What's a Lenormand Oracle in SoloRPGs

An alternative to Tarot Cards

I know most of you subscribed to my substack read my actual plays and my Daggerheart Actual Play is going strong but I didn’t feel like writing one up this week. Instead I wanted to talk about an Oracle I “invented”(at least I haven’t seen it anywhere else and I certainly didn’t invent the method, I just created the table).

Starting out with Solo RPGs I struggled (and still do) with random meaning tables. Everyone praises the Mythic GME and Ironsworn tables and while I like the books for teaching me important aspects of solo roleplaying I am not very good at word association.

When I started playing Daggerheart and using my own supplement Daggersworn I first used Ironsworns tables, mostly because they are published under a creative common license.

I quickly ran into the same problem. Most of the time, it just didn’t work for me making me look for different approaches. I started looking at Tarot Cards. Unfortunaltey Tarot Cards are not great to include in a SoloGuide because not everyone has access to them and I wanted to provide as much as possible for a free product.

I eventually found something called Lenomarnd Cards which is a different system of divination than Tarot. Instead of using Archetypes it uses more common objects like “Key”, “Ring”, “Tower” to imply meaning.

So what? Another set of cards you might think. And you would be correct. Luckily, the number of cards they use are 36. And the more experienced among you might already be thinking, “That’s the same number of elements as in a d66 table!”

You are correct again. Since I really enjoy using it, here is a d66 Lenomarnd Table you can use for your SoloRPGs or divining your future (if you are into that).

How do you use it?

Well, I am really no expert in the usage of Tarot Cards or other methods of divination. I like to use it to get an idea of a theme and I draw one card.

Alternatively, you could draw two, 3 or 6 cards. I think two is relatively self explanatory. You get a theme/action and a modifier similar to rolling on Ironsworns Action and Theme table if you are familiar with those. But what if you draw (roll) three cards:

Stork - Moon - Tree

In this case the Moon is the theme of this. It can be interpreted as past, future, present; or you look at 1+2 and 2+3 individually. This scenario could mean someone renews their honor or maybe moon and tree mean passion for spirituality (a fanatic?).

The third way I know of is to build a cross and either inerpret left to right, top to bottom or the diamond around the center

Rider (4)
Star(1) - Woman (2) - Dog (3)
Scythe (5)

You either look at 1 - 2 - 3; 4 - 2 - 5, or 1 - 4 - 3 - 5

I find the idea that you receive news that some relative/lover/partner dies relative obvious but it also depends on the kind of question you ask. Is it what is the focus of the next scene? Is it what is the goal of the antagonist? What does the NPC know about this artifact? It helps for ideas when finding complications for my action rolls.

If you are still reading and you want to comment your interpretation of the cross. Does it spark something in you?

Hope you find this useful

Daniel