, or even MtG cards. If you do try it, feel free to let me know in the comments below how it goes!