The Dungeons & Dragons Tarot Deck: A 78-Card Deck and Guidebook

I got these for a Campagin I was crafting that was going to feature a tarot card reading as part of the main plot device. For this purpose it works wonders. The party meets a strange fortune reader in a tavern and boom. Do a tarot reading and use the booklet to see what effects happen from that card. Or tweak what the books says to fit your campaign. Or use it hidden from the players as a way of letting fate decide what happens next. Very fun for a table top rpg. Easy way to spark the imagination for interesting story developments. As for an actual tarot deck. No. It's not very useful. Technically it is a full tarot deck with the exact number of major and minor arcana ans 4 suits and 1-9 ace knight page queen and king. However tarot readings rely on vivid icons recognizable symbolism to do readings. This deck could still be used to do a tarot reading but it is much more difficult than other decks to use that way. Because portions of the art work on cards are altered to fit a D&D adventure aesthetic as opposed to a more traditional tarot art style that stays true to form. For example. A tarot deck has 4 suits wands, cups, swords, and coins. While some of the cards in the minor arcana look similar to the way they might in other tarot decks. Some use symbolism that is completely backward from what it should represent. A five of coins card has five wizards with wands. Clearly in a traditional deck this would be 5 of wands or *maybe* 5 of swords but it this deck they are designated to an entirely different suit that doesn't exactly resemble the card art. This deck is wonderful if you know nothing about tarot and want a grear D&D prop. If your more interested in learning tarot cards this deck may be a great place to start but is probably not the last tarot deck you'll own if your serious about tarot. But I'd your just wanting to some extra fun for a table top RPG this is 100% worth it. The art work is very lovely and the quality of the cards is very nice. You'll find yourself flipping through it just to admire the art. And the booklet it comes with gives great ideas to inject creativity into any campaign.

Potential negative: Seems to be a missed opportunity for the creators here, since the cards lack suit indicators. That is going to be a barrier to entry for a lot of people who are newly interested in tarot, of which there are more than ever recently. That adds up the missed sales, probably, but need be no deal breaker for the buyer. Neutral: The cards feel like bicycle playing cards in terms of texture. There is a little more gloss on them than I would have preferred had I my druthers. But they are just uniquely feeling ultimately. YMMV. Potential positive: The art is extremely evocative. The lack of suit indicators was no problem for me at all. Cards like Six of Swords and Six of Cups (as those two happened to stand out to me especially, among the Hanged Man, Moon, Lovers...) are instantly recognizable, if you know what you are *supposed to be* looking at. The rest are not hard to figure out, again appended with the preceding qualifier. With the minimal distraction thanks to the omitted graphics, it becomes easy to simply take in the feeling from the art alone. Conclusion: D&D is rife with archetypal imagery, even if it is a sort of transmission-via-transmission-via-transmission (myth -> fairy tale -> adventure story -> fantasy story -> RPG). These cards illustrate the perennial potency of those archetypes with utmost distinction. That said, in the interest of full disclosure, I am plenty familiar with RWS and Thoth decks, along with numerous modern permutations. If you are not, this deck may be only confusing and frustrating. And tarot should not confuse or frustrate you; quite the opposite. So if you are unsure, you might simply put it aside and consider picking it up in the future, after you are able to quickly recognize and interpret traditional decks with ease.

This tarot deck is absolutely beautiful and stunning the art work is beautiful both front and back the guid book is very very lacking in terms of tarot. However as a DM for a D&D campaign this deck is very helpful in plot hooks for a DM to give to there players it could make for a very interesting and intriguing campaign if the dice and these cards made the story. Back to the cards they are easy to shuffle but very slick and slide a lot so keep that in mind when your shuffling so they don't fly off everywhere. Back to the guidebook as far as Tarot goes it has all 4 suits of the minor Arcana and the major Arcana. Though they are hard to Decifer what each suit is since they stats used in D&D do not fully make sense for the minor Arcana suits they are if your D&D fan this will make sense as to why but these are the suits and there counterpart in the minor Arcana suits. Strength= Wands Intelligence= Swords Wisdom= Cups Charisma= Pentacles This is cool and all but the stat as far as a D&D character go and the the minor arcana just do not match well in my opinion.

So my feelings are, as the title of the review says, mixed. The outside of the box is nice looking and sturdy, love it! The inside that holds the cards is super-duper thin card stock, no thicker than the cards (possibly even thinner?) and was pretty badly bent and torn already when I opened it. Don’t love it. See the pics I included. I wished they’d charged a little more and used sturdier materials, or honestly, just made a smaller box and book that were more “fitted” to the deck and didn’t require the extra packaging. The cards themselves aren’t the best quality, but not the worst either, I think they’re pretty standard for decks in their price point, and I actually like the feel. If it doesn’t feel like a $50 deck (and it doesn’t), I didn’t pay that, so it’s fine. The good: I really like the art on the deck, back and fronts, it is a true, fully-illustrated 78 card deck. And I love the adventuring prompts that are included for each card, I think that’s really fun! The bad: like most other reviewers have already commented, the minor arcana are extremely confusing. They didn’t use the standard suits, that’s fine, but they didn’t actually say how their suits (Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma) correspond to the traditional Wands, Swords, Cups, and Pentacles. I think it might be that order, Strength = Wands, etc, just because they mention them both in that order in the book where they acknowledge using the specialized suits, but I don’t… know. That makes things challenging if you do reversed meanings, which they don’t include but do acknowledge without providing a means to read them other than vague references to interpretation and intuition. But still, I’ve seen plenty of decks that use completely novel suits, that would still be okay—except there’s no clear, visual identifier for each suit. They could have done color, d&d class, d&d race, weapon (swords… wands… they’re right there, how much more d&d did it need to be?!) but there’s no clear, unifying theme for each suit. It’s all d&d, so swords and ‘wands’/staves are scattered haphazardly in the hands of adventurers of various sorts throughout the suits. Even that I could deal with, except the Minor Arcana also aren’t labeled with their suits. So you have four Aces, four 2s, four 3s, etc, and none of them say “Strength” or “Wisdom” or anything, none of them feature any significant symbol, color, character, or otherwise recognizable theme to tell you which ace or 2 or 3 it is… you just have to flip through the book checking all of them until you find the picture that matches the particular ace you pulled. That’s just really inefficient for pretty much any use? Like, you don’t need to say “four of swords” if there’s swords all over the card and it’s labeled “4,” I could guess that, but how am I supposed to know that the masked dude in the suit and tie, with a staff in one hand and an orb in the other, is the 7 of Intelligence? And what would tell me the 8 with the unarmed drow wrapped up by the giant spider, or the the 3 that’s a druid summoning a burst of mushrooms, are part of the same suit? Seriously, I keep flipping through, trying to figure out what I’m missing, because it’s honestly weird, I didn’t deliberately choose particularly obscure cards either, that was literally a random example. For what it’s worth, I think this appeals more as a d&d collectible than a proper tarot deck, so if I was thinking of giving it as a gift I’d keep that in mind, but I’d also hesitate to give it to someone I didn’t know already knew about the issues with it and wanted it anyway. So why 4 stars? Maybe a combination of me not liking to dump too much on something that feels like actual effort went into it (every card is illustrated! Every card has it’s own adventuring prompt!) and genuinely liking some aspects of it (again, the art, the prompts, the outside of the box, the book). I’m still thinking I can macguiver it into a more usable deck, write in the suits on the minor arcana with a white pen, reinforce the torn parts inside my box with a piece of thicker card stock. I shouldn’t have to, those are big, weird issues, but I like what I like about the deck enough to maybe try.

Purchased as a gift for my friend. We love this set. The images are so pretty!

Bought as a birthday gift, beautiful artwork, good quality cards and box.

For the D&D Player with no experience with Tarot: This is a beautiful keepsake, and a great addition to your campaigns if you have a bit of writer's block when creating your own campaign. Each card represents an encounter, almost like a side quest if you will kick off your creativity in RP. The box is nice, the card quality is about right for the price range, and the artwork is stunning. I'm pleased that it's not filled with a bunch of portraits, and I appreciate how well researched the Major Arcana is, the book is user-friendly and does a good job at educating about tarot in a digestable way to the masses. It has some colorful language but its not too heavy. I think it's a perfect affordable gift for a DnD fan. If this rating was solely on the use for DnD players this would be a 5 Star. For the Occult, witch, psychic, and divination practitioner: Minor Arcana: Because of the minor suits, this is not a Tarot deck, it's a cartomancy deck. If you are new to actual tarot and want to start learning, this deck does not have a direct comparison to the minor suits in traditional tarot and even their own suits are not consistent in their symbolism. You would either have to use their very high-level descriptions solely, or you would have to ignore their book altogether and base your reading purely on intuition and your knowledge of symbology. This is why I say this is for more advanced readers. If you don't have developed clair-sense, then understanding symbology is your greatest ally in this deck. If you do have clair-sense developed, then you shouldn't have an issue reading the 56 cards independently so long as you completely go into it knowing that there is no side-by-side direct correlation between tarot's pentacle/cup/sword/wand suits to this deck's wisdom/intellect/charisma/strength suit. And while in Dnd wisdom and intellect are different, in symbology these two suits are very redundant. The biggest issue with this deck is that there isn't a suit dedicated to material items, so the imagery for material things isn't quite as robust as a traditional tarot deck. The Major Arcana: You can definitely tell they did their research and this is done exceptionally well, in a very DnD way. I believe you could easily do a reading by having these cards ground your answers. They are beautifully done and they have some really great symbolism and imagery in each card. My only complaint with this is the Lovers, and the Devil card. The symbolism is lacking for the internal aspect of the Lovers card that represent the duality in us in harmony, and the devil represents the duality in us that is not balanced. The two characters representing the lover cards seem to be at odds with each other instead of in harmony and feel that if they had changed the cloaks to counterbalance one another maybe this card could be a better success. The devil card also completely lacks the symbolism of not being in balance, its a great image of a tiefling and tackles the materialistic and playfulness of the devil card but again, the imagery misses the mark on that inner self of having the devil on your shoulder. That said the moon, and The World cards are *chefs kiss* especially the world. The major arcana share the story of a journey in traditional tarot, and this deck nails that which I feel is especially critical since D&D is all about going on an epic journey with your friends. The journey ends on The World, and in true D&D fashion its 3 travelers cheering in a tavern with a flaming sword and a pile of wealth, perfect imagery for the end of a campaign. Minor Arcana Court Cards: These were overall disappointing. I think they could have pulled more deities from DnD lore and completely missed an opportunity to create a narrative between contrasting personality types. Overall: As critical as many tarot readers are of this deck, I think it's a great deck to own for more advanced readers. It would do exceptionally well in questions of travel, decision making, education, and provide intelligent insight. It would not do as well with answering questions that are materialistic, job-focused, or emotion-based. As a Tarot reader and a DnD fan, If I were to design this deck, I would have done the minor arcana different by dropping intellect, and picking up dexterity, and then within the symbolism I would have very clear imagery of morality when it came to cards representing people. And then lean into numerology symbolism to showcase the use of Die in the game as well as offering tarot readers better numerological symbolism. I would also lean into the story of the traveler more throughout every card, because that is the biggest foundation in both Tarot and Dungeons and Dragons. I gave it a 3 star because of this, there were many opportunities to really cater to both audiences and licensed tarot products to offer people a chance to get into Tarot, and they really missed the mark there. But I didn't feel it deserved less because it really is a great deck for role-playing in D&D.

I pre-ordered this deck going back 6 months, and it has been well worth the wait! I watch a lot of different tarot readers on Youtube, and have been interested in and tried my hand at reading for myself using a lot of the same decks I've seen that looked beautiful or interesting. The one's that the art really captivates and guides you. This looked to be different and something I'd truly connect with in my interests and love for both tarot and D&D. (I have some Hungarian Gypsy in my bloodline which encourages this passion too) I think I finally have a deck worth using on a regular basis. The card stock isn't like most tarot decks. It's more like an air-cushioned playing card stock, with the lamination. They slide and are easy to work without them slipping out of your hands. They are a bit thicker and therefore heavier than your usual deck. May even be water resistant too, but I'm not going to dunk them in water. I think if you spill something, they should be fine though. The artwork is absolutely one of a kind. It reminds me of a blend of classical high fantasy, mixed with the aesthetic of a wall mosaic, and traditional medieval romantic paintings and tapestry work. They're breathtaking! Plus, I've never seen this artwork for D&D anywhere else, I'm pretty sure it's exclusive to these cards, that alone should be enough for a hardcore enthusiast. The cards also boast a different set-up to the traditional suits of Wands, Swords, Cups, and Pentacles. Instead replacing those respectively with the character creation features of Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. Which works for this I think. The only downside is also kind of a positive, depending on your viewpoint. If you've never read or used tarot before, this could be a little confusing for you, because they don't label the minor arcana cards with what suit they belong to. Just number them ace to 10, then page, knight, queen and king. Nothing indicates the different suits; you would have to initially keep checking the guidebook to know which is from what. So, either take it slow and be patient out of the gate or get another deck because this is more for moderate to advanced readers. The guidebook too, is a bit too short. Given how they change things more I would've expected them to take the time in explaining concepts. But no, you're going to have to intuit a lot of meaning into them, it won't hold your hand on everything. But you do get the overall concepts for the cards and how to read them. Just be sure to cut your teeth on a more straightforward deck before this one. Now, here's the surprise I didn't see coming and should have. You can use this deck for your D&D campaigns if you're DMing! The cards can be used as story hooks, or inspiration for encounters, or misdirection's, especially if the campaign your running is getting stale, and you need to throw your players a curveball. It's the same concept used in Curse of Strahds Taroka Deck. Which I also have, and this could be more universal than the Taroka for campaigns outside of Ravenloft. This wasn't at all what I bought this deck for, but it's a welcome bonus. I only just got it tonight, and I don't typically review my purchases on Amazon, but I couldn't wait to talk about how much I love this deck. Again, the art alone is worth the purchase, I hope everyone can appreciate the artists' work as much as I do.