It’s a betting game designed by Rob Heinsoo in which you compile flights of cards of various strengths, many of which have various triggered abilities whose activation is dependent on its strength compared to those played previously. After each “gambit” (kinda like a trick, I guess), the stakes go to the player with the most strength and a new gambit begins. Collecting matching sets of same-color or same-strength dragons triggers extra gold-earning effects. The idea is that this is a game that exists within Greyhawk (the default setting for D&D 3.x) so you can play while your characters play.
I’m most interested in it not for this, however. No, far more interesting is that the August ‘06 issue of Dragon included a Tarot-like character generation method using the deck. The only thing better than a cartomantic spread for 2nd-generation RPG character creation is a good lifepath system. I’m a sucker for those, as Traveller Tuesdays will no doubt eventually show. I thought I’d create an adventuring party by this method (using Pathfinder rules, however, cuz duh) and see how it does at providing me with story seeds and interesting character details. Join me in this adventure?
First thing I do, obvi, is shuffle the deck. Fun fact: I always shuffle decks 7 times because I picked up somewhere that a standard 52-card playing deck achieves pure, unpredictable randomness at seven riffle shuffles, combinatorily speaking. So I do that. The spread involves three cards (Body, Spirit, and Mind) surrounded by 4 others, laid horizontally, in the cardinal directions (Nature, Nurture, Dexterity, and Wisdom) and four more bursting diagonal at the corners (Strength, Constitution, Intelligence, and Charisma). The orientation of the cards plays a role in the reading, so you should know that Strength is in the upper left, followed in clockwise order by Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma, Constitution, and Dexterity. Thus, there’s a physical side (the left) and a mental (the right).
I draw the following cards for my first character:
Nature: Blue Dragon 4
Spirit: Black Dragon 1
Body: Green Dragon 6
Mind: Silver Dragon 8
{Oooh! An evil body, with evil instincts and urges, but a good mind stronger than it. It’s Driz’zt, sure, but the idea that I’m not even done drawing and already seeing interpretations suggests that this will be a useful creation method!}
Nurture: Black Dragon 5
Strength: Red Dragon 12
Dexterity: Red Dragon 10
Constitution: Dracolich 10
Intelligence: Red Dragon 8
Wisdom: Bronze Dragon 11
Charisma: Gold Dragon 11
Hmmm, there’s just so much evil in this spread ~ maybe the good mind, despite its being stronger than the evil body, is losing the battle, just outnumbered by instincts and culture. I have to be careful, though, cuz while I like the idea of deconstructing Driz’zt, these themes edge a little closer than I’d like to some truly disgusting ideas.
Let’s see, we then put 9 tokens on Nature, 3 on Spirit, 1 on Nurture, and 2 on each ability card. These will eventually become points in standard point buy that will determine the character’s actual ability scores.
The character’s nature, represented by a blue dragon, is resilient, vain, and forceful. I give six tokens to Body and three to Mind off the Nurture card as a result. Spirit, perhaps oddly-named, represents chance. We all have things that are central to who we are that just kind of bumbled their way into our path, whether it’s the career we discovered after a friend forwarded us a funny job posting or our love of Fleetwood Mac because the diner we ate lunch at everyday while homeless played a lot of it over the stereo. In this character’s case, these things involve the stealth, cunning, and deceit of the Black Dragon. Dexterity, Constitution, and Intelligence each receive a token as a result.
More doubling themes! I’m seeing a character inclined toward vanity and forcefulness, but pushed by circumstance into acting secretly, maybe even from the shadows. Perhaps I’ll make them a vigilante . . . . I think it might be fun to play up the discomfort of the character, the strain of trying to stifle their usual habits and bearing in order to be most effective. These are much safer themes than the ones I mentioned earlier, thankfully, though they could be combined by creating a sneaky character from a member of a typically brutish race like ogres. Side note: Golarion’s ogres might exist as part of a long line of classist depictions of rural folk (as ogres usually are), but damn if their sheer, utter, going-for-it monstrosity is much more fun than standard D&D uses of the ogre!
The Green Dragon in the Body position tells us that the character can handle most anything, accepting what would be maiming blows with nothing but a snarling belligerence. I kind of envision this more as the really annoying kind of person who is never down for very long, no matter what’s thrown at them, but always brings things to account. Many have tried to take them down, only to fall to the character’s retaliations. All six of these tokens go to Constitution.
We finally get a glint of something pleasant and hopeful in this character ~ who seems very much like a Mean Girl, to be honest, vain, cunning, tricksy, and vengeful ~ as their Mind is filled with the judgment and justice of the Silver Dragon. I kind of want to make them a paladin, but it seems like that would fail to capture the duality of the character, the tidal wave forced into the trickle that rots your walls. Maybe there’s an archetype of vigilante that would be appropriate . . . not really (at least not one listed on www.pfsrd.com), though I did briefly consider a zealot. It didn’t quite fit what I wanted, however. I think I could model what I want with the Celestial Obedience feat, perhaps, as I’m getting an image of a character in an evil society who has turned to devious methods to promote a good religion. Sort of a Frank Miller villain by day, sneaky Superman by night kind of situation. More on that later. For now, that Silver Dragon gives two tokens to Charisma and one to Wisdom.
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