Tarot of Many Things

78 cards, and both Upright and Reversed have different effects

A scratchily markered paper saying Tarot of Many Things, on top of a rider waite tarot deck box, sitting on a wooden style table.

A partially cut apart piece of paper, showing several potential sizes printed of the cover page (tarot of many things, in all caps and serif font, left-aligned on the page because it looked best that way. Kinda bold and plain, looks strong. Also an accordioning of the first handful of pages is sitting below it. Read the text below for details on that. Also the (pocket size) cards are sitting at the top of the pic.

Kabutroid holding up the little booklet of the instructions.

The first attempt to tape-cover the pages, tape hanging from a door frame, with about 12 pages attached to it. This was more difficult than I had first hoped. It moves very easily, which we don't really want.

The better method, sticky-side-up tape layed across a long board, and held taut on either side, and all of the pages of the book are attached to the tape. The board in question here is a closet door, read below for details. It's sitting on a zebra-print blanket, on a bed. A Kabutops doll is kinda crawling around on the bed.

The partially accordioned book, just kinda being held up. There's a handful of stuff in the background, a union jack kinda towel over a box, a grey bag in the corner, which is actually Kabutroid's Bag of Holding, with a D20 patch on the front. There's also a few other stamps, it's generally very blurry. One is a heart, and one is OCN, Opaskwayak Cree Nation.

One of the booklets squarshed down beneath a big brown wooden box. It's squished pretty flat, like half a centimeter, a hair more.

The four finished booklets, one being smaller than the others, the first one, and one being a light brown, that aged paper looking style. The deck of tarot cards is sitting ot the right of them, the back facing up, a blue checker type of pattern, diamond-oriented. It's very fine lines, so it kinda makes your eyes blur, if I can say, it's like those visual eye illusions, where in this case the centers of the diamonds (a set of four larger white diamonds interspersed with lines very close together. It makes the diamonds stand out brightly, almost flaringly. Like, if I can describe, there's one visual of this where it looks like there's a dot hovering between all of the lines, this pulls that off, but as though the dot was white, it's got that effect. Like a bright pop in each of the diamonds.

The book, box, and cards spread out to resemble a smiley face, on the wooden table. It's a bit artisticly done, in that the cards are kinda spread out along the bottom left (I apologise, I do not know the names of different art styles, modern versus contemporary versus all of those, I would love to take a course on all of that one day). But it's in a style, where the mouth of the smile is kinda left, and the eys are upper right, a kinda simple smile. A little bit amused looking.

The Tarot of Many Things, more that can happen, miles and miles more!

So, in my research involving the Deck of Many Things, I had come across knowledge of a 78 card deck, a Tarot of Many Things. Oohhh, an interesting thing, so I looked that up, and there was like... only a handful of places where that was posted. More now actually, getting to that lol. I'm guessing Grog from Critical Role had something to do with that, but now there are actually several card rollers out there for this! Like oohhh, beaten to the punch but I can't complain. So thank heavens I didn't need to type all of that out on my own, so that's awesome.

And I thought I was going to be modifying the cards at first actually, like... writing on them all. Seems that isn't the case tho, I thought they'd all have different names or something. In either case, when I got to the store, they had three different sizes of this deck! So I'm like oohhhhh, I've got a choice here, so I kinda picked them all up, see which felt the best in the palm of my hand kinda thing. And yah this pocket version (as opposed to the miniature version), just felt the best and stuff, got the right heft to it and all that. A micro deck for a macro many things kinda thing lol. Not too micro tho, still readable.

And then there's the issue of getting this to fit inside the box with the cards, so that's the next tacklement.

So I converted it to image files (lines left in to edit if you want, you can create borders around the text!), and set off from there. Now how to attach the pages to eachother. I'd debated using the 'staple in the middle' method, but that just wouldn't work well with thicker paper, and also lining all of that up would be... man, I'd need an app to pull that off. So bookbinding it is, in a way.

And so, we came out with version one (top-right pic). Though on my first attempt at eyeballing this particular print shop's sizing it wasn't exact, but it was indeed the perfect width. And then, I discovered that a simple accordian fold just works! So, I've created a template for making micro-books in the bonus section, to do this again in the future. Do I do this to Zebeth in the future? The answer seems most likely, KABS, remember to do that every time you see this page.

SO YES, accordian-style folding of the pages. Need to tape every other outside seam (far better than every), but I'm going to be covering the entire thing in tape anyway. Protection and stuff, stronger, better than a glue-stick method. And thus brought us to our next difficulty... how to tape this thing up.

I took a swing at making the smaller-sized book (which also has a minor error! Fixed in second printout, v1 some numbers mis-ordered, like 01-05 Goblin, 06-10 Dwarf, a percentile like that, those were out of order, so that's fixed), and tried taping it up page by individual page, kinda on my lap so to speak. Now, added... fun to all of this, I wanted the overlapping lines of the tape to run horozontally rather than vertically, so I had to tape *across* the page, making it miles more difficult. I did it, to be fair, but man that put up a fight. Version 2 and stuff, you can see me trying to hang tape from above, but then settled on laying it across a big door thing my friend had kicking around where I was at. And that's the ideal, have the tape pulled tight tight tight, I had a heavy thing taped to the end hanging over the side. And then I could just lay the pages down onto the tape, and that, THAT made sure that they were all perfectly straight across the tape. And I had like no room for error, there was maybe a millimeter of overlap between the two strips of tape needed, wow just a heads up there. So yah, being able to tightly lay the paper flat across the tape was invaluable, SO much mental note for all of my future microbooks. Laying the pages out side by side was a bit difficult, more difficult actually. Kinda touch the corner down (yah working with tape is just...) right lined up with the other page, and then continue. And then, you can see that I kinda tabbed the tape on the tops and bottoms of the pages, alternating, so that there would (again) be an overlap line, but at least there would be the same number on each page. Like that tape-over-tape line will be on the top on one side and on the bottom on the other, kinda alternating. And then you re-accordion the taped pages, and tape all of the blank sides to eachother with those tabs.

Now, undersized booklet test subject 1 was first bound with just elmers glue, put a lot of that inside the seam and hold it squished there for an hour. So that didn't work even slightly, and we moved up to hot glue. And that was the ticket, that hot glue, of what I am able to get for this. Slightly flexible generally rubbery plastic that's mostly clear, get in there and bind all of those folds into a nice tight seam. Test booklet 1 was only squished for an hour after taping before its initial pva gluing, followed with the hot glue squished into the seams instead. The rest of the books, are getting squished overnight.

And following their subsequent squishing, the hot glue was applied to their bindings as well, and the final page/back cover was pulled back around, and they were squished yet again until said glue dried. With that, the final page and the back cover were taped together like the others, and the book was complete. The Tarot of Many Things.

Also don't forget there's Dennis.

Finished on May 20, 2022

.......

And then we got it on EBay. Issue 77, Dragon.

Dragon magasine issue 77, the one with the tarot of many things. It's inside of a plastic sleeve... don't expect it to stay there lol, I'm not that type, besides it's not A++ or whatever, some minor scuffing. Like it's in *ridiculously* good condition, like if this is not a reprint (I'll check it one day, no worries either way), it must have sat on a shelf in a bag its entire life. Like the pages aren't even creased open, I dunno. If this thing's original... well to be (yah let's prattle to you a bit) honest I doubt that it would get to more than a few hundred dollars, there are lots of copies of it, and I paid thirty dollars for it this year in 2022. D and d is getting really big these days, so it could become more valuable, you never know. There's no text saying it's a reprint, and it appears that there's so many available right now, how obscure this presently is (there are very few articles or even forum posts talking about it), but it might take off. Still, I don't expect to keep it in that plastic sleeve, it's got some minor minor scuffs, like A+ but not A++ type of thing. Firm cardstock paper all around, a solid magasine. I plan to keep it open in my d and d box personally, let it get scuffed and scratched a bit, get lived in a little. Nah, I'm not a keep it in the box kinda person, I've gotta play with it. 200 dollars to... well like I said, it's not A+++ material, so if they ever get to five grand... not that I'd want to sell it regardless, I dunno a mill, but this ain't Superman number 1, three million copies, let's let this thing live a little bit. You've got a minor scuff, I'll give you a few more. I mean it's got insect comics (see pic three), I've *gotta* play with it. If you're unfamiliar with the insect note, see my fly chronicles page, I've befriended them. Anyways yes, the cover of dragon magasine 77, with the price tag on the cover still, 3.75 from good stuff games. OOhh, you got a minute, I'll lay it out here. Dragon, King of the tabletop. The magic of the tarot. all about the unicorn. monthly adventure role-playing aid. 77 is at the top right. A wizard at the back of a stone chamber, archways and pilars all around, a giant fanged stone head on the left. He looms behind a gathering of soldiers, all engulfed in fire, running away in fear and confusion. It's very atmospheric, the pale green light of the back of the chamber. Yah those soldiers should have had a cleric with them, or... I dunno, they seem woefully unprepared to take on a wizard, I don't know what they were thinking. Like... miles away, they should have seen this coming, I dunno what the story is behind this lol. They should really have a cleric with them, these are all fighters, c'mon guys. Some have beards, that fang face is glowing kinda cool. Yah guys, come back with a cleric, or if the wizard is the good guy well then... wow, easy win. Anyways, it looks cool.

The page that begins the tarot of many things article. Just a black and white page, several tarot cards along the top, the magician, the high priestess. I think this page is actually the lead-up to the actual cards, the first card instruction are actually on the next page, which is mostly cut off in this pic. But yeah, showing the tarot of many things part.

A shot of the insect-related comic strip thing, like two frames of the comic involve... wasps, I haven't actually read it in depth myself yet, lessee... it only calls itself a bug. It appears very wasp-like, it doesn't have the nozzle to be a mosquito, but maybe I'm reading into it too much into it. But yah, I like insects and this thing has insects in comics, it's like win-win! :D

Do you have insect comic strips in this issue, aw yeah you do! Thank you Dragon Magasine, you are SO awesome!

It's like... I got it, I've got the thing that produced the tarot of many things. SO cool! I guess I could pour on about it for ages here, but I'll just leave it there, it's all more or less iterations of "This is SO cool!"

And of course we need....

Would you like to draw one?