Nem (they/them) runs the leftist tabletop studio and occasional publisher, Sandy Pug Games, creating games exploring anti-capitalism, alternative forms of interaction, and what it would be like if DMC’s Dante was in Dungeon World. Recently, they have helped facilitate the Our Shores Kickstarter, allowing members of the South-East Asian TTRPG scene (RPGSEA) access to funds and exposure they had previously been denied.
Read MoreHad Signs of the Sojourner allowed the player to fail without having the door slammed in their face, it would be easier to forgive some of the flatness present in its card system or the brevity of its script. But by framing conversations as games to be won without anticipating how often they’d be lost, huge chunks of the game become sequences of frustrating nonsequiturs.
Read MoreWandersong may not reference tarot cards directly, but its thematic questions are such that they map almost too well to be purely circumstantial. Whether you believe tarot cards hold any spiritual power or are merely a useful tool for introspection, I hope this analysis helps you appreciate how cleverly Wandersong employs and subverts archetypes that have existed for generations, and, more broadly, how tarot cards can be used to explore narrative and the act of interpretation.
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