nettarot

January 5, 2015 11:50 PM

nettarot is an information age tarot deck designed for the digital medium by Kevin Thrasher
posted by juv3nal (25 comments total)

Symbol cards, nice. But it's not tarot.
posted by charlie don't surf at 12:24 AM on January 6, 2015 [6 favorites]

(Morgan's Tarot)

I was delighted to see that the deck had returned to print a couple of years ago.
posted by mwhybark at 12:38 AM on January 6, 2015 [3 favorites]

Symbol cards, nice. But it's not tarot.
posted by charlie don't surf at 4:24 PM on January 6

If they aren't being used to play a trick-taking game for three to five players, aren't they all fundamentally just symbol cards?
posted by DoctorFedora at 12:52 AM on January 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

Cool interface. Neat idea.

I like it but am bummed it's not a true attempt at a tarot interpretation for 201X. I'd love to see that.
posted by wemayfreeze at 1:05 AM on January 6, 2015 [3 favorites]

Don't joke about the Tarot

(Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died. - Stephen Wright)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:17 AM on January 6, 2015 [8 favorites]

That's whimsically delightful. There's part of me that wants to be able to use a nettarot13 for truly occult occultism but it's a very small part. Thank you!
posted by nfalkner at 1:58 AM on January 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

One would think that a work dedicated to the information age would have more robust documentation for whatever it is that a given card is trying to convey. What could be whimsical mystery just comes off as maddening inconsistency.
posted by lumensimus at 3:40 AM on January 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm quite enjoying this. Thanks for the post, juv3nal.
posted by jammy at 5:42 AM on January 6, 2015

Symbol cards, nice. But it's not tarot.

You could try the Silicon Valley Tarot
I personally get better results with The Cards Of U'ut.
posted by thelonius at 5:56 AM on January 6, 2015 [3 favorites]

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but it seems you can only draw one card at a time here. I haven't seen a way to arrange the cards into a spread, like a Celtic Cross or something, to be able to do some actual Tarot.

I love the concept though!
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 6:04 AM on January 6, 2015

Agree: nettarot is nottarot. But very cool cards and I'm learning a huge amount of cool stuff by clicking them, so win!
posted by The Bellman at 6:50 AM on January 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

One would think that a work dedicated to the information age would have more robust documentation for whatever it is that a given card is trying to convey. What could be whimsical mystery just comes off as maddening inconsistency.

I feel the same about most of Microsoft's APIs.
posted by Foosnark at 7:41 AM on January 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

I've always wanted to design an IT Tarot deck for programmers, project managers and CIOs that works a bit like Oblique Strategies for unclogging the design/creative/debugging thought process. Never had the graphic skills for it, and just words is too close to Eno for comfort...
posted by Devonian at 8:07 AM on January 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

lumensimus: "One would think that a work dedicated to the information age would have more robust documentation for whatever it is that a given card is trying to convey. What could be whimsical mystery just comes off as maddening inconsistency."

An oblique strategy may be required.

oh, hello, devonian.
posted by boo_radley at 9:10 AM on January 6, 2015

Huh, hermitosis disabled his account. I thought of him here.

~-~-~-~-~-~-~
Tears in Rain.

Dodecahedron.

The Eternal September.

A situation will arise from difficulty. There is not enough information to make an informed decision. Lasting pain will be the likely outcome.

~-~-~-~-~-~-~

doritos locos taco.

spray cheese.

lies on the internet.

Shame and self-loathing. Selfies. Snapchat and tinder should be avoided.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
posted by boo_radley at 9:20 AM on January 6, 2015

In terms of alternative tarots, I am partial to Edward Gorey's "The Fantod Pack". Here's a .pdf, but the actual set is nice to have too.
posted by k8bot at 9:44 AM on January 6, 2015

This is more properly what Tarot afficionados refer to as an "oracle deck".

My first draw was the Wind Fish and I was all "okay yes fine, oracle, you don't think I ponder that on a regular basis". Shortly after I got "lies on the Internet".

One of these days I really need to spruce up the page for the deck I made.
posted by egypturnash at 10:20 AM on January 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

1999's HotWired is calling: The Suck 1000 Tarot Deck. Sadly it's not very good. The Suck Net Moguls trading deck was better. (Complete with authentic progressive GIFs).
posted by Nelson at 10:52 AM on January 6, 2015

wemayfreeze: "

I like it but am bummed it's not a true attempt at a tarot interpretation for 201X."

Well I would say Cosmic Tribe Tarot (NSFW: boobies, weewees, and hoohoos.), but Burning Man is sooooo 90s. I think a modern 201x would be tweets, gamerculture, anonymous, warsonterrors, nsa,wikileaks.

Less MDMA/LSD, more Mephedrone/JWH-018. Less "why don't we do it in the road" and more "let me chew your face off in the road".
posted by symbioid at 1:48 PM on January 6, 2015

This morning with sleep in my eyes my brain interpreted the title as netrot as in internet rot and it made me realize that I probably spend too much time on the interwebs.
posted by reedcourtneyj at 2:55 PM on January 6, 2015

Tarot is a well developed system and if you're going to use it, you need to use their iconography, otherwise you're just using your own symbolism that is totally disconnected from the system.

I personally want one of these Classic GD Tarot sets, but it's completely unavailable. If there were good scans of the full set, I'd print and paint them. You're supposed to paint them yourself anyway. That's part of the problem, the guys who know the GD symbolism well, and have produced their own completed tarot sets, usually are not good artists, so the execution can be clumsy.
posted by charlie don't surf at 3:27 PM on January 6, 2015

Morgan's Tarot did it better, I'm sorry to say. My friend and I are disappoint. No idea how you'd use this oracle deck for anything.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:12 PM on January 6, 2015

Did you see this thread in December, charlie? Tangential to this one surely, but possibly of interest to you.
posted by mwhybark at 8:32 PM on January 6, 2015

Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards.

Tarot is a well developed system and if you're going to use it, you need to use their iconography

Evokes an image of people playing a poker-esque game with this deck
posted by otherchaz at 12:03 PM on January 7, 2015

mwhybark: Did you see this thread in December, charlie? Tangential to this one surely, but possibly of interest to you.

I think I saw that but I refrained from comment because you should not get me started talking about the Rider-Waite-Smith deck. The FPP linked to Holly's RWS site which is a favorite of mine.

otherchaz: Evokes an image of people playing a poker-esque game with this deck

They look more like flash cards, to memorize the charts of correspondences in books like Liber 777. But people can take this too far. Never ever in my life did I even remotely consider that someone might think it's a good idea to put the color scales into CMYK. Pantone spot colors might work, but not CMYK.
posted by charlie don't surf at 8:35 PM on January 7, 2015