Tarot for Downtimes
Rather than having a roll, leading to a complication, leading to a table attempting to summarise the possible things that could go wrong, I thought of using tarot card draws for downtime results.
In particular for actions like Cultivate Relationship and Build Institution, where it’s less a straight succeed/fail and novel obstacles and situations tend to arise.
One advantage is that I usually write downtimes as little short stories and cards would make for excellent writing prompts – not just ‘do they advance the relationship’ but suggesting how they do so.
Just as BenL’s 2d6 system provides for failure, mixed success, and total success, I’d make mixed success the default and have further effects for particularly auspicious or inauspicious cards (at the DM’s discretion, though you could theoretically write a list for each action.)
Where a precise probability is called for – chance of spell research failure, etc. – particular suits or cards could be specified. If an action requires a 20% chance of failure it could fail on drawing Swords (17.95%) or a Face card (20.51%), for example.
It may make more sense to resolve downtimes in a more traditional manner, and save the deck for inspiration when a complication or boon is otherwise indicated, but it’s a fun idea. The tarot seems like a trove of ready-made hints and associations.
I had a look at the Everway rules to see if they’d inspire anything, but they were underwhelming – the resolution mechanic doesn’t seem to go beyond “draw a card and decide what happens.”