Prophesy in The Gloom - A System using Tarot Cards

Inspired by my own love of Tarot conceptually and Zak Smith's use of it is as a resolution mechanic, I've added it to the Gothic milleu of The Gloom, mechanically and in fluff:

Prophesy.

During your Haven Turn in the Gloom you may have chosen Prophesy, which means you sought out a back-alley palm-reader or haruspex to give you some inclination of your future. Fate and fortune often hang on the blade of a knife. At the start of your next expedition, your DM will perform a four-card Tarot reading for you, with the cards granting certain boons or follies. It is necessary that this reading be performed for you alone and without the knowledge of your team-mates.

Minor Arcana

The Suit of Swords: For any card in The Suit of Swords, the DM will give you the card to hold. You may expend it to add that number to an attack roll.  Page, Knight, Queen or King, you may expend it to turn any attack roll into a critical hit. You must use this ability after rolling the attack but before hearing the results of your roll.

The Suit of Cups: For any card in The Suit of Cups, the DM will give you the Page, Knight or Queen of Cups, you may expend it to automatically succeed on a survival check to find forage, provided such a check is possible. If you receive a King, you may expend it to remove one Foible. 

The Suit of Wands: For any card in The Suit of Wands, the DM will give you the card to hold in your play area until you choose to use it. You gain a one-use bonus to an Investigation, Perception, History, Arcana or Religion check, adding a bonus equal to the bonus on the card (1-10). You must use this ability after rolling but before learning the results of your roll.  If you receive a Page, Knight or Queen, you may expend the card to reroll a Spell Attack roll or Saving Throw against one of your spells, or your own Saving Throw against a magical effect. If you receive a King of Wands, you may expend the card to cast any first-level Wizard spell without expending any slots or material components, using any mental stat as your casting stat. This is fluffed as a prophesised event rather than your casting.

The Suit of Pentacles: For any card in The Suit of Pentacles, your DM will take the card and place it in their play area. Your DM may expend a card in the Suit of Pentacles to add sanity damage to a roll, with the damage reflecting the number on the card (1-10), expending the card. If your DM receives the Page, Knight or Queen of the Suit of Pentacles, they may expend it to add an extra monster to a random encounter. If your DM receives the King of Pentacles, they may expend it to curse one character with a Foible of their choice.  

The Major Arcana:

(00) The Fool—Give this card to your DM. He may expend it to turn any critical roll into a critical failure.

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(1) The Magician— Place this card in your play-area. You may use a Wizard spell up to third level without expending a spell-slot or material components, using any mental stat as your casting stat, expending the card.

(2) The High Priestess— Place this card in your play area. Once per day for this expedition, you may freely cast the Sanctuary Spell on yourself using any mental stat as your casting stat.

(3) The Empress— Place this card in your play-area. You have a moment of rapturous aura. You may charm all creatures that can perceive you within ten feet, expending the card.

(4) The Emperor— Place this card in your play-area. You have a moment of command and leadership, and may expend it to gain advantage on Persuasion, Intimidation and Deception for one day.

(5) The Hierophant— Place this card in your play-area. For this expedition, you have advantage on saves against supernatural possession and in performing exorcisms or other holy rites.

(6) The Lovers— Place this card in your play-area. You may expend it and tell a love-story from your characters past and be rewarded with immunity to all charm effects for this expedition. Alternatively, you may nominate one other character as your lover. This will enable you to have a shared pool of sanity points, but you will both gain a foible if you hit 0.

(7) The Chariot—Place this card in your play-area. You may expend it to either dash without spending any Action or Movement in combat, or to have your party travel twice as fast in an Adventuring Turn.

(8) Strength—Place this card in your play-area. Your carrying capacity increases by ten for this expedition.

(9) The Hermit— Give this card to your DM. He may expend it to give any character the Paranoia, Fatalistic Despair, This is a Game, Solipsism or Photophobia Foible.

(10) The Wheel of Fortune— Place this card in your play-area. You and the DM both gain a pool of three rerolls which you may expend through the expedition. They cannot be used to reroll the same die.

(11) Justice— . Place this card in your play-area. You may expend it to succeed at an Investigation, Insight or Religion check once in the expedition.

(12) The Hanged Man— Give this card to your DM. He may expend it at any time to add an extra complication or hazard to any encounter.

(13) Death— Give this card to your DM. He may expend it to force a player-character to fail two death saves immediately.

(14) Temperance—Place this card in your play area. You need only expend a food and water ration every two days to avoid exhaustion for this expedition.

(15) The Devil— Oh fuck. Give this card to your DM.  They will walk you to one side to discuss this. SPOILER FOR THOSE PLAYING THE GLOOM.

The Devil grants the player the 'Betrayer' Foible. Essentially, they must undermine the party and try to cause the expedition to fail whilst evading notice. If they successfully do so, grant a level for every character lost.

(16) The Tower— Place this card in your play area. You may expend it in an Adventure Locale and the DM will give you prophesied knowledge of the layout and character of the dungeon you are in, the location of several hazards or traps, and some hint at the greatest concentration of moveable wealth.

(17) The Star— Place this card in your play area. You cannot become lost during the next Expedition.

(18) The Moon— Give this card to your DM. He may expend it to add a pack of therianthropes otoany encounter or adventure locale.

(19) The Sun— Place this card in your play area. You may expend it at the start of an adventuring day in The Gloom to force the ‘Sunburst’ weather condition.

(20) Judgement—Place this card in your play area. If you commit an evil deed (murder, cannibalism, betrayal, rape, killing a prisoner, ambushing a neutral force…) you must pass this card to your DM. You lose all Sanity if above 0, and you gain two Foibles and a Curse. If you still have this card in your play area at the end of an expedition, lose one Foible.

(21) The World—Place this card in your play area. On your next expedition, you may ask the DM to look at the encounter tables and hazards of any region you enter.

Warforged for Into The Gloom - The Alloyed [5e]

 1. mix (metals) to make an alloy.
"alloying tin with copper to make bronze"

2. debase (something) by adding something inferior.
"a salutary fear alloyed their admiration"

With the release of Ebberron, I thought I'd give a riff on Warforged for The Gloom campaign. I've tried to make them feel very different from mortal characters - especially in a survival-focused game like The Gloom.

The Alloyed, The Talosophic
 From the Imperial Punishment Factories they creep back into every walk of life: The Alloyed. Men of steam, and steel, and brass. On metallic feet they click along, lungs and hearts working in tandem with steam-pipes; oil-black ichor mixing in uneasy communion with scarlet blood. Under metallic shells run the same tendons and ligaments as mortal men, and many Alloyed claim they are the same as any Unalloyed. Others hint at a permanent chill, the unshakable sensation of a phantom limb, occasional unwarranted movement of mechanical parts; a sense of ticking purpose and dreadful ennui.

The Alloyed are a race made to represent those who, willingly or otherwise, have replaced a considerable part of their bodies with machinery. These indomitable creatures have been packed off to The Gloom in numbers – whether this is due to their utility or expendability is anyone’s guess

The Alloyed/The Talosophic
Ability Score Increase: Your strength and constitution increase by one.
Size:  The Alloyed are wedded enough to their mortal form to be Medium.
Speed: Your movement is a little ungainly: your base walking speed is 20”.
Organs of Steel and Steam: You do not eat or drink mortal food, and lack of sleep does not cause you exhaustion. However, you must refuel yourself daily with Ichor and become paralysed if immersed in water. You may not gain the benefit from magical healing.
Languages: You speak Common and one additional language of your choice.

Subtype: Choose one of the below subtypes that best reflects your method of construction and purpose.

Walking Fortress:  You are made with innate armour: an indomitable steel shell cocooning your mortal parts. You gain +1 AC and take one less damage from non-magical piercing, bludgeoning and slashing attacks.
Robota: You were made for hard and tedious labour unsuited to those limited to flesh. Gain +1 strength. Part of your body is a tool (hammer, saw, axe etc) which deals 1d6 + STR damage as a weapon you are proficient with.
Nerves of Steel: You have had much of your lymph nodes and nervous system stripped away, and you feel your emotions only as far away things, of little consequence. You gain advantage on saves against being frightened and the charmed condition. You gain +1 Wisdom.

Inspiration for The Gloom: Children of Time

I recently finished Children of Time by Adrian Tchaijovsky, and below are my brief Goodreads thoughts:

"An incredible work -a future sci-fi classic and absolute must-read. One of the most accomplished pieces of science fiction I have ever read.

Children of Time threads together two narratives: the desperate striving of humanity's last monster-slaying colony ship, the Gilgamesh, and the rapid evolution and expansion of our misbegotten children: a race of hyper-intelligent spiders delivered to sentience by cosmic accident. 

The effect is dizzying, and Tchaikovsky elegantly en-webs the high concepts of speculative fiction with the petty and personal - it is both readable and grand; space-opera and soap opera. 

Tchaikovsky's mastery of perspective will have you rooting for a race of cannibalistic giant spiders to wipe out out the human race.

I cannot give praise superlative enough."

Beyond that, Children of Time has two rich seams to inspiration for The Gloom.

Firstly, The Gloom is a land of perpetual darkness, and Darkvision has been excised from the Player's Handbook. Fear and horror emerge because your hominid, forward-facing eyes and sensory focus on eyesight are wholly inadequate. Darkness abounds, meaning that those things that rely on echolocation, proprioception, vibrations, bioluminescence, the taste of the air - these things have an advantage, an advantage more terrifying in that it is alien. My players have pieced together how some things in The Gloom sense (the Gloomlings - retextured Goblins - hear by echolocation and thus recoil from gunfire and loud noises due to their sensitive hearing...) but much is mystery. Children of Time depicts a society of spiders whose primary senses are based on vibration and texture; whose life is three dimensional. This colours their philosophy and language in intriguing ways, and I'm trying to explore that with the denizens of The Gloom; to craft a tactile, feeling culture of sound and taste and touch and senses no human possesses. Soon I'll be posting posts about the Drau, the Gloomlings, the Pale Kings and the Araneids - some of what passes for the nations of The Gloom, and I'll be trying to work that sensate strangeness into their fibre. An Araneid taster:

"The Parliaments of Silk

Deep in The Gloom they lie: landscapes textured only by the interplay of stillness and vibration. Every tree or protrusion of rock or ancient building wreathed in a veil of near invisible-webbing. Adventurers may pick and cut their way across a silent and ghost-like expanse, brushing the silken threads away or burning them with torches, and believe they walk across an old home; an unloved room; an abandoned tomb.

They would be wrong.

Each vibration of taunt silk is felt; recorded, gestated, analysed. An arachnid mind contemplates in perfect stillness. Wordless silk-talk continues as the Parliament tug at threads and perform a deliberate and slow stepping-dance –in the terrible language of the Araneids, they plan their hunt.

What was once a city of the Precursors is now parcelled in silk: a trap of impossible vastness. With delight the Araneids are rapidly learning that the silver objects, marble sarcophagi and statuary which works so well as web-anchors also draws prey into their domain. "
The second seam is the human experience of Children of Time: one of desperation and in-fighting and the persistent, primal fear of extinction.

The Gloom wasn't always thus: players have already uncovered ruins that hint at what I'm calling Preumbral civilization. Unable to translate or decipher any text they've found, the great history of the Preumbral civilization is at yet guesswork to the players. But soon they'll be uncovering the history of The Gloom. For me, the world-building of The Gloom stems from an event I'm simply calling The Dusk, when a fairly recognisable if fantastic society suddenly loses its congress with the life-giving sun. Crops die; plants yellow as photosynthesis becomes a memory: in the terror, foot-riots and messianic cults obliterate and constrain order; scarcity and murder become a way of life, leading to ghouls and societies of ritual cannibalism.Vampires and horrors from beneath crawl out to prey freely in a world almost granted to them. Magical and technological and religious and cultic coping mechanisms are devised as a self-confident and mighty society suddenly looks the end of things square in the eye.  I extrapolate from this process the sentient foes our Gloomdelvers are likely to face: the last survivors of a teneborous entropy.

For the other side, I've been researching what grows and dwells in a world absent light and blessed of accelerated arcane evolution. A cursory look into the bestiaries of the deep and dark recesses of our own planet gives ample inspiration for such things: an image dump should happen soon.