Harrow Deck Stacking


Curse of the Crimson Throne

Grand Lodge

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Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

The Harrow deck used at the beginning of each chapter of CotCT could easily be stacked by the GM with predetermined cards in order to craft the story (ensuring that the Harrowing would fit the chapter's theme and foreshadow events).

For those that have ran CotCT, I'm interested in hearing about you Harrow experiences, specifically any experiences with using stacked decks.

If you didn't stack the deck, how did you Harrowings go? Did they fit well with the chapter at hand?

I'm trying to decide what would be best for my group.

-Skeld


Skeld wrote:
If you didn't stack the deck, how did you Harrowings go? Did they fit well with the chapter at hand?

Well, I didn't took pains to interpret every harrowing as close to story as AP suggests, but overall it was close. My party just properly started 3th arch and had theyr harrowing. Suprisingly, it came close to the story and some details for my party.


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After doing one of these with no prep, I found that splitting the difference worked.

I would lay out a random spread a couple days before they got to that part and write down an interpretation of the cards at my leisure. Any card can be shoehorned into pointing out things you want it to if you have enough time to think of the right words.

Then I would shuffle the stat cards, let them draw, then pretend to shuffle those back in and lay out the spread according to my already written interpretation.

So it was still random, just not so random that I actually had to think of prognostications on my feet. Also I didn't feel guilty for purposefully putting too many (or too few) of the stat card in the spread (since it was a random draw).


Thanks Aeonesti, that sounds like a much better way to handle things.

I think my biggest worry for this campaign will be the harrow readings.

Dark Archive

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Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Thing about Harrowing is that its fortune telling. Nature of fortune telling is that you can make anything sound close to what is going on, its about being so unspecific that things you say could really apply to anything.

Like, for example, when I did few Harrow readings on prompt in RotR I was worried it wouldn't be fitting because I hadn't stacked the deck, but it actually turned out to be really fitting to what is going on in the campaign in way I hadn't thought of.

Heck, when you think about it, stacking deck so that all cards are "relevant" is really unlike how real fortune telling goes. Fortune telling is interesting in that even if card's meaning doesn't seem "relevant" the way they are interpreted still fits and makes it sound meaningful to situation.

I dunno if what I just said there makes sense, but yeah, I would say that no need to stack the deck, result is much more interesting without that.

Grand Lodge

Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
CorvusMask wrote:
I dunno if what I just said there makes sense, but yeah, I would say that no need to stack the deck, result is much more interesting without that.

What you said made sense. It comes down to this question: will I be inventive enough to come up with interpretations of the cards, on the fly, such that they will be relevant to the upcoming chapter?

To ask another way: how much mental gymnastics will I have to perform to make the random cards showing up make sense when the players look back on the reading? I don't doubt my ability to be vague, but I want the players to be able to look back and say, "so that's what that card meant!"

-Skeld

Dark Archive

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Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Well, it definitely helps if you can remember cards' meanings aligned and misaligned, I myself did it while reading the manual so bit of gm loading screen there :'D Anyway, nice thing with harrow reading is that you don't need to interpret each card on each row aloud so if you can't figure anything for all of the cards, you can just focus on ones you can think something for.

I think it is something that can be practiced. Of course, if your players don't mind you could do reading ahead and think interpretation in advance.(maybe draw cards in front of them and leave it mysterious of what it actually means until the next session?)


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I stacked the deck for the first Harrowing, as I wanted it to all mean something. We actually did an In Game Harrow about someone's past which was entirely done on the spot, and it worked out pretty well. However, I still went through all the cards last night and currently have a stacked deck ready for the second module's Harrowing tonight. I like having a spiel pre-planned rather than trying to come up with it on the fly.

Grand Lodge

Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

We had our first session, and first Harrowing, a few weeks ago. I didn't stack the deck. It actually went fairly well. Based on that, I don't think I'll have any trouble with it going forward.

-Skeld

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