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.

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

Award-winning game designer and publisher at Autumnal Games. Designer of Fortunes: The Tarot Card Storytelling Game and The Ink & Blood Dueling Society, run live at PAX East, PAX South, and PAX Unplugged. Every game on this site is playtested at real tables before release.