Fools Reborn
CoF Tarot Blog
#0 The Fool - 30th October 2025
Oh you found the new blog, good for you.
We're extremely excited about our forthcoming game and the tarot deck we're making to go with it. There will be people out there who find themselves just as excited as we are because, like us, you straddle the Venn of Tarot, Tabletop and Carol Berg Fandom. We know the tarot people out there appreciate some of the finer details of our new card designs and would like to know more about the reasoning behind them. At the same time some of you don't know Tarot yet but do know RPGs and want to hear how the two can be put together to create stories. Lastly there are those of you firmly in the Berg fandom but who might not know the joys of collective storytelling or the ins and outs of Tarot correspondences.
So we've decided to write a fortnightly blog about the cards, our game mechanics, and how they link to the world of the Collegia Magica novels. Starting where all tarot should, with the Fool.
You can see somewhere on this page Ledesma's dual design for the Fool card, and hopefully like us you find them pretty. This card contains all the usual symbolic elements found in traditional tarot and one of two twists binding it into Berg's Sabria. So let's establish our writing format here: 1) What does this card mean? 2) How does it represent Berg's specific fantasy setting? and 3) How does it mechanically impact on the stories you can tell during the game?
The Fool
Card Meaning
Tarot should be read intuitively based on your own personal reaction to the image and what you know of its meaning, but clearly this process is helped by a more detailed knowledge of the symbology.
The Fool represents the concepts of beginnings, spontaneity, independence and innocence. They are freshly embarking on the adventure of life or upon some new endeavour with hope in their heart. The cliff edge represents a leap into the unknown, the flower is innocence, the canine companion embodies his guiding natural instincts, and the sunlit sky the blank canvas of each new day.
The Fool usually represents an untrammelled "Yes" answer to most questions. It is action unfettered by introspection.
Setting Specific Design
In the world of the Collegia Magica the noblest souls sometimes return to the world, born again into earthly bodies in order to complete some task for the betterment of mankind. Such a return comes at the cost of autobiographical memory - the new life remembers no specifics of the souls prior incarnations.
You can see our fool is wearing a messenger bag and is in danger of losing its contents over the cliff edge. We added this detail to strengthen the representation of the Fool as tabula rasa, the blank slate. The inclusion of some kind of written material into the card design was also crucial given the character of the fool himself is intended to represent a certain librarian, immersed in the investigative narrative of the book "The Spirit Lens".
In the "The Spirit Lens" a magical artefact purports to show viewers a window onto the world beyond the veil of death, and this is represented in the "Dead" version of the card
Mechanical Impact
In the "Fools Reborn" game character creation is driven by a Tarot reading and most new players will intuitively develop their character ideas based on the cards drawn. At this point in the game each card indicates possible positions in late medieval society, with the Fool representing the concepts of Performer, Artist and Beggar or a more Youthful or Naive character.
During main gameplay the Fool card is the driver of critical failure within the game system. If you pull the card during play you usually have to discard the hand drawn, automatically failing the current task, but are compensated for the immediate narrative loss by gaining Destiny points - a form of meta-currency or experience tokens that can be spent on improving your character's skills and abilities.
The card also provides the "Excuse" - meaning it can save you from damage that might otherwise be inflicted upon your character through in game combat or misadventure.
So now you've reached the end of our first tarot blog. Hopefully you know a little more about our game and how the Fool card works within it. We hope to see you again as we delve into the meanings and uses of other cards.
"Fools Reborn" is A Tarot TTRPG of Carol Berg’s Collegia Magica Novels. Coming 2026.
The Fools Reborn game utilises tarot cards, rather than dice, as its core resolution mechanic on both a numerical and narrative level, providing the system the flexibility to model both swashbucking combat scenes and magical manifestation.
As part of the game a newly commissioned tarot deck is being designed by artist David Ledesma, inspired by Carol Berg's Collegia Magica Novels. The deck will also be available for purchase as a stand alone product. Both the main system book and the card deck have a scheduled release window of the first half of 2026.
