Fortunes might be played after a rousing seance or during the quietest hours of the night, ideally in a room with a candle. It could be played by an eccentric family who lives in a dilapidated mansion on a hill overlooking a small town in autumn, or by a curious young couple sitting on a hay bale as a harvest festival finally winds down on a Sunday evening. However it is played, Fortunes is a game for storytellers.

How it plays: use your own tarot deck, or a regular deck of playing cards. In Fortunes, you invent characters, determine important events, and shape the world. No game master, no prep, no memorizing rules.

The digital version includes the rules and story prompts for The Seance, set amid the spiritualist movement in 19th-century London. Your story might involve a famous mystery writer growing convinced that fairies are real, a furious magician determined to disprove a wealthy medium’s claims, a vengeful mouse with ties to a secret society beneath the cobblestones, or a roguish airship pilot who can’t raise funds for the world’s largest dirigible.

This debut zine focuses on that 19th-century London setting, though the ruleset is built to run in a much wider range of times and places. Thanks to the backers at Kickstarter, this edition also includes two additional settings: Village of Secrets and The Fairy Garden. These are called books.

How a game runs

The game consists of four acts. In Act I and Act II, you introduce the themes that occur throughout Act III. Storytellers who use these recurring themes during the collaborative story gain additional cards to use in Act IV. Begin Act I once you choose your book.

Act I: Setting

• Read the setting narration aloud
• Draw one card to guide the setting
• Each storyteller creates a fact about the setting

Act II: Characters

• Each storyteller draws a character card
• Each storyteller introduces a character

Act III: Story

• Each storyteller draws three cards to begin
• Play a card to tell the story (repeat three times)
• Draw a card when you use a recurring theme

Act IV: Conclusion

• Use any remaining cards to resolve the story

During the game, players take turns telling a collaborative story. There’s a card to enhance the setting, a card to guide each primary character, and three cards (to start with) in your hand. Each card has a corresponding story prompt, and some of these prompts will set up your story’s “recurring themes.” You’ll be able to draw a card each time you work one of these themes into your scenes. During your turn, you choose one of the cards from your hand and describe a scene from the shared story.

If you’ve incorporated the recurring themes into the story, you should have at least one extra card in your hand for the conclusion. You will use these remaining cards to finish the game. With each card, you get to wrap up one story thread from the collaborative tale. Maybe you’ll describe what happened to a character. Maybe you’ll hint at a new mystery yet to be solved.

Play it live. Fortunes was most recently run in public on March 28, 2026 at Storygames Chicago’s TTRPG Con, held at the Logan Square branch of the Chicago Public Library. The next scheduled session is in August 2026 at Secret World Books in Highland Park, IL.

Written by Jim Markus. Art by Charles Huth.

Jim Markus

Jim makes games and events that invite people to embrace a shared fiction.