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![\"Ganakagok\"](\"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/ganakagok.jpg\" "\\"Ganakagok\\"")
<\/p>\nThis sounds interesting: a role-playing game inspired by Inuit mythology:
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\nWhen people ask me what my game Ganakagok is about, I say, \u201cIt\u2019s a fantasy.\u201d I tell them that it\u2019s about a people called the Nitu, who live on a starlit island of ice in a world where the sun has never risen. They live in darkness, revering the Stars, honoring their Ancestors, and marveling at the handiwork of the Forgotten Ones, who long ago wrought Ganakagok into its current form.<\/p>\n
I had been thinking for a long time about how to use a tarot-style \u201coracle\u201d in a role-playing game, because I was fascinated with the way that divination methods like tarot and the I Ching provided powerfully suggestive grist for the interpretive mill. In other words, divination methods seem to work by providing an ambiguous image of which one makes sense in the context of the current situation or problem. Because our minds are designed to see patterns, make connections, and find order, the appropriateness of the divination seems uncanny.<\/p>\n
To make the Ganakagok tarot, I essentially \u201creskinned\u201d a normal 52-card playing card deck, changing the names of the suits and the court cards to make them seem more icily primitive\u2014Tears rather than Spades, Stars rather than Diamonds, and Ancient, Man, Woman, and Child in place of Ace, King, Queen, and Jack. Then I went back to the divinatory meanings associated with the corresponding card in a tarot deck, coming up with two \u201cmotifs\u201d for each one, a noun phrase that I called the card\u2019s \u201cimage\u201d and a verb phrase that was its \u201cmeaning.\u201d So, for example, the Ace of Spades became the Ancient of Tears, or \u201cPolar Bear,\u201d with the meaning \u201cto master or overcome.\u201d And the Two of Clubs became the Two of Storms, or \u201cDepths of the Sea,\u201d with the meaning, \u201cto be troubled by the unknowable.\u201d<\/p>\n