I was happy to read about the Matrix Games a couple weeks ago but I didn’t figure out how to run a game.

It’s pretty simple on it’s.face

Characters have a name, descriptions, skills, qualities, social status, anything that could.be useful. They don’t have numerical scores, they are just listed.

The contest is determined through argument.

My hulking barbarian can easily cleave a puny goblin in Twain with his hefty claymore.

Strong argument. Easy challenge.

Team combat is messier.

Apologies if this is illegible (I’ll turn it into a blog post eventually), but I’ve been itching to apply Tarot to solo play and came up with this spread. I thought the results were outstanding, so I wanted to share for feedback/improvement. Details below.

Setup You don’t need to know Tarot card meanings (or even use Tarot cards) to employ this. It’s more about the “spread” or significance of each position in the layout. You could probably use any random generator (story dice, adventure glyphs, etc.) or just go by what the imagery on the cards tells you. I’m leaning on the traditional meanings of the cards, however, and the deck is the Golden Universal Tarot.

Opposition I chose the two Kings because I liked the artwork of the cards, but the rest were drawn from a shuffled deck. I figure conflict equals story, so I set them opposed and drew cards for each King’s strength and weakness (kinda forming two arrows — or sword tips? — pointing towards one another). In my case, these are NPCs, but your character (s) could probably be one of the opposed entities.

Conflict I think you could do something as simple as one card to represent your character(s) or a high level view of the issue, laid between these opposing entities, but I went for a little more detail with a common “past/present/future” (top to bottom) spread between.

You The 10th card represents your character’s role in this conflict — standing between the present and the potential future. Whether that means prevention (of a negative future) or facilitation (of a positive outcome), is all in the cards. 🙂

Next Since I don’t have a clear idea for my character yet, I can take this info and run with it. I may just do another simple past/present/future spread for him, and/or make his own “arrow” layout with strengths and weaknesses. Or, maybe just his role in the conflict gives him the initial definition.

Question Is this “too much work” for the average bloke? It took me about an hour, writing it all out and pondering some in between, but I found it a rewarding experience in itself and feel like it produced a rich starting point for an interesting story. Please share if you give it a try!