The Old Ways Must Go

The Old Ways Must Go is a cooperative storytelling game about coming together to create new ideas, frameworks, or rituals from outdated, decaying old ones.  Its structure offers a framework for creating new rituals and for guiding gentle conversations for healing and moving forward in times of community upheaval. And it offers an intuitive technique for building or deepening your relationship with your favorite tarot or oracle deck.

Why Tarot Based Tools?

We are living through a time of paradigm shifts.  Many of us know what frameworks are failing us, yet few have the capacity to imagine alternatives.  

Tarot is a card game that has evolved over the centuries to become a profound tool for looking inward and forward.  What if we can imagine new ways of using tarot? Kind, collaborative, and playful ways that help us imagine the futures we want while composting the broken scaffoldings into new structures and frameworks.

To do this, we started with game design ideas and created a game that allows players to imagine an old structure and create new, more inclusive rituals from it.  Yet we've discovered in "playing" that meaningful conversations and profound insights come with each round.

The Old Ways Must Go explores how individual agency and collective storytelling come together to create new meanings from old structures. It is hopeful, collaborative, and reflective. It allows for brave conversations and intuitive insights about how we engage in meaning-making. At its best, it supports healing conversations that help fracturing or frustrated communities re-engage and find a path forward.  

What do I need to play?

You'll need a tarot, oracle, or other imagery-heavy card deck of your own. Preferably one with evocative art that speaks to you on a visceral level. Familiarity with traditional tarot meanings is not necessary for this game. Play involves spontaneous and collaborative interpretations of imagery in context. Though it was originally designed for tarot, any card deck with imagery of personal significance will work.