The Magnificent Edition of Royal Blood includes everything you could need or want to play this tarot heist TTRPG. The presentation box includes the core rulebook, the set of 84 tarot cards (yes, that is an unusual number of tarot cards; don’t worry, you can remove a few and use it as a standard deck), and a dozen metal coins you can use to bet on your characters’ fates.

You’ve got old blood in your veins.
Sorcerer-King. Witch-Queen.

Royal Blood is a tabletop roleplaying game about heists, tarot cards, magic, fate and desperation. It uses a deck of tarot cards to build characters, plan a heist and determine opposition, and to resolve every risky action the players make in an attempt to claim power.

Players take on the roles of Royals, desperate modern-day magicians with wizard blood left over from the time of sorcerer-kings and witch-queens. Each court card in the deck comes with its own player character concept, such as the cruel mask-cutting Queen of Swords, the wild and impetuous Princess of Wands, or the unsettlingly calm Knight of Pentacles.

They’re going to take down one of the major arcana, or the Arcane. The Arcane were once human just like the player characters, but vast power and long centuries have twisted them weird and iconic. Death starts revolutions, the Hanged Man builds border walls, the Sun sells serotonin supplements and the Magus installs spyware on company laptops.

If you want to steal the power from a demigod you’ll have to be clever about it. You can’t go in all guns blazing: Royal Blood deals in heists. Using a spread of tarot cards, you’ll determine what stands in the way of the player characters and what they can subvert to their own ends. No preparation is required, and you can go from zero to game in about half an hour.

Then it’s a simple matter of stealing power from the most dangerous people in the world – but they’re old, and complacent, and set in their ways. They’ve been in charge for too long.

Time to get to work.