The Quantum Haruspex
storytelling game of human fate and making decisions 

The Quantum Haruspex has warped and torn our world. In 199X the discovery of  Magickal technologies have revolutionized every field. ScryComputers log you into the dataORB with a passChant. Illnesses are cured by Aura-Scrubbing Nanites. The Military Adjustment force are cracking down of ritualTech. CyberOpium dens are raided. The poor are criminalized as leeches on the psychic networks, and big CEOs summon demons to dance for them Most people are implanted with a Quantum Haruspex, running their blood through an Extispic filter and executing the required ritual programming to predict and inform choices.
But a future observed is a future changed. The eldritch ritual being performed by the cybernetic implant was actually warping reality, and splicing in alternate dimensions in order to create robust predictions. Strange anomalies began appearing. People realized they were remembering different pasts. Things changed, small details at first, the face on the 5 credit crystal, the number of steps up to an apartment. But things began to get out of hand; the future could be predicted, but major historical events were changed. 
The reality began to unravel, tearing apart and then encapsulating those guilty inside a perfect stasis – a reality rift. That is when the Reality Restoration Unit was formed to save those who got trapped inside, frozen in an eternal turmoil, a cycle of indecision. 

What the game is about

You are each playing a member of the Reality Restoration Unit (RRU), informally called 'riftwardens' or 'stitch patrol'. Your task is to walk into the gaping rifts in reality torn by the Haruspex, resolve the charged situation inside, and then get out. 

	To play “Quantum Haruspex” you need at least three players, no more than five. Get some pencils, paper and a Tarot Deck. It is best to use a deck with an illustrated minor arcana and evocative imagery. Although the classic Rider Waite deck is a great pick, you may find it helpful to find a deck that is thematically close to the type of story you want to tell. 

The Petitioners 
When you enter a reality rift you become another person, one of the Petitioners, poor souls trapped inside. 
First you 'look into the void' – agents enter a meditative trace, mentally reaching inside the vortex to find people with closely interwoven fates. 
Shuffle the Tarot deck, giving the cards a couple of twists. Then draw a card and place it face up between you and your left neighbour. 
The picture on the card defines the relation between the souls you will be extracting. The direction of the card defines who dominates the relation. Interpret the cards as you wish. Don’t let any “traditional” interpretations weigh you down. Let the symbolism inform your choices. If you feel the need to look to a guide, do. Work with your other players and discuss ideas..
For example you have the 'Death' arcana facing you – you might be an assassin and the person to your left is your designated target. Or you got the reversed 'Knight of wands' – you are a lab assistant to a high ranked scientist. 
Look into the void and work with your partner to describe the relations of the Petitioners you are saving today. Be truthful - if the Petitioner is a weak-willed coward and that is the reason why he got trapped inside the rift just say so. It will help you in the future when you try to resolve the situation at the heart of the rift. Write down your character on a piece of paper, a few sentences about what they do, who they are, and their relationships with the other characters. 
After you have all introduced your Petitioners you may begin to 'stitch' the reality. 

The Reality Rift
	Now you will take turns, wading into the rift searching for certain details about the situation, analyzing it and then taking actions to resolve it. 

3
2   1    5   6
4

You draw cards to explore different aspects of the situation. This will form your scenes and inform the whole game. There are six aspects and they are laid out in a spread as presented above. 
Card 1 – The Desire that unites all the Petitioners. It is the prize and the urge that connects them all in this rift. The rift actually opened because the desire went unrealized. Draw a card and decide all together what this desire is, using the already established connections between the Petitioners. 
Enact short scenes between your Petitioners as they start to remember the reason that brought them together. 
Card 2 - The Past defines that turning moment where it all went awry. Draw a card and put it to the left of the Desire. This card shows how the conflict started and where did it take place. For example, the 6 of Swords, “Rite of passage”, might represent a secret lab. The 3 of cups, “Abundance”, suggests a lavish party, or rave.
The Petitioners should be remembering now how it all started, when the reality started unraveling itself. 
Card 3 – The Threat  Something looming and in the distance. Draw a card and put it below the Desire. It is the main obstacle on the path to fulfilling the Desire. Answer  questions like, what is being threatened? What is threatening? How imminent is it? Search in your Past for inspiration. 
For example the Tower might be an exploding skyscraper, or a sudden bankruptcy of a huge financial corporation that you were working for. The 5 of Swords might indicate a betrayal or it might just mean that you were captured and all your weapons are locked away.  
This is the Petitioners main obstacle in reaching that dream life they deserved or just surviving to live another day. It might be something they have to overcome within themselves, such as an injury or illness, or something external, like an enemy.
Card 4 – The Hope is the silver lining on a cloud, a drowning man's straw. Draw a card and put it above the Desire. It is an item, or a old friend, or a skill, or some other valuable resource that one suddenly came to possess, that will help you to overcome the Threat. 
For example the Emperor is an influential CEO who decided to support your project and the Devil is, well, a devil who made you an offer you would be stupid to turn down. 
Card 5 – The Present is those few precious hours, or even mere seconds before the moment when time came to a screeching halt. Draw a card and put it to the right of the Desire.   
For example the Wheel of Fortune might be a game of dragon poker with really high stakes just before the final call. 
The Petitioners should be much more agitated now as they come to an end. This was the moment they ceased to exist, and they remember vividly all the minutia detail that preceded this moment.  
	Card 6 – The Resolution is the moment where RRU came into the picture. This stage uses special rules. 
	Taking turns pull a Petitioner into the spotlight. He draws a card. All the other players become the Quantum Haruspex. 
	Each member of The Qunatum Haruspex then make a suggestions as to how it all ended for that Petitioner, each using the card in front of the Petitioner as inspiration for the final Resolution of the conflict. Built upon what you learned about the Petitioner in the Past and in the Present, what was the Threat and how did she Hope to overcome it. 
	At last the Petitioner makes a final decision choosing one of the suggested outcomes and finally escaping the reality rift. Alternatively she may choose none an stay in the vortex. 
	Remember that you are still officers of the RRU and your ultimate goal is to save as many people as possible/ Work together to make each one of the chosen prediction work with the others. 

Scenes
	So all of the game revolves around scenes, these chunks of continuous action, starring at least one character. There is no GM in this game, so anybody can pitch an idea for a scene. Once you have the situation, decide which character each player controls. You can pick from already established characters, or create a new character that fits in. Scenes don’t need to happen in chronological order, or even a logical order. Time is not real anymore. Causality is broken. Do not be afraid to contradict things established in previous scenes. It will all get tied up if it needs to be.
	
When playing out a scene, try to keep the following things in mind:
1.	Sprinkle Evocative Details. Mention the blood-stone circles that summon the elevator to the top floor of the skyscraper. Bring up the neon purple lights that pulse through the city. Bring up the cybergolem’s that perform menial tasks in the background. Bring the world to life with details.
2.	Zoom in and out. Don’t be afraid to zoom in, and explore what’s going through a character’s mind, their little ticks and tells that tell us how they’re feeling. But, by the same token, don’t be afraid to zoom out, and gloss over unimportant things. Sometimes you need to paint with a wide brush, and give us establishing shots. 
3.	Foreshadow. Things happen offscreen. A dull explosion in the distance. A swarm of Adjustment Vehicles speed by. A character drops an unfamiliar name. You can seed more scenes this way.
4.	Everybody can die. Nobody has plot armour. If they get hurt enough they can die.
5.	Ask questions. If someone has an answer, great. If not, write down the question. Figure it out later in a different scene.
6.	Everybody plays everybody. Everybody can play an NPC. They don’t belong to anybody, they might get passed around between scenes.

	Each scene should have a main conflict in it. It might be physical, it might be social, it might be emotional, it might be anything. It’s when someone acts, but the outcomes and consequences are yet to be determined. A conflict happens when anybody says anything like:
 	“Yeah, she’s not going to let you do that!”
	“It’s not going to be that easy!”
	“You’re going to need help from Sandra’s gang to get through there.” So, this is where the Haruspex comes in again.

Conflict and the Haruspex
	So one player is the Haruspex. Maybe it is the player who is in the conflict, maybe not. They look at the conflict and draw a card.  They read off the main information, and hand it to another player to interpret. That player makes a prediction, based on the card.
	The Haruspex then passes the card to a different player, and they now have to predict a different outcome, based on the card. The Haruspex chooses which prediction comes true.
	The player who wasn’t chosen can now colour the chosen prediction. Some minor details change. Colours swap. Something small, but weird. They now become the Haruspex, and the deck of cards is placed in front of them.

Historical Reference
On Haruspicy: In Ancient Rome a haruspex (plural haruspices) was a person trained to practice a form of divination called haruspicy the inspection of the entrails hence also of sacrificed animals, especially the livers of sacrificed sheep and birds.  
Haruspicy was part of a larger study of organs for the sake of divination, called extispicy, paying particular attention to the positioning of the organs and their shape. There are many records of different peoples using the liver and spleen of various domestic and wild animals to forecast weather. There are hundreds of ancient architectural objects, labyrinths composed of cobblestones in the northern countries that are considered to be a model of the intestines of the sacrificial animal, i.e. the colon of ruminants.
On Tarot divination: Divination using playing cards is in evidence as early as 1540 in a book entitled “The Oracles of Francesco Marcolino da Forlì” which allows a simple method of divination, though the cards are used only to select a random oracle and have no meaning in themselves. But manuscripts from 1735 (“The Square of Sevens”) and 1750 (“Pratesi Cartomancer”) document rudimentary divinatory meanings for the cards of the tarot as well as a system for laying out the cards. Giacomo Casanova wrote in his diary that in 1765 his Russian mistress frequently used a deck of playing cards for divination. 
	 
Variation 
	This game might  work with non- tarot prediction cards. For example like the Harrow deck from the Pathfinder RPG. Or just some other cards with evocative imagery like those in the “Imaginarium” board game.