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I have an oracle fortune teller character who reads Harrow cards for a living. I always bring my Harrow deck to live in-person games but with the time limits of organized play, I never got to do a full reading. Normally when there was a decision to be made I just drew a random card and held it up pretending it guided my choice. That's great for flavor but not really using the cards fully.
Normally I play SFS PbP and PFS2e live, but today I started my first PFS2e PbP game and already just during introduction have managed to do a full nine cared Harrow reading, so a bit excited my Harrow deck will finally be put to good use. Now I'm wondering how many readings I can work into one scenario.
How and when do you use Harrow cards in your game?
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I once did a harrow reading for a fellow player on behalf of an NPC for a game I was in. My brother was the GM and I had just learned harrow rules while we were playing book 1 of Jade Regent and another player was interested in engaging with Koya for a bit so I write up the Harrowing between sessions in a text post, checking in with the GM for things I might use in it.
So, as I’ve not run across it … how do you change harrow cards with the absence of alignment? (You yo used to see ‘the lawful good card of strength, con, etc)Or do you just lop off the alignment descriptor.
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There's no hard answer jn the lore yet, but it is apparent that the concepts behind those alignments haven't gone from the setting. Instead of calling the upper left pip "Lawful Good" you might think of it as the Justice vertex, conjoining the nodes of Order and Virtue, contrast with Tyranny or Freedom, and opposite Discord.
Until it comes time to ORC update the harrow deck, this may be all we can do for now, but as far as I understand the divisions of the harrow are still intended to exist in-universe, even if the actual alignment descriptors have changed... actually for that matter you could use the names of the planes if necessary. Heaven is the "past positive" position, Outer Rifts is "future negative" and Boneyard is "present uncertain" etc.
From the look of it, the longer answer is 'Not now, the concepts behind alignment are still in existence and the names are still valid. If we rework it later we may change the names used instead of keeping the alignment names.'
And the rework described is very much similar to what Sibelius suggested.
I’ve used the Harrow deck as a reading to foreshadow future events. It was a set up reading rather than random, so the alignment issue really didn’t come into it.
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As the GM, I've done a few truly randomly drawn Harrow readings.
BUT, I did the pulls in advance so I could work out potential meanings of the spread ahead of time. I don't have the improvisational skills to do that on the fly. Then come gametime, I just dealt the cards in the same order I had previously to keep things looking appropriate.
As a player, I played a Card Caster Magus. He'd say quippy one-liners related to the cards he drew before throwing, but that was the extent of it for him.
Nope. I grew up in a household that taught that seances, Ouija boards, and tarot cards were all tools of the devil and his demons, so I've never really been comfortable around the idea of card readings (even those intended for pretend) even as an adult.
I don't engage in any sort of romance or flirting with the characters that I play. Because I am married and doing that would make me uncomfortable.
But I am not going to try and say that other players shouldn't have such plot lines with their characters.
I have seen some people doing harrow readings. But this was all in PbP, so time costs of doing such things measured in hours is pretty small compared to the pace that the games normally run at.
I played a sylph Suit Seeker Inquisitor that drew cards in combat and out of combat. Using a RNG d54 and this Harrow list.
The random cards pulled really inspired a lot of creativity as I had to read them first as a player, but then truly as the character would, given the situation. They were, like some believe the tarot to be, a window to intuition and subconscious thought. They didn't always (or ever?) "foretell the future" as much as "explained a slice of perception of the present". It was really fun, getting the character to imagine and see beyond the veil to "deeper meanings" and make "connections" that may or may not have initially been there. It was helpful that the GM was a fan of the tarot/astrology and as along for the ride.
I've also seen players (out of combat, narratively) do the opposite, which is to choose the cards they want - to forcefully draw cards that make sense for the situation, but that kinda drives me mad. To me, using the Harrow is all about the adventure of the randomness- allowing the vagaries of chance and shuffled cards to come through and hit my character (and thus myself) with curve balls I need to interpret through at least two lenses. Not to "decide" what card appears and thus what the Harrow tells my character and why. That seems to miss the point entirely.
At least as far as I can remember the Suit Seeker was based on randomly drawing the cards and thus was not a fait accopli...
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Nope. I grew up in a household that taught that seances, Ouija boards, and tarot cards were all tools of the devil and his demons, so I've never really been comfortable around the idea of card readings (even those intended for pretend) even as an adult.
I understand. I grew up in a household that taught that gods, devils and demons were tools of scammers and social control engineers used to control impressionable masses, so the idea of gods, angels and devils still feels hinky. I still have trouble playing properly devout characters. Conan's desire to sock Crom in the jaw is about as close as my characters get to "belief".