6 Tarot-based NPCs (using Captain Ahab's oracle)

Phill Loe over at Captain Ahab's Leg wrote a great post about oracles - symbolically charged random generation methods for use in gaming. Phill made some great Tarot-based generators, and I tested the monster generator before. This time his quick NPC creation method caught my interest, let me quote (emphasis mine):

"I always bring a deck of tarot cards with me to the gaming table. They can also be used to answer questions about the world—but I find that they can be a little cryptic if you’re asking the deck anything concrete like “what does this magic item do?” or “what taverns are in the area?” They are much better at generating high-level concepts.
For NPCs, I will use a simple three card layout. The left card represents the character’s past, the middle card represents the character’s appearance or how they “seem” to other people, and the right card represents the character’s motivations. It’s generally important to try to make that character’s motivation something the party would potentially care about."

This is an interesting method, so I gave it a try, and generated six NPCs. Each spread took about two minutes. I based my interpretation on personal visual associations with the iconography (I have a Rider-Waite-Smith deck), in certain cases a simple printout of Tarot meanings, and in two cases rolls on the "36 character types" table.

Six Tarot-based NPCs

1. King of Wands, inverted + Page of Wands, inverted + Knight of Cups
   Scion of disgraced noble house, disguised as a lowly servant, conspiring to achieve personal grandeur.
2. The Empress, inverted + The Fool, inverted + Six of Cups
   Matronly woman, grieving the loss of her sons in the recent war, asks to retrieve lost heirlooms. 
3. Ace of Pentacles, inverted + Four of Pentacles, inverted + The Devil
   Adventurer ready to gamble away everything but a single gold medallion – it was given to them by a dead friend, but is in fact cursed and the source of bad luck.
4. Four of Swords, inverted + Knight of Swords + Seven of Pentacles, inverted
   Famed warrior, the last of his militant order, must lead a last charge, while dreaming of settling down and growing grapes.
5. Ten of Cups + The Tower + Knight of Pentacles
   Family sorting through the ruins of their destroyed home suspiciously optimistic about the future.
6. Two of Swords, inverted + Ace of Cups, inverted + The Magician, inverted
   Mysterious stranger from the Upper Spheres dispenses healing water, but preaches against the tenets of local authority.

[Monster] Tarot-based weird encounter generation

Captain Ahab's Leg posted a wonderful evocative system for generating unusual encounters based on Tarot cards. I love random content generation, I have a Tarot deck, so... here we go!

The Form: Eight of Pentacles

A craftsman chisels pentacles on golden discs – perhaps these creatures (because there are several of them) are constructs.

The Human: The Fool

Perhaps these monsters can be underestimated at first…

The Inhuman: Death

…but then they present a significant threat. The image shows Death as a mounted knight. A high priest in a tiara stands on the ground before the knight. Maybe praising him, but maybe trying to barter with him. In any case, the knight towers above him, subdues him just as he’d subdued an enemy previously. So perhaps the creatures have some sort of awe-inducing mind control power.

The Cycle:

The Larva: Six of Wands

The wands are carried, not mobile on their own. In their initial state, the creatures need an outer force to propel them forward. Maybe tumbleweed? They roll in, surround the enemy, and then build up into something unified and bigger.

The Pupa: Queen of Swords

Majestic and bellicose… But the Queen sits upon a throne, doesn’t fight. She towers over the enemy, and prepares to unleash the final attack.

The Imago: Nine of Pentacles

Pentacles again, but at a higher value than the Form, so I interpret this as a growth in power. The image shows a falconer, so maybe the great monstrous attack (the “awe-inducing mind control”, see above) is a swift, targeted thing.

The Encounters:

First Encounter (Eight of Pentacles, The Fool, Death)

An abandoned workshop, eerily silent, dead bodies lying around it – no evident cause of death. Inside lie eight golden discs with pentacles engraved on them. A priest kneels in the middle of the room, mumbling “please don’t hurt me, oh most magnificent one… please don’t hurt me!”

Second Encounter (Six of Wands, Queen of Wands, The High Priest)

The priest suddenly snaps out of the condition and starts arranging the discs in a specific shape.

Third Encounter (Nine of Pentacles, Ten of Wands, The Judgement)

A force of magnetism starts pulling together the discs, they gather, lift up from the ground, and form a sphere mid-air. They shine gold and bright, majestic… And now one person of the party is struck with awe – they must serve the sphere.