I love the handful of zines I own that embody not only DIY RPG aesthetics, but also “weird literary chapbook” and also “mysterious occult booklet.” I have many that do each individual flavor well, but a combo of all three is rare indeed. Such is Dungeon Divinations (2021), by Max Moon. It is one of only perhaps three zines in my collection that has a dustcover, which is neat. The art (which, I lament, greedily, there is not nearly enough of) by Luciana Lupe Vasconcelos also sits at a pleasing crossroads between RPGs, literature and the occult. The whole book is sharply designed and feels formidable in the hand.

But what is it? It is a method for generating dungeons for RPGs through the use of Tarot card spreads. Those spreads aren’t arranged, necessarily, in a way optimal for dungeons, but rather derived from the practice of using Tarot for divination. It turns out that there is considerable overlap between “good dungeon” and “effective fortune-telling” design. Does this speak, at last, to the fabled and feared conduit from D&D to the occult? Perhaps it reveals something fundamental about the ways we find patterns of meaning in the meaningless when we’re creating. I tend to mostly agree with Max in his introduction, when he describes the book in his introduction as both “absurd and earnest.” Honestly, it’s probably best that interested parties judge for themselves, if they can secure a copy.

Inside are sections on mindset, how to lay cards out and the thinking behind the card spreads. This mechanical section is followed by three example dungeons, one for each of the detailed spreads. They’re all…absurd and earnest and, I think, pretty workable dungeons for crawling (though honestly, I would have liked a conventional dungeon map to help me parse them).