Neverway: the Grand Tableau is an homage to Jonathan Tweet’s Everway with the aim of updating the system, plugging some gaps and making it easier to obtain play materials (e.g. by basing the fortune deck on the Lenormand). This post is an introduction, and in later posts I’ll write down the functional system including Lenormand cards and how they’re drawn, duelling, etc.
Overview
Here is a summary of features:
- A 36 card fortune deck (based on the Petit Lenormand card decks)
- Resolution using Karma, Drama and Fortune
- Characters have four main attributes (after card suits/elements), and a three-card divination spread (after Everway’s Virtue-Fault-Fate)
- A point-buy approach to attributes and powers
- Attributes can go down in the game as a fatigue mechanism (“damage” as an in-game currency is mostly absent in Everway)
- Powers are tied to specific cards or Suits
- A duelling system that makes use of Lenormand card suits and values (can be simulated using a reduced deck of playing cards)
Similar to Everway, Grand Tableau’s world is a series of connected worlds or realities — specifically the Grand Tableau of 36 houses. Characters are able to pass between worlds using their own decks (not unlike Amber’s Trumps). Those decks represent the cosmic structure of the world, and will vary in design between realms and cultures.
Just as in Everway the Realms can be defined/brainstormed using a three-card reading (similar to the spread for each character). Individual antagonists and obstacles can be given ratings in one or more of the four Suits to determine the level of challenge they offer.
Similar to Everway, characters in Grand Tableau are “walkers” (with varying prefixes like sphere-, mirror-, deck-, etc.) and the core activity should be traversing the different realms and having adventures. Long-term adversaries come in the form of enemy walkers with their own secret societies (and direct encounters with these antagonists should involve the duelling game).
The Lenormand Deck
(“Under the Roses” Lenormand deck)
The Lenormand deck is a fairly convenient replacement for Everway’s Fortune Deck having 36 cards with no minor arcana (i.e. all the cards have pictures and meanings). There is no Usurper, of course.
Using the Petit Lenormand does require some concessions. First, there are normally no reversed meanings in the Lenormand, so either we abandon inverse meanings or invent them — I’m doing the latter.
Second, Lenormand cards are usually read in groups (pairs up to the 36 card Grand Tableau); to make it function like Everway’s Fortune Deck the cards need also to be read on their own.
Third, it’s not possible to map all of Everway’s cards onto the Lenormand, though some fit quite well (Death = Coffin, Trickery = The Fox, etc.). Still the Fortune Deck is a nice starting point giving a range of responses, so where possible I’ve tried to import upright and reversed meanings from the Fortune Deck, though not always to the same card (for example The Bear takes “Simple Strength” from the Peasant card and “Blind Fury” from the Dragon card).
Some of the Fortune Deck cards are an activity (e.g. Sowing Stones, Striking The Dragon’s Tail, Drowning In Armour) which should be taken as a metaphor for the actual thing the PC is doing. None of these are represented very well in the Lenormand deck. Other cards are metaphors for states of being (the Eagle, the Fish, the Cockatrice etc.) and work better. But in all cases we need to reduce the variety of meanings for Lenormand cards into one clear meaning which the GM and players can interpret into the situation. Most of the time the Fortune Deck isn’t used for divining a situation so much as suggesting an outcome to a current risky situation.
Building the Deck
Ideally your Lenormand cards should have the upright and reversed meanings written on them. You have these choices:
- get a commercial deck and write on it (probably not popular)
- create your own deck by drawing or pasting images on a deck of playing cards
- use a companion sheet for the interpretations of the cards (i.e. the above document)
Suits
One benefit of the Lenormand cards is much clearer alignment to both numbers and suits. While the Fortune Deck’s cards do have alignments (to the zodiac, elements etc.) they’re not as obvious as the four suits of traditional playing cards or Tarot. In Grand Tableau the suits apply not only to the houses but are reflected on the character sheet.
Hearts Water. Emotions, love, relationships, sense of self. For characters this measures a person’s ability to connect with others and network, and also their intuition.
Diamonds Fire. Change, fortune and misfortune, enterprise. For the PC this represents the PC’s drive and ability to effect change, take risks and so forth.
Spades Air. Government, authority, territory, society. In PCs this represents intellectual capacity, understanding of law, and personal authority.
Clubs Earth. Survival, hardship and trouble. For characters this is about ability to endure harm and hardship.
Character Creation
The rough draft character creation process is more or less taken from Everway:
- Think of a character concept.
- It may help to do the 3-card reading here. Draw or choose 3 cards to represent your Virtue, Fault and Fate.
- You get 20 points to spend among your four Suits and any Powers or Magic you want.
- For points in Suits an average human level is 3, and each point invested doubles the power in a given suit.
- Each Suit has a speciality; when that speciality applies to the situation the value of the Suit is counted as 1 higher.
- You get one minor power for free.
- Magic costs 1 point per level, and is aligned to a suit. You can’t have a magic level higher than your suit’s rating. Magic schools to be defined.
- Powers cost 1 point if they can be used frequently, 1 point if they can be used in many circumstances, and 1 point if their use is major, i.e. disrupts or dominates a scene. Need to define these further.
In Play
Most of the time play is exactly the same freeform process as Everway, using Karma, Drama and Fortune to resolve actions.
The additional bits of the system include a duelling minigame (inspired by both Lace and Steel and, perversely, time combat from [Continuum]]5) and some way to do fatigue which I felt was lacking in the original.
The next post will examine the Lenormand cards in detail.
