Little Arcana: A Tarot Trading Card Game

I’m Maisie. I live in South Yorkshire, I’m disabled, and I make things.

Little Arcana started because I wanted to suggest things for my friends to learn tarot, and many of them couldn’t get on with the books I recommended. They felt too dry and all the apps and websites were becoming difficult to discern whether they were AI or not. I'd have periods where I wasn't practicing tarot and having to refresh my memory. I kept forgetting what the cards meant until I’d used them. Then I realised that’s how I’d learned every card game I’ve ever played: not from the rulebook, from playing. 

It's estimated that in the first 300 years of the existence of what we would recognise as a tarot deck, it was solely used as a card game for entertainment, until it began to be used for divination in the early 19th century. 

Tarot is still played as a card game in France, Italy and Austria. For some people, that remains its main use. For others, the cards are a way to explore symbolism, ask themselves questions and reflect on the patterns in their lives.

The same deck has room for both.

So I made the tarot deck a card game, with a modern TCG twist. The three-card spread was already a board. Past, Present and Future already read like a turn order. Reversals already worked like a mechanic. All I had to do was let the cards do what they already meant, and the game fell out of the deck.

I curated and drew the first 78 final drafts myself, on an iPad, over many many months with a shrimp like posture. Pip, the wonky star on every card back, turned up about ten card ideas in and never left. He’s me, really: a bit lopsided, pleased to be here, going through the Majors one lesson at a time.

Thanks so much for reading :)