Spindlewheel

Spindlewheel is an interpretive tarot-like storytelling game where you weave together a story from card to card. The objective of the game is to tell a satisfying story. Your Character might win wealth and respect and come away from the adventure a better person; they might crash and burn, and end the story as a warning to others. Both of these are victories if they fit the arc of the story you've told, and bring satisfaction to you as a storyteller.

Spindlewheel's fundamental verb is interpretation. Each card's text evokes an idea. The upright and inverse text are different. Sometimes they’re diametrically opposed; often, they’re two sides of the same coin. Use the card as an anchor for the part of the story that you're telling. A card can be a person, an event, an attitude, or a physical object. Use as much as the entire card, or as little as a single word. A card is interpreted twice: once when it enters your hand, and again when you play it. It does not have to be the same interpretation.

FOR EXAMPLE: I might draw the Hearth card and Reflect that I feel like people closed their doors to me; but I might Engage that card later, declaring I won’t do the same to someone else, and play it to invite someone into my home. Spindlewheel is a loom on which you weave stories, placing cards like threads to intertwine and complicate the tale. It’s also genre-agnostic: The deck might give you a Princess, a Plague, a Witch with a Cursed Sword, a Trickster, and a Tin Penny; whether it describes the fate of a kingdom or a bizarre encounter at a bus stop, is up to you!

Spindlewheel is a 103-card deck of completely bespoke illustrated oracle cards by Sasha Reneau; this edition also features four additional 15-card expansion packs illustrated and designed by Caro Asercion, J.A.C. Clark, Coey Kuhn, Michael Teller Ornelas, Takuma Okada, josie robo, and Ray Felix Carter.