The cards, the cards, the cards can tell, the past, the present, and the future as well… provided you can actually read them. Tarot decks are seeing increasing use in tabletop roleplaying game design, from pure oracles like in Tangled Blessings to full-on challenge resolution like in To Change. In many cases the games provide pretty good prompts and details for what a given card means, but I’ve often seen them limited to just the major arcana, or suggest the players can be inspired by the card’s art to help interpret things. For those unfamiliar with tarot (it’s me, I’m talking about myself), that can be a bit of a challenge. Enter the Ultimate RPG Tarot Deck from Jon Taylor and Jef Aldrich!
All posts by Seamus Conneely
Ringmaster Review: A Circus Troupe Descended from the Queen
Royal clowns? Well, not quite. For The Queen has taken quite the journey since Jason first looked at it. It got itself a second edition, and moved from Evil Hat Productions to Darrington Press, true. From near the start, though, it offered an SRD and the Descended from the Queen moniker to allow others to use the mechanical framework, and as it turns out there a lot of games under that tent now. This time we’re dealing with a dark and supernatural version of the greatest show on earth, with Ringmaster from Pascal Godbout/Spotless Dice Games!
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Wandering Blades Review: Old School Tech, Wuxia Style
Highly skilled martial artists roam the lands seeking to redress wrongs, help the downtrodden, and free the innocent from oppression. Heroism, action, melodrama! These are the hallmarks of the wuxia genre, and when they show up in the tabletop sphere they tend to come with a pretty big set of rules and no small amount of actual magic. In this case, though, we have a game trying to use old school renaissance-style mechanics to enable wuxia genre conventions: Wandering Blades!
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A PAX East 2025 Tabletop Round-Up
Just because PAX East isn’t a 100% tabletop-dedicated convention doesn’t mean I’m going to stop treating it like one. Well, mostly. I did check out some “video” games while at the con, but that will be more of a CHG aperitif. Let’s get to the main course first so that I can share the games that caught my eye this past weekend with you: dead gods, burning forests, nighttime escapes and knives in the back, things upon things, and glittering glass!
Cannibal Halfling’s Guide to PAX East 2025
It’s not quite as good for our purposes as PAX Unplugged or other tabletop-centric conventions, but PAX East in Boston still has plenty of things to check out for the roleplaying, card, and board gamers of the world. Running from today May 8th until this Sunday May 11th, PAX East 2025 has some familiar games, some new opportunities, and plenty of tables you might want to take a seat at.
Pocketopia 2025 – A Brief Closing Glimpse
This month’s Crowdfunding Carnival has itself an interesting sideshow, hosted by Backerkit itself! Pocketopia 2025 isn’t exactly Backerkit’s answer to Kickstarter’s ZineQuest, since zines aren’t the focus, but it’s definitely in the same genre. The stated goal is to be “a celebration of portable easy-to-learn tabletop games”. So, as it comes to an end less than a day from now, how has it gone?
Solitaire Storytelling: The Librarian’s Apprentice
Infinite, ever-shifting, and sometimes dangerous, the Library exists in the space between worlds and times. Among the many who call it home are the Librarians, and only those who truly understand it may join their ranks. I seek to do so.
The path of a Librarian’s apprentice is a long one. My current task is designed to test my skills at traversing the Library and finding information. If I retrieve the six documents requested by my Librarian before the day is out, I will have completed one more step on my journey.
I think I’ll be okay. After all, I stumbled into the Library on my own and survived in the stacks for a while, dodging all manner of dangerous tomes and trespassers. Now I actually have training as an apprentice and the help of my familiar. the tumblefluff Dog ear, a library spirit who helps me navigate the stacks. That doesn’t mean it’ll be an easy task; after all, as the library itself once whispered to me, there are more things twisted here than plots.
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Hero Forge Custom Dice Kickstarter Review
Hero Forge did its first Kickstarter more than ten years ago to launch a custom miniature printing business, and launched a second one to bring color to their minis. In between and after the fact the platform has continued to add more and more options to their catalog: new items, species, materials, and so on. Now Hero Forge has a third crowdfunding effort, and it’s focused on what you use to determine your miniature’s fate: the dice.
Eight Years of Cannibal Halflings
80% of a decade down, and things are about to get decidedly enneadic around here! 2024 has certainly been one of the years of all time, but how did we do around here and what might the future hold?
Role-Playing Games in Psychotherapy: A Non-Therapist’s Review
While roleplaying games can certainly allow players to explore certain things and work through some stuff, an important axiom to remember is that your GM is not your therapist. Therapy is a serious business, and you shouldn’t be unloading your psychiatric needs on someone who is not trained to handle it (or try taking on those needs yourself, if you’re the GM), for their good and your own. Unless, one supposes, they were your therapist first, and are now running a game for you as part of your usual appointment. Such is the purpose behind Role-Playing Games in Psychotherapy: A Practitioner’s Guide by Daniel Hand.
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Cannibal Halfling Gaming 