Bit of a surprising addition since tarot cards aren't normally associated with ghost hunting in the real world, but I do agree with the notion that it could determine the outcomes of the next round. Perhaps you would be able to purchase a reading that would deploy three random cards to determine what happens?
Summarized meanings for the tarot cards shown (keywords from the labyrinthos website!)
Not super knowledgable about Tarot cards, but I do know the basics! All I can is, if they're going adding upright/reversed versions the card might indicate something negative or positive!!
Death: Upright: transformation, endings, change, transition, letting go, release Reversed: fear of change, repeating negative patterns, resisting change, stagnancy, decay
The Hermit: Upright: self-reflection, introspection, contemplation, withdrawal, solitude, search for self Reversed: loneliness, isolation, recluse, being anti-social, rejection, returning to society
The Moon: Upright: happiness, success, optimism, vitality, joy, confidence, happiness, truth Reversed: blocked happiness, excessive enthusiasm, pessimism, unrealistic expectations, conceitedness
I hope these are used before a round to influence gameplay on a mission overall. Like mutators in Unreal Tournament. I've been asking for this ever since Nuzz's PhasmoRPG, which just seems like such a cool concept. Actually having some kind of per-mission gameplay-changing system, would help a lot to increase the longevity. Apart from a meaningful upgrade system of course, which is also on the table it seems.
My mom is a tarotist and all of them have a complete different meaning XD, like death is change and the tower is really the worst here, maybe im gonna myself become one too if im good at it Btw Love you
Nuzzgard <3 u r the best 😀
slides in if I may chime in as someone who (novice-ly) reads tarot. Tarot cards are all about moving through life. You start with the fool, naive and unknowing. The Beginning, and you end at the World, completion and knowledgeable.
Death: Change, the end of something. It's not nessecarily a negative card, but it is often to people who dont know tarot whom tie it to death. But it doesnt mean death, it just means something coming to an end. Something is trasforming into something new for the good. It's often comes in tandom with the Wheel of Fortune.
The Hermit: Isolation, introspection. Hermit often means looking into ones self and actions one can take. It's often a sign of needing to pull back away from others and listen to ones inner voice and wants.
The Moon: This one Im definitely thinking is interesting in this sense, as moon is one of the cards that feels linked to the unconcious. Dreams and fantasy, illusions and intuition. Things that have been buried within the unconcious. definitely makes sense for a supernatural based setting imo
Fool: As I mentioned earlier, the fool is the start of the journey, the beginning. It is naive, and unaware, running headlong into the journey unaware of the dangers ahead of them (much like the investigator themself at the start of a mission lol)
Wheel of Fortune: Similarly to Death, Wheel of Fortune is all about change. It is the mantra of 'what goes up, must come down. What goes down, must go up.' It is the cyclical wheel of life, that no matter the trouble, success will come, and no matter the success, ruin always follows.
Tower: Now everyones call of this being a positive card made me laugh. Tower is more negative than Death. Tower is all about disaster. No matter unright or reversed it is the natural and inevitable destruction one must encounter in order for there to be change. It is the inevitability of change and ruin, that no matter what if one wishes to grow past to their new self, they must destroy the pillar of the old.
Devil: The Devil is all about indulgences. Its about the fear, insecurites and obessions that one clings to. Its bonds are not physical or real, but they cling to ones self. When the Devil shows up, its often to point out someone clinging to something that is no good for them, or to point out insecurities within themself. To defeat the Devil you have to let go of the negative feelings youre holding.
long ramble but! In terms of how theyre using these in game, its really hard to tell. I think it would be very cool if you could do readings about your next hunt and it influencing them. I dont know how much theyre actually doing their research when it coms to tarot cards and their readings, because a lot of them (big example of death) are very different from what the name entails and have a lot more depth. Either way Im excited to see how theyre going to have people use them!
My personal wish is that the cards would represent the ghost's personality. Certain cards mean a ghost is very active and aggressive, some will be shy and passive. Maybe have the cards change mid investigation as the ghost's way to bamboozle the investigators.
I'm actually quite familiar with tarot – I've done hundreds of readings over the past few years and own three decks.
The first thing to note is that card meanings widely vary depending on your deck. I've seen quite a few people saying things that contradict each other and my own experiences in the comment section – this is likely just because we've all been working with different decks! I usually use the standard Rider-Waite-Smith deck – this is the one people most readily recognize, with the old medieval-esque art.
Here are the Rider-Waite-Smith meanings for the above cards, copied directly from my own tarot key:
The Hermit: Upright – Prudence, also and especially treason, dissimulation, roguery, corruption. Reversed – Concealment, disguise, policy, fear, unreasoned caution.
The Moon: Upright – Hidden enemies, danger, calumny, darkness, terror, deception, error. Reversed – Instability, inconstancy, silence lesser degrees of deception and error.
The Tower: Upright – Misery, distress, indignance, adversity, calamity, disgrace, deception, ruin. Reversed – According to one account, the same in a lesser degree; also oppression, imprisonment, tyranny.
The Devil: Upright – Ravage, violence, vehemence, extraordinary efforts, force, fatality; that which is predestined but not for this reason evil. Reversed – Evil, fatality, weakness, pettiness, blindness.
Based on my own experiences doing readings, I would agree with many others that The Tower is a terrible card to get – but I believe the Devil is actually even worse, ESPECIALLY The Devil in reverse. Whereas The Tower might refer to something that actually needed to crumble, even if it was painful (e.g. ending a bad relationship, working through addiction, etc.), The Devil in reverse signifies that you are acting foolishly and your current path will necessarily lead to destruction.
With all this in mind, I doubt the Phasmo crew are going for these meanings, at least not all of them, for the following reasons: 1) They seem to be interpreting Death in a negative light, which makes sense for a horror game, but as many others have pointed out Death can actually be quite a good sign for those looking for a life change. 2) If The Moon actually does end up being helpful for the player's sanity, this will directly contradict its Rider-Waite-Smith meaning. The Moon inspires paranoia, informing the querent that there are enemies in the shadows they are unaware of – something that typically isn't great for the average person's sanity. 3) The Hermit. I mean, come on. Does that guy look prudent to you?
Anyway, I actually don't know why I wrote this full five-paragraph essay, but I just wanted to share my own experiences with tarot in case anyone found it useful/interesting!
As someone who practices reading tarot frequently (proud owner of 4 decks, and have the bad habit of buying more), it'll be interesting to see if they apply the actual meanings of the card to the game, or if they'll go off name alone. Hopefully the former, since it'll make the cards really inaccurate if they do the latter. I'm already mildly annoyed at the use of the term 'smudge stick' and 'smudging,' I don't wanna be annoyed about incorrect tarot, lmaooo. I got so happy when I saw these though, I love tarot, it's one of my favorite forms of divination, next to the pendulum.
They give you the power of your s̶t̶a̶n̶d̶ persona so you can eventually move from ghost hunting to vampire hunting with the power of social links from other players.
Maybe these are pre-match modifiers that give you a random set of conditions to work with? Like you'll get a number of cards drawn before the start of the mission, and if you draw "the devil" you get hunts at higher sanity, or something like that.
it could mean a physical hunt, but death in a real world reading usually implies the end of a relationship and gaining perspective of yourself, so perhaps you could gain information on how they died in game?
I guess Im not the first to have this "inspiration" but It would be kinda cool if you and your team mates drew these cards (either one or up to four of the cards) at the start of a mission and that would indeed effect a little on how the mission will go. Ex death would bring about even more hunts / longer hunts no matter the ghost type. It would add some spice to how you play the missions 'cus you'd have either a buff or a penalty that would either enable (like all questions on quija board will always be answered or no sanity loss for the quijaboard) or disable you to do thing normally (death, sainity will no longer have effect on WHEN a ghost can hunt you, no matter the ghost). Thx for these updates Nuzz, I'll try to catch your next stream.
Since i have a background in tarot and astrology, have friends who are professional tarot readers and also grew up in a haunted home, I thought i’d write my experiences with tarot and speculate on the functionality these cards are going to have in the game.
All the cursed possessions seem to reveal information or force out necessary information at a price. With the music box revealing the ghost location and maybe making the ghost prioritize you as a target, or the summoning circle which might start a hunt, i think it makes a great deal of sense for tarot to come with inherent risk, but the interpretation of these cards is completely incongruent to the meanings of these cards.
Specifically with the Tower, Death and the Devil. The Tower is arguably the worst card in major arcana, it indicates a theme of “give up” as the tower is destroyed by lightning or bad luck. It means to move on, rebuild, and not resist an unfortunate but inevitable end. This card signifies utter destruction and ruin, and in terms of game functionality, this could mean dropping sanity to 0 permanently for the user or just killing the user instantly.
Death signifies new beginnings and the ending of cycles, so not a physical death so much as a metaphorical one. It could mean the start of a hunt, or the end of one if the deck was used during a hunt.
The Devil is about willing subjection, submission, addiction, attachment and a shadow self. I feel like this means the ghost would specifically target you and only you once this card was pulled. This card isn’t necessarily negative so much as indicating you’re making a decision to willingly indulge and subject yourself to control by something, whether that thing or idea be pleasure, drugs, negative and dark thoughts, or a relentless AI.
On the other hand, the hermit, moon, and wheel of fortune are all relatively positive cards. The hermit means looking within and going on an internal journey to find yourself, and it’s a card representing knowledge. The hermit is most likely to reveal ghost evidence, where the moon is more mysterious. The meaning of the moon is roughly “listen to your intuition”, but that usually means this card is not at all a straightforward answer, which is also likely why the card has a brain on it.
I don’t have too much of a clue as to the Wheel of Fortune and the Fool. The wheel of fortune just means good luck, and the fool indicates either endless potential or raw power. The fool is objectively the strongest card in all of tarot, but it’s all about tapping into that potential. This could at the very worst change the ghost type and evidence, (the tarot cards can represent the ghost’s whim, not the reader’s) and at the very best be the strongest beneficial card in the game.
Lastly, there are 22 major arcana in Tarot, and there’s 21 ghost types revealed to us currently. There’s a really strong likelihood that the cards correlate to ghost behavior or abilities, like the hermit representing phantom’s ability to vanish after a photo is taken, or strength representing an oni’s ability to gigayeet objects.
It’s extremely ambitious for the developers to put this into the game, because there is a lot of functionality behind these cards in terms of the programming required to implement all these affects. I’m really glad there’s a game out there that taps into horror to be endlessly entertaining, and yet we’re also blessed with extremely generous developers and a really familial and comparatively cooperative community.
The cards are probably there to help with the ghosts personality. Whether or not they are a out to murder you, want to be left alone, will try to mess with you or roam about etc.
I was the Ouiji board guy >:3 hehehehehe
Bit of a surprising addition since tarot cards aren't normally associated with ghost hunting in the real world, but I do agree with the notion that it could determine the outcomes of the next round. Perhaps you would be able to purchase a reading that would deploy three random cards to determine what happens?
The ghosts have stands
Phasmophiba Stands?
Summarized meanings for the tarot cards shown (keywords from the labyrinthos website!)
Not super knowledgable about Tarot cards, but I do know the basics! All I can is, if they're going adding upright/reversed versions the card might indicate something negative or positive!!
Death:
Upright: transformation, endings, change, transition, letting go, release
Reversed: fear of change, repeating negative patterns, resisting change, stagnancy, decay
The Hermit:
Upright: self-reflection, introspection, contemplation, withdrawal, solitude, search for self
Reversed: loneliness, isolation, recluse, being anti-social, rejection, returning to society
The Moon:
Upright: happiness, success, optimism, vitality, joy, confidence, happiness, truth
Reversed: blocked happiness, excessive enthusiasm, pessimism, unrealistic expectations, conceitedness
The Fool:
Upright: beginnings, freedom, innocence, originality, adventure, idealism, spontaneity
Reversed: reckless, careless, distracted, naive, foolish, gullible, stale, dull
Wheel Of Fortune:
Upright: change, cycles, fate, decisive moments, luck, fortune, unexpected events
Reversed: bad luck, lack of control, clinging to control, unwelcome changes, delays
The Tower:
Upright: disaster, destruction, upheaval, trauma, sudden change, chaos
Reversed: averting disaster, delaying the inevitable, resisting change
The Devil:
Upright: oppression, addiction, obsession, dependency, excess, powerlessness, limitations
Reversed: independence, freedom, revelation, release, reclaiming power, reclaiming control
Make your own judgements on what each card could mean based on this!
Since it's a Cravens it might be waxing so if it is it will give sanity if it's waining it will take it
I think maybe the moon one could clear the weather modifier for the level. Could be very useful.
Where's the Za Worldo?
I hope these are used before a round to influence gameplay on a mission overall. Like mutators in Unreal Tournament. I've been asking for this ever since Nuzz's PhasmoRPG, which just seems like such a cool concept. Actually having some kind of per-mission gameplay-changing system, would help a lot to increase the longevity. Apart from a meaningful upgrade system of course, which is also on the table it seems.
Whatever this is, I'm looking forward to it.
ZA WARUDO. im not sorry.
Jotaro's name was originally Jotarot. Coincidence? I think not
omg i know my mom likes to play with Tarot cards
the ghosts are a jojo reference guys
In actual tarot cards the moon means fear and being afraid
My mom is a tarotist and all of them have a complete different meaning XD, like death is change and the tower is really the worst here, maybe im gonna myself become one too if im good at it
Btw Love you
Nuzzgard <3 u r the best 😀
Interesting. Hermet I thought could do something with sanity
hey nuzz! can you please do PhasmoRPG again? so many updates on phasmo that it is going to bring in a whole new experience!
I think death just kills the user while devil starts a hunt or makes ghost manifest. Death might be a drawback of using the tarot card
They could be perks you select for your character in the lobby.
Generally speaking the tower denotes destruction.
slides in if I may chime in as someone who (novice-ly) reads tarot. Tarot cards are all about moving through life. You start with the fool, naive and unknowing. The Beginning, and you end at the World, completion and knowledgeable.
Death: Change, the end of something. It's not nessecarily a negative card, but it is often to people who dont know tarot whom tie it to death. But it doesnt mean death, it just means something coming to an end. Something is trasforming into something new for the good. It's often comes in tandom with the Wheel of Fortune.
The Hermit: Isolation, introspection. Hermit often means looking into ones self and actions one can take. It's often a sign of needing to pull back away from others and listen to ones inner voice and wants.
The Moon: This one Im definitely thinking is interesting in this sense, as moon is one of the cards that feels linked to the unconcious. Dreams and fantasy, illusions and intuition. Things that have been buried within the unconcious. definitely makes sense for a supernatural based setting imo
Fool: As I mentioned earlier, the fool is the start of the journey, the beginning. It is naive, and unaware, running headlong into the journey unaware of the dangers ahead of them (much like the investigator themself at the start of a mission lol)
Wheel of Fortune: Similarly to Death, Wheel of Fortune is all about change. It is the mantra of 'what goes up, must come down. What goes down, must go up.' It is the cyclical wheel of life, that no matter the trouble, success will come, and no matter the success, ruin always follows.
Tower: Now everyones call of this being a positive card made me laugh. Tower is more negative than Death. Tower is all about disaster. No matter unright or reversed it is the natural and inevitable destruction one must encounter in order for there to be change. It is the inevitability of change and ruin, that no matter what if one wishes to grow past to their new self, they must destroy the pillar of the old.
Devil: The Devil is all about indulgences. Its about the fear, insecurites and obessions that one clings to. Its bonds are not physical or real, but they cling to ones self. When the Devil shows up, its often to point out someone clinging to something that is no good for them, or to point out insecurities within themself. To defeat the Devil you have to let go of the negative feelings youre holding.
long ramble but! In terms of how theyre using these in game, its really hard to tell. I think it would be very cool if you could do readings about your next hunt and it influencing them. I dont know how much theyre actually doing their research when it coms to tarot cards and their readings, because a lot of them (big example of death) are very different from what the name entails and have a lot more depth. Either way Im excited to see how theyre going to have people use them!
Man..more and more changes coming to the game. I love it.
Hermit looks low sanity-ish
My personal wish is that the cards would represent the ghost's personality. Certain cards mean a ghost is very active and aggressive, some will be shy and passive. Maybe have the cards change mid investigation as the ghost's way to bamboozle the investigators.
Zar Wardo
I'm actually quite familiar with tarot – I've done hundreds of readings over the past few years and own three decks.
The first thing to note is that card meanings widely vary depending on your deck. I've seen quite a few people saying things that contradict each other and my own experiences in the comment section – this is likely just because we've all been working with different decks! I usually use the standard Rider-Waite-Smith deck – this is the one people most readily recognize, with the old medieval-esque art.
Here are the Rider-Waite-Smith meanings for the above cards, copied directly from my own tarot key:
Death:
Upright – End, mortality, destruction, corruption.
Reversed – Inertia, sleep, lethargy, petrifaction, somnambulism.
The Hermit:
Upright – Prudence, also and especially treason, dissimulation, roguery, corruption.
Reversed – Concealment, disguise, policy, fear, unreasoned caution.
The Moon:
Upright – Hidden enemies, danger, calumny, darkness, terror, deception, error.
Reversed – Instability, inconstancy, silence lesser degrees of deception and error.
The Fool:
Upright – Folly, mania, extravagance, intoxication, delirium, frenzy, bewrayment.
Reversed – Negligence, absence, distribution, carelessness, apathy, nullity, vanity.
Wheel of Fortune:
Upright – Destiny, fortune, success, luck, happiness.
Reversed – Increase, abundance, superfluity.
The Tower:
Upright – Misery, distress, indignance, adversity, calamity, disgrace, deception, ruin.
Reversed – According to one account, the same in a lesser degree; also oppression, imprisonment, tyranny.
The Devil:
Upright – Ravage, violence, vehemence, extraordinary efforts, force, fatality; that which is predestined but not for this reason evil.
Reversed – Evil, fatality, weakness, pettiness, blindness.
Based on my own experiences doing readings, I would agree with many others that The Tower is a terrible card to get – but I believe the Devil is actually even worse, ESPECIALLY The Devil in reverse. Whereas The Tower might refer to something that actually needed to crumble, even if it was painful (e.g. ending a bad relationship, working through addiction, etc.), The Devil in reverse signifies that you are acting foolishly and your current path will necessarily lead to destruction.
With all this in mind, I doubt the Phasmo crew are going for these meanings, at least not all of them, for the following reasons:
1) They seem to be interpreting Death in a negative light, which makes sense for a horror game, but as many others have pointed out Death can actually be quite a good sign for those looking for a life change.
2) If The Moon actually does end up being helpful for the player's sanity, this will directly contradict its Rider-Waite-Smith meaning. The Moon inspires paranoia, informing the querent that there are enemies in the shadows they are unaware of – something that typically isn't great for the average person's sanity.
3) The Hermit. I mean, come on. Does that guy look prudent to you?
Anyway, I actually don't know why I wrote this full five-paragraph essay, but I just wanted to share my own experiences with tarot in case anyone found it useful/interesting!
As someone who practices reading tarot frequently (proud owner of 4 decks, and have the bad habit of buying more), it'll be interesting to see if they apply the actual meanings of the card to the game, or if they'll go off name alone. Hopefully the former, since it'll make the cards really inaccurate if they do the latter.
I'm already mildly annoyed at the use of the term 'smudge stick' and 'smudging,' I don't wanna be annoyed about incorrect tarot, lmaooo.
I got so happy when I saw these though, I love tarot, it's one of my favorite forms of divination, next to the pendulum.
They give you the power of your s̶t̶a̶n̶d̶ persona so you can eventually move from ghost hunting to vampire hunting with the power of social links from other players.
Maybe these are pre-match modifiers that give you a random set of conditions to work with? Like you'll get a number of cards drawn before the start of the mission, and if you draw "the devil" you get hunts at higher sanity, or something like that.
imaging that The devil card increases all of the ghosts speed to that of a revenant in the next game, that would be scary
could the devil mean the ghost is always in shadow form? idk just a theory
it could mean a physical hunt, but death in a real world reading usually implies the end of a relationship and gaining perspective of yourself, so perhaps you could gain information on how they died in game?
I guess Im not the first to have this "inspiration" but It would be kinda cool if you and your team mates drew these cards (either one or up to four of the cards) at the start of a mission and that would indeed effect a little on how the mission will go. Ex death would bring about even more hunts / longer hunts no matter the ghost type. It would add some spice to how you play the missions 'cus you'd have either a buff or a penalty that would either enable (like all questions on quija board will always be answered or no sanity loss for the quijaboard) or disable you to do thing normally (death, sainity will no longer have effect on WHEN a ghost can hunt you, no matter the ghost). Thx for these updates Nuzz, I'll try to catch your next stream.
Jojo reference
JOJO fan: its show time
Since i have a background in tarot and astrology, have friends who are professional tarot readers and also grew up in a haunted home, I thought i’d write my experiences with tarot and speculate on the functionality these cards are going to have in the game.
All the cursed possessions seem to reveal information or force out necessary information at a price. With the music box revealing the ghost location and maybe making the ghost prioritize you as a target, or the summoning circle which might start a hunt, i think it makes a great deal of sense for tarot to come with inherent risk, but the interpretation of these cards is completely incongruent to the meanings of these cards.
Specifically with the Tower, Death and the Devil. The Tower is arguably the worst card in major arcana, it indicates a theme of “give up” as the tower is destroyed by lightning or bad luck. It means to move on, rebuild, and not resist an unfortunate but inevitable end. This card signifies utter destruction and ruin, and in terms of game functionality, this could mean dropping sanity to 0 permanently for the user or just killing the user instantly.
Death signifies new beginnings and the ending of cycles, so not a physical death so much as a metaphorical one. It could mean the start of a hunt, or the end of one if the deck was used during a hunt.
The Devil is about willing subjection, submission, addiction, attachment and a shadow self. I feel like this means the ghost would specifically target you and only you once this card was pulled. This card isn’t necessarily negative so much as indicating you’re making a decision to willingly indulge and subject yourself to control by something, whether that thing or idea be pleasure, drugs, negative and dark thoughts, or a relentless AI.
On the other hand, the hermit, moon, and wheel of fortune are all relatively positive cards. The hermit means looking within and going on an internal journey to find yourself, and it’s a card representing knowledge. The hermit is most likely to reveal ghost evidence, where the moon is more mysterious. The meaning of the moon is roughly “listen to your intuition”, but that usually means this card is not at all a straightforward answer, which is also likely why the card has a brain on it.
I don’t have too much of a clue as to the Wheel of Fortune and the Fool. The wheel of fortune just means good luck, and the fool indicates either endless potential or raw power. The fool is objectively the strongest card in all of tarot, but it’s all about tapping into that potential. This could at the very worst change the ghost type and evidence, (the tarot cards can represent the ghost’s whim, not the reader’s) and at the very best be the strongest beneficial card in the game.
Lastly, there are 22 major arcana in Tarot, and there’s 21 ghost types revealed to us currently. There’s a really strong likelihood that the cards correlate to ghost behavior or abilities, like the hermit representing phantom’s ability to vanish after a photo is taken, or strength representing an oni’s ability to gigayeet objects.
It’s extremely ambitious for the developers to put this into the game, because there is a lot of functionality behind these cards in terms of the programming required to implement all these affects. I’m really glad there’s a game out there that taps into horror to be endlessly entertaining, and yet we’re also blessed with extremely generous developers and a really familial and comparatively cooperative community.
The cards are probably there to help with the ghosts personality. Whether or not they are a out to murder you, want to be left alone, will try to mess with you or roam about etc.
jojo fans when they realize the tarot cards are jojo references: hehe boi