Landscapes of the Arthurian Tarot

If I'm not careful I can see a future where I own far too many Tarot decks.

Not so much for oracular life guidance, but I'm increasingly drawn to these decks of highly evocative artwork as a means to spark ideas when running or prepping a game.

In the throes of writing Mythic Bastionland I picked up The Complete Arthurian Tarot deck, which is a joy to flick through.

A significant feature of this deck is that (as far as I can tell) the non-Court Minor Arcana are all landscapes, completely devoid of people. This is in stark contrast to the Hanson Roberts Tarot which I have a personal soft spot for. Where the Hanson Roberts deck vividly humanises the elements of the non-Court minors, the Complete Arthurian deck puts the light firmly on the surrounding world.

Take the Grail Three (commonly 3 of Cups).

Usually this card means party time, with three women toasting and celebrating. Here a vacant table is laid out, allowing more focus on the surroundings. It's a feast of apples in a lush, shady orchard.

The Four normally depicts a man with three cups, either too distracted or jaded to notice the fourth cup being offered to him from a disembodied arm.

Here that's represented by a stagnant pond. Discarded cup and overcast clouds further setting the mood.

8 of Swords is normally a blindfolded, bound woman surrounded in a ring of swords.

Here we're trapped by a treacherous bog instead, requiring careful action to escape. Even beyond that a grey mountain looms over us.

Of course we have to look at everyone's favourite, the 9 of Swords aka "I'm sad because I have too many swords".

This is about as close as we get to human representation. A row of impaled heads painting an ill vision for the future of this shadowy night.

Each suit also corresponds to a season, and that comes through in the artwork to various degrees. Stones (commonly Pentacles) are tied to winter.

In place of the juggler, the concept of divided priorities is shown through a river splitting in two, weaving tantalisingly close to each other through a snow cloaked valley but never managing to converge.

The accompanying book does a good job of tying each of these cards to a particular Arthurian myth, but I enjoy the landscapes even when I don't remember the full mythic context.

So what's the point to all this?

Whether in prep or at the table, for me so much of running Mythic Bastionland is about describing a patch of wilderness as the Knights either ride through it, look over it for landmarks, or come face to face with Omens of a Myth. Sure, it's not the main part of the game, but it's a constant layer of flavour that I try to maintain.

Even if it's not a literal deck of cards, don't neglect the power of a heap of visual prompts to draw from for your game. Sometimes they can be as simple as a landscape.

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This post was originally sent as a reward to all Patreon supporters, and is released freely on this site the week after its original publication.

If you want to support my blog, podcasts, and video content then head over to my Patreon.

Where are We?

Chatting with people at GenCon, we occasionally drifted onto talking about Google+, the rosy past where we rejoiced in social media paradise [citation needed].

It's getting on for six years since I wrote about its upcoming closure, and where are we now?

No, I mean where are we?

I've bounced around a few places since then.

Blog: The staple. I'll keep it going as long as I have the urge to write stuff. I post weekly and check my comments daily. I mostly stay up to date with what other people are doing through blogs. If you aren't blogging, I'm likely to be unaware of your new thing.

Newsletter: Substack may not be the perfect platform, but I'm enjoying this as a parallel version of the blog. I know others write bespoke newsletters, separate to their blog, but really I just treat this as an alternative way to get the same stuff. In essence the archive acts like a blog of sorts, but I prefer reading on a proper blog page. Something about having that tantalising blogroll right there beside the post.

Patreon: This really sits on top of the two previous places. If you're creating anything, even if you don't want to offer anything extra, I'd recommend giving this a try. You might be surprised how many people just want to offer support for what you do.

Discord: My preferred way to just talk with people. I guess I like the old IRC-vibe, but I appreciate it's not for everyone. For reasons explained further down this is now my primary place for DMs.

Broadcasts and Podcasts: I have a lot of fun doing these but they're an occasional side-line for me.

Reddit: I really enjoyed doing an AMA on there a while back, but I'm more lurker than a poster. It's a great place to browse now and then to find cool stuff, but I don't feel like I get any real personal connections from there.

Twitter: Oof. I'll try to keep this succinct. This place was designed to reward the sort of behaviour I didn't want to engage with and has steadily gotten worse. I saw how it changed the way people interacted with each other. I saw the way it stoked unwelcome fires. I kept active there mostly as a point of contact to invite people onto the podcast or to collaborate on a project. Essentially, I went there because I liked some of the people there, even if it made them act differently.

I decided the feed was too much. I unfollowed everybody and just stuck around to respond to mentions and DMs, only posting to link to my other places.

Then they changed things so that I'd be fed recommended content instead. I could block these on my browser but it was trickier on my phone.

All the while the content of those posts got worse and worse, to say nothing of the company ownership.

Right now I'm ashamed to even have a presence there. I don't want to be associated with it. It's embarrassing that I was there at all.

I've complained for a long time, but never really walked the walk.

As of now I've left my account open mainly to keep the name, but I'm not going to go there anymore and I've removed the link from my other sites.

If you're able to do the same then let's just do it. We're better off elsewhere.

Bsky: Yeah this is a nicer twitter, so I don't feel as dirty for maintaining a presence there, but it's still probably something I'm better off without. I'm likely soft-quitting this too, but might dip into my incredibly restricted feed now and then.

What if I'm wrong?

A few potential problems come to mind.

What if I need to contact somebody I don't already have contact details for?
Twitter was normally a good place to do this, but I figure I can probably get hold of anybody I need to by asking around on other platforms.

Is this terrible advice if you don't already have a well-established network and platform for your own content?
Yeah, I guess I can only talk from my own perspective, so if you're hustling to make contacts and build your audience from scratch then maybe this is all a bit isolationist. 

In short:

Quit Twitter.
Newsletter Up.
Hit the Blog. 

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This post was originally sent as a reward to all Patreon supporters, and is released freely on this site the week after its original publication.

If you want to support my blog, podcasts, and video content then head over to my Patreon.

Shards of GenCon

This post is fuelled by jetlag and hazy memory, but I wanted to quickly talk about my experiences at GenCon.

I have no way of funnelling this into a coherent narrative, so it's just a list of things.

JFK is a terrible airport to transfer through. I have a new respect for the unremarkableness of Atlanta.

The opening of the trade hall felt like the end of civilisation. So many people in such density that I was concerned we might create a black hole. Luckily, I managed to pick up a couple of things I feared would sell out and then go hide for a while.

Later I would discover neither of these things sold out as instantly as I'd feared, and I could have grabbed them in a more relaxed manner if I'd kept my cool. There's a lesson here I guess.

Despite the arduous journey and crushing crowds, there's no denying that if you want to meet as many amazing RPG people as possible then GenCon is the place to be. Even just aimlessly wandering the Trade Hall I got to chat with Tony Vasinda, Spencer Campbell, Jay Dragon, Trevor Devall, others I'll have to apologise for forgetting right now.

The following day I met with Yochai, Brad, and Sam to stand in queues for longer than we would like, doing our best to transform it into some enlightening fable. I think we mostly succeeded. Later I selflessly offered up my hotel room as a space to record a podcast, allowing myself a ringside (more accurately: bedside) view of the performance.

Then came the Ennies. Favouritism runs rampant as I shamelessly throw my support behind people I like, who just happen to also create fantastic RPGs:
Kyle Latino won for Monstrous, perhaps the biggest cheer of the night.
Shadowdark and Eat the Reich obviously won everything they were up for.
Reynaldo and Greywiz were in attendance, bizarrely meeting in flesh for the first time, as Break!! won a much deserved gold. If you'd told me when Break!! started development, a mere fifty years ago, that I'd be sat at the Ennies when it won I wouldn't have believed you.

(I mean... technically I wasn't there, as I left in the interval, but you get my point)

Among my Ennies-buddies were JP Coovert and the mythical being behind Prismatic Wastelands who I'm fearful to out as human, rather than some sort of blog elemental. Actually, his name is Warren, and we shared some good snarky gossiping while the winners were offering heartfelt speeches.

We moved on to one of the hotel bars, where Luke of the Pirate Borg crew was celebrating his birthday. I'm told that Ed Greenwood was there, but he must have astrally transited before I arrived. The Pirate Borg guys are all jacked, semi-uniformed in black, but super friendly and passionate about RPGs. I'd describe their vibe as ethical mercenaries. They look like they could mess you up but they really just protect penguin sanctuaries or something.

Last year I signed up for a few different games, and while they were fun they paled a touch in comparison to the pickup games I stumbled into. This year I didn't sign up for anything, but I got to play even more.

Wednesday is the trade day, which means the convention centre is mostly empty. I got to enjoy a pick up game of Shadowdark (kinda) with my adoptive GenCon parents from last year, Kelsey and Baron. We explored an ice cave, burned the yeti, but died trying to escape from the flaming mayhem we'd created.

This was the last time I was able to enjoy sitting in a mostly empty space in the convention centre, so it's a real highlight in my mind.

We snuck into the quasi-abandoned mall that connects to the convention centre for the evening game, finding an eerily empty seating area. I got to play X-Crawl Classics run by Brendon LaSalle himself. My hobbit was called Slamwise. The neighbouring table were playing Macdeath, a twist on that play, run by Professor/Dan. Amongst others, Ben and Bob were there, and yes I'm putting them together because it's fun to say their names that way.

Brad ran a bunch of us through his Dream Shrine and... this module is something special. Definitely check it out if you want a good compact adventure packed with dreamy weirdness.

Later I got to run a brief game of Paranoia for Sam, JP, and Brad,. It felt like a good density of laughs for such a short session.

For most of the con I was wearing a t-shirt with one of my games on it. This made me feel like a gigantic tool, but the purpose was to transform myself into a walking business card, preventing the need for me to awkwardly tell people what I do. Steve from Epic Levels spotted this and said hi, after watching a D&D 3e seminar (look... I have nostalgia for it even if I don't like it). He warmly encouraged me to go and speak to Monte Cook, who had been on the panel and, based on shaky intel, I believe has played one of my games at some point. I did so before quickly fleeing, but appreciated the nudge.

The secret (I assume?) Rowan Rook and Decard bar is always a pleasure, and Grant is still one of the most generous hype men on the planet. Introducing myself to people is the worst, and I was glad to find the solace of a similar soul in Chase of Rascal.

Of course, as a cultured individual, I wanted to experience the real taste of America, so a special thank you goes to the connoisseurs who guided me to through the culinary complexities of the White Castle Drive-thru (on foot, mainly with Shadowdark crew) and the Waffle House (open 24 hours, but... not today, so the car park became our banquet hall). Too many people to list, but here's a selection:

Zeb, who I believe started the whole Waffle House thing.

Sillion who's working on some awesome looking deep-south cyberpunk thing.

Hunter is also working on that and has a bunch of other cool stuff.

Tomas makes this wizard thing, Gabe has this slice of space horror, oh and Kieron was there. I think he invented MODOK or something.

Is that everything? I'm not even sure.

GenCon continues to confound me. So much of it is inconvenient and consumerist, but then that magic is still there, lurking just beneath the surface.

Next time I hope to dig even deeper.

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This post was originally sent as a reward to all Patreon supporters, and is released freely on this site the week after its original publication.

If you want to support my blog, podcasts, and video content then head over to my Patreon.