Aspect Spotlight: The Fool

This post is part of a series focusing on the eight Aspects—the “playbooks” of Divination if you will. Learn how each one represents its tarot card in the Hero’s psyche and how it plays, including a spotlight on a couple Powers for each one. The entire series is linked at the bottom of the page.

The Fool is the 0-card of the tarot, and it’s a classic case of how a tarot card’s meaning is deeper than its name. The Fool’s a dummy, sure. They’re about to step off a cliff, and they’re super into that flower.

But they’re more than that. They’re the concept of innocent ignorance, which is where we all are before we learn things.

When our Fool is a part of the Hero, they are their youthful part, their playful part, their part that wants to experience new things and smell roses. It’s a popular Aspect with players. I get it. The Fool was so popular a card, it’s the only Greater Arcana to survive its way into decks of modern playing cards as the Jesters.

I don’t love making the Fool out to be, like, a thief class; but if I were thinking of it in that way, I’d say that the Fool provides fresh attempts at hard situations—failures, moments of uncertainty, suspense, danger, and excitement. That makes them resourceful, supportive, and resilient.

The Fool gets fun-to-use, somewhat selfish Powers that let them take risks, behave unpredictably, and face (or fall into) danger with less risk.

Ease of Youth lets you take a second try at something one of the other Aspects failed, using your innate youthful advantages—so long as you taunt or console the Aspect who failed in the first place. What young person isn’t both determined and self-critical?

Inner Chaos lets you turn on full psychic chaos mode. You force the doom scrolling. You’re the noise of an intrusive thought. You are the part of the Hero that can’t concentrate, can’t pay attention. Sometimes you’ll have a good reason to do that—to keep the other Aspects from doing things they want to be doing.

As the Fool, you could benefit from Beginner’s Luck, which gives you a bonus when you try something the Hero isn’t trained in.

Or you could use Wild Card, where you steal another Aspect’s successful Future Card—potentially making their life more difficult—in order to use it for yourself. Like any young person, you might get in your own way a time or two as a matter of learning how things work.

These Powers give you flexibility as a teammate to the other Aspects, but also give you the ability to make things difficult for them when they aggravate you—or just when you want to have some fun. This can be important, especially if the other Aspects share a seriousness. They need the Fool to keep them light, to keep them learning lessons about new things.

The Fool pushes their boundaries, and the Hero’s, and tends to have a blast doing it.

Read about the other Aspects here: