This is a one-short LARP game, due to be run at a party but equally suit­able for conventions.

The Plot

Once upon a time, the world was presided over by twenty-two pow­ers, each rep­re­sent­ing an aspect of life and of the cos­mos. Unseen but all-powerful, their mere exis­tence directed the actions of Man. But in their cre­ation of Tarot cards, humans unwit­tingly stum­bled upon the pat­tern of the Uni­verse; the nature of the twenty-two fold shards of God­hood. From that moment on, the pow­ers were imbued with human­ity. They were no longer abstract con­cepts, they had been given human attrib­utes. Human emotions.

Thus, the seeds of the Fall were sown. And now is the time of that Fall. The Bal­ance between the twenty-two is falling apart. War, famine and suf­fer­ing plague the Earth. The twenty-two pow­ers feel as read­ily as the humans do that the End is approaching.

And so they meet. Back in the old days, there would have been no such con­cept as “meet­ing” among the pow­ers, or even “speak­ing to”. But they have become so human now that they are bound to phys­i­cal forms, to one place and time. It hurts a lit­tle, but with the loss of potency has come a loss of mem­ory, too. The times before the Tarot were cre­ated are fond and dis­tant mem­o­ries now, rose-tinted with time.

The Char­ac­ters

Each of the 6–21 play­ers takes on a char­ac­ter that is the embod­i­ment of one of the Major Arcana cards of a Tarot deck. They are humanoid in form, though still pos­sessed of remark­able powers.

Approx­i­mately two-thirds of the char­ac­ters are the “good guys” (from a human’s point of view at least). They are appalled by the events of the Fall, gen­er­ally unsure as to what has caused it, and deter­mined to reverse it.

The rest are the “bad guys”. To them, humanity’s inven­tion of the Tarot has robbed them of the god­hood that is rightly theirs, and if tak­ing it back means the end of human­ity, so be it. Their opin­ion of the Fall may vary between unsure what caused it but not both­ered by it, to hav­ing delib­er­ately worked to insti­gate it.

At the begin­ning of the game, no char­ac­ter knows the alle­giance of any other, unless they have some rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion on the piece of paper they are given at the start of the game (see below).

The Cards

I’ll type up some sum­maries soon, but for now if you don’t know what each card of the Major Arcana rep­re­sents, check out Wikipedia.

The Game

For the “good guys”, the aim of the game is to elim­i­nate or con­vert the pow­ers that are respon­si­ble for the Fall so that they can begin to repair the Earth. The “bad guys” have the oppo­site goal — elim­i­nate, by killing or con­vinc­ing, all those trai­tors that have sided with humanity.

At the start of the game, in gen­eral, nobody knows the alle­giance of any­one else. Hav­ing been coerced into humanoid forms, char­ac­ters may not even recog­nise the Card that another char­ac­ter embod­ies. How­ever, each char­ac­ter is given a small piece of paper con­tain­ing between one and three pieces of infor­ma­tion that they believe are true. This can be infor­ma­tion about the Fall, about the cre­ation of the Tarot or their pre-Tarot exis­tence, or it could be inter-character infor­ma­tion, such as you have worked with the Moon and are sure she’s on your side, or you’ve heard a rumour that the High Priest­ess is a “bad guy”.

These are designed to throw up inter­est­ing sit­u­a­tions for role­play, and to get the char­ac­ters talk­ing to each other.

The Sys­tem

Each char­ac­ter has two abil­i­ties: “push” and “kill”. They each affect one other character.

Each char­ac­ter has three “shots” of “push”. One “shot” can be used to tem­porar­ily influ­ence another char­ac­ter accord­ing to the caster’s nature. For exam­ple, the Fool can “push” their nature onto another char­ac­ter, mak­ing them more naïve and reck­less for a few min­utes. The Sun could inspire just enough glory in a friend to make them tri­umph over an adver­sary, or just enough false courage in an enemy to lead them to their downfall.

The tar­get must be close enough to hear the caster. When using a Push, the caster must role­play this by point­ing at their tar­get, say­ing “push”, then the name of the tar­get, then describ­ing in a word or two what aspect of their nature they wish to push. The push is not notice­able to any­one, even the tar­get. The player tar­get­ted must role­play their changed men­tal state for two to three min­utes, but the char­ac­ter her­self is not aware of the effect unless some­one points out that she’s act­ing strange. She does not know who pushed her. A push being used is not notice­able to onlook­ers, so any­one over­hear­ing a push occur should ignore it (includ­ing the pointing!).

Each “good guy” has one shot of “kill”. This is role­played by touch­ing the tar­get and sim­ply say­ing “kill”. Its effect is obvi­ous, imme­di­ate and unpre­ventable. When a char­ac­ter dies, every other char­ac­ter is imme­di­ately aware of who died, but unless they saw the touch occur, they are not aware of who killed them. It is like the death of a sib­ling, that takes with it a part of you. Killing another power is never a deci­sion to take lightly.

If any char­ac­ters are out of the room when you die, announce your death (out-of-character) loudly enough that every­one — or at least the ref — can hear.

Each “bad guy”, their hearts turned bit­ter, has three shots of “kill”. How­ever dis­cre­tion is advised, as if a char­ac­ter is caught using more than one kill, any cover they were main­tain­ing is effec­tively blown.

I am aware that this is going to turn into a bizarre overblown ver­sion of the Were­wolf Game. We will see how this goes.

The Ref

The ref (GM, or other appro­pri­ate name) plays the part of Card XX: Judge­ment. Judge­ment is impar­tial, car­ing not if human­ity lives or dies, or even if other pow­ers live or die — only that they get what they deserve.
So that he may judge fairly, Judge­ment desires any and all infor­ma­tion from the player char­ac­ters. Char­ac­ters may talk to him at any time, in con­fi­dence. From time to time, Judge­ment may obtain extra infor­ma­tion that may help cer­tain char­ac­ters achieve their goal, but he will only give out these tips in exchange for infor­ma­tion given to him.
It is par­tic­u­larly impor­tant that char­ac­ters who switch alle­giance from one side to the other inform Judge­ment, as in his role as Ref he likes to know how many of each fac­tion are left in the game!