Swords! Sorcery! Sandguins! Kay Purcell’s Tarot-Powered Tabletop Tales

Welcome back to Tarot Interviews with your host, Fin. Today we're sitting down with the incredible Kay Purcell, an accomplished games master, ttrpg performer and co-founder of Chaotic Wholesome Presents. Founder of Chaotic Wholesome Presents, kay is also known for weaving unforgettable stories in tabletop role-playing games, bringing creativity, inclusivity and immersive storytelling to every campaign. As a passionate advocate for collaborative and chaotic fun, kay has helped build a community where everyone's story matters. So stick around as we draw the cards and explore Kay's journey, creative process and what it means to bring wholesome chaos to the TTRPG world. Kay Purcell, welcome to Tarot Interviews. I have your cards in my hand.

I am terrified and excited. Thank you for having me.

An absolute pleasure. Now, as you can see, the cards are going round and round. What I'd like you to do is just tell me when the moment strikes, when the inspiration reaches out and boops you on the nose. Tell me when to split the deck, and I'll do so.

Right. Yes, we are watching the cards go round and round as the world turns to chaos around us, and I think that's the time.

You have the Ten of Swords.

Well, welcome to life in 2025.

Indeed, it's a very interesting time, isn't it? Okay, now, I've recently made a tarot-themed playlist for every single track linked to one of the 78 cards and the one that you picked. It took me a while, also why I was in the shower and the thought came to me if I was to pick a song for every tarot card, what would I pick? And, of course, once I thought of it, I had to run with it. Anyway, ten of Swords is the Deconstruction by Eels, or that's kind of my feel on it. So, looking at that and imagine you've never seen this card before. Describe it, how does it feel? What's going on in the card?

See, this is challenging because I do a lot of terror pulls so my brain is defaulting to my deck. But you know, having never seen it before, this looks like a really really bad, sad, terrifying card. Because there's a poor fellow laying face down, red sheet kind of spread over his lower half and ten swords just stabbed right into his back. He's laying on a beach with a kind of gray ocean behind mountains in the distance, yellow sky and looming black clouds coming down over the top. Third of the heart.

Okay. So, as you'll be well aware, the traditional meaning for this is painful conclusion, rock bottom. Moments that the imagery stark. It offers a glimmer of hope that darkness won't last forever. The question I'll take from that is can you discuss a difficult ending that's led to a new beginning for you?

Well, while your very flattering intro definitely focused on my TTRPG stuff, which is my passion, I have the great fortune slash misfortune of working in the video games industry Mm-hmm, a poison choice Just in shambles. Right now, not a single week goes by that there is not multiple layoffs and multiple studio closures, and just a couple months ago I was in one of those. I had taken a job in New York City, which I was so excited to move cross country and experience something new, working on a I could talk about it now a really cool game called Contraband that was announced at the final E3.

No, I missed the E3. What genre are we talking?

This is what has been said publicly. Hold on, no, it's good. I'm just running through what was in the trailer, because that's what's out publicly I see. It is a co-op smuggling game set in the 1970s in a fictional Southeast Asian world of Bayan. I spent over three years of my life working on this game. My company decided to close all of our North American offices and multiple people who had been employed for nearly 20 years no longer had a job.

My God, Kate, that's awful. Which part of the game were you working on?

Well, I do community management, comms and marketing. So I was very involved in the community launch strategy, advertising, working with Microsoft as our publisher. So I was working with Microsoft's Marcoms. I got to help with the E3 trailer announcement and throwing turtle parties around that. I was also working on other games as well as a comms person, because some of those I don't know if I'll ever be able to talk about, but I was working on a lot of different parts, a lot of fingers in a lot of different pies, getting to do some really cool stuff, working with an international team.

Suddenly I was on the wrong side of the country with no job, in one of the most expensive cities in the United States in an industry that was falling apart and it was a little stressful, but it was also. This happened right at June, which is my birthday and also Pride Month here in America, and it was actually a little bit of relief because I had worked with the truly incredible creator, candice the Magnificent, who wanted to do a charity series of games called Magnificent Pride that I was producing on our channel through Katta Coulson and actually had time to do all of that. We did four charity games plus a bonus Juneteenth game, which was an all-black table running. Paradox Perfect, which is an awesome little indie system which was completely wild and ridiculous and so much fun and involved twerking and dinosaurs. Don't ask.

Twerking and dinosaurs. I need to ask which dinosaurs.

A lot.

Are we talking? Cretaceous Jurassic?

So Jeremy Crawford, who is a part of Three Backs Halflings, was the GM of it and he is a dinosaur nerd. Basically, everyone got pulled into an alternate reality where dinosaurs did not go extinct and were now the dominant species on the planet, and there were all of the era correct personalities that we would have known from this setting were all suddenly dinosaurs with punny names, and it was truly incredible.

Just very quickly as a bonus question, without thinking about it which is your favorite dinosaur game?

Oh, cats, I like the. Okay, I know they're not accurate, I know they're not correct, but the frilled spitters right. I know that's not it, but that's what locked into Baby K's brain in Jurassic Park. I know that is not accurate. That is so influential that you can see this. The audience will not. I have a little crocheted penguin behind me because in one of my horror games I attacked my players with sandguins and they were little penguins that swam through sand and people were like, oh, they're so cute. And then they walk up to the penguin and the penguin opens its mouth. I don't know if you've ever seen the inside of a penguin's mouth. It is a horror show. It is terrifying. There are beaks with teeth, layers and layers and rows and rows and rows of teeth. Only these were actually carnivorous teeth that could actually hurt you. And then they had frills that came up.

And this is from a previous role as a penguin orthodontist- Basically.

Yes, I've watched a lot of documentaries, y'all Nature documentaries, science documentaries it all comes together in my weird TTRPG brain space.

And got spliced with Dune and a fever dream.

Yeah, I mean basically God Plane, which was this campaign, has been described as a fever dream.

My kids have only recently, just got into dnd. In fact, after this interview I'm going downstairs to play the first set of dnd that my kids have. It's one of these. I think it's a campaign that's basically spoon-fed to you that there are very, very few options. It plays like a kind of choose your own adventure but, it's the gateway into it. I mean they they do like the kind of tt rpgs like um, there's one called the is Dead which we've played so many times Also Goat Crashers, honey Heist.

Yes, honey Heists are great. If you are looking for really fun, super kid friendly, there's a D&D supplement called the Verdant Isles and it's a tea time adventure and you play little animal people and it's all like problem solving. Combat isn't a thing and they even have an app with maps and recipes so you can make the tea that you drink in the game. It's very cute. It's an indie group. Go, support indie TTRPGs. We love them.

My daughter is very much of the opinion that people are trash and she's only interested in animals. She's 13 and I don't think she's wrong.

Yeah, I will not argue with that at all. My cats are my favorite people.

Right, we have a second card to pull. So, right as before, cards are in my hand, apart from that one over there, which can remain in the corner, okay, so?

Oh, hello, yeah, I mean they're jumping out. That's what we gotta do.

Yeah cards, say me do you want this one?

yeah, sure, it says pick me. I'm not going to argue with a pick me card.

The Ace of Swords, the Ace of Swords. You are pulling the swords out this evening.

Look, I'm a fighter. What can I say? I'm tiny but feisty.

What is this card saying to you?

So the Ace of Swords? This is a very Monty Python-esque card which I feel like would offend the swords if you told them that. But there is a cloud with a hand coming out of it. It is holding a sword upright. There is plant life. I'm trying to remember exactly what it is. It's a little far away. There are plant life, or vines, or laurels, or something coming from the tip. Oh, there's a crown with the laurels coming from the crown, set on a pale orange, I think sky with mountains off in the distance now, interestingly, on one side of the crown it does look like, uh, laurel leaves that are flowing into the breeze.

On the other side it looks a bit like a feather boa that you would normally see discarded after pride.

I I do enjoy a drag queen oh, we've got the card of clarity.

Truth, mental breakthrough, um fresh starts, new ideas, sudden insights that cut through confusion. It's the symbolism of mental strength, the power of intellect seeing things as they really are okay. So my question to you is what was a breakthrough moment in either your storytelling or game mastering that you're most proud of?

so I'm actually something of a newcomer to ttrpgs. I had always wanted to play them but, um, I know I don't sound it, but I grew up in texas, um, and the bible belt and the christian school I went to such things were not as we said. Even before we went live, the X-Men comics that I had were banned from school because Nightcrawler was a demon.

My God, I mean, it wasn't the fact that they're basically just hot mess bisexuals, it was one that looked a bit dodgy.

Yes, and like trying to explain them no, no, no, it's really cool because he's a Christian. They're like no, that's a demon, get it out, it's not allowed.

It has an angel in it, though. Surely they balance each other out.

Nope, nope. That was clearly, and you know, satanic panic was still very solid in that space, and so it was never a thing I was allowed to do. And then I went on to deep lore. I worked at DeviantArt for almost 20 years. Then I started working in video games, and it wasn't until I was a couple years into working at Red Bull that I was saying to friends like I really want to play a TTRPG, I really want to try D&D. And like David, my creative partner looked at me and went, oh, you want to play, hold on. And all of a sudden there were like eight mother lovers who I was very close to in my life, who had never mentioned that they were TTRPG nerds, who all went, oh, I play tabletop, let's put together a game. And I'm like, why did none of y'all mention this? So I didn't actually get to play games until shortly before the pandemic, and I have in all my life played four TTRBG sessions in person. It's all mostly been online through streaming and fundraising through the pandemic.

I was doing these games and I really enjoyed them, but I had a moment of like I'm mostly joining games and I kind of I don't get to tell the stories I necessarily wanted to tell. I don't always get to choose who I'm at the table with. Sometimes not everyone in the space is great, right, and I was having friends who were saying they were having bad experiences with no safety tools, and I was like, okay, I want to tell these kinds of stories and I want to be at these kinds of tables. I have to run these games myself, don't I? I have to learn how to GM, I have to learn how to storytell, and I started out by trying to go through modules and find pre-written stuff that I wanted to, and I just got frustrated that the stuff I wanted wasn't out there.

So, as we discussed before, I put together with my partner Godplane. It was a short story that I'd been trying to write for ages and a comic that I was trying to write. I couldn't find the format for the story and I'm like, well, let's make this into a TTRBG and see if it works. And you get four complete strangers who are pulled out of very different worlds, dropped into the dream of a god and told you have to stop a nightmare before it wakes the god, good luck.

Yeah, good luck.

And it was such a great breakthrough moment for me because it was like I was so afraid that I don't know the lore of the Forgotten Realms that well because I only just started and people are going to call me a fake nerd and what if I don't edit it? And it was like cool, I can just do my own world and that way, none of the rules have to apply unless I want them to. I can make up my own gods. I can do all of this. And I went from I need to learn all the rules, I need to do all of this correctly. I need to, I need to, I need to't out.

Yet that's sacred and it's a story that repeats and tells itself, and it doesn't. It's that focus on. Not everything has to be unique, not everything has to be absolutely the first time this is being exposed and, in fact, there's a joy in experiencing the same story with new elements and new twists and seeing how different characters and different groups react to these things, while also highly adapting parts of it to each individual character and group. So, yeah, it was a moment of I have to do it myself. I have to follow the rules.

No wait, I don't cool you make the sound, I mean the visual imagery that I'm getting is of opening a pandora's box, of unleashing all of the content and literally riding that wave.

I took the bits I wanted. I loved the mists from Van Richten and the Domains of Dread, and so I went okay, there are misty hallways that connect all of these different planes and there's all these little different parts of the world and every one of those can be whatever I want. And oh, what if I write up 10 and then make them roll a D20? And we decide where they go based on what they roll every time they step out of the mists. Right, it just became so much fun of. I don't have to structure this if I don't want to.

Something you mentioned a little while ago was the idea of safety tools. Now, this is something I haven't heard of and I'd love to know more about, because I'm very familiar with the certain character classes. I'm looking at the Bard who is, as a cliche, supposed to be some form of Lothario, cracking onto everything, and I imagine the idea of consent within a game starts to blur. So, as a games master, how would you deal with that?

Don't know if you have noticed y'all, but I am femme presenting, and the number of times I have showed up to a table I have been the only non-dude and have immediately been relegated to oh, you're going to be someone's girlfriend and I'm like, no, I'm not, I'm not here for that. So one of the really cool things things that have come out of this kind of new era of TTRPGs is there are safety tools online and some of them are as simple as you could. Have an X card and if something makes you uncomfortable, you throw up the X card and you stop. There's a fast-forward card which is like hey, something about this isn't feeling great, can we hurry over it? So there are different tools like that, but one of the most important things we discuss now is a session zero, which is where you come together and everyone. You kind of get to know other players. Depending on the game, you may or may not introduce your characters, but you get a feel for everyone and one of the things you go over is your lines and veils, which is when I play games y'all.

I have a really bad dog phobia. I have been hospitalized from dog attacks. I don't like dogs, I don't mind other people having dogs, right? I just I'm not going to pet the dog. So that's one of my lines is like we can, we can fight a dog. Someone else can have a dog. Just please don't require me to interact with said dog. Right, and some of those are very simple. Some of them are hey look, I have no problem with like romance if you ask, right, If we make sure we're all comfortable with it. But also, I don't want to deal with anything involving pregnancy because that's just not. I don't want the pregnancy scare. None of that is interesting to me. That's not a thing I want to pursue.

So there are pre-made sheets that have some of these basic things. Then you can list out your own things for some people. You know, hey, family member has dementia. Maybe we don't put a character with dementia in this, right, there are all sorts of little things that are important to talk about, including things like if you're in a regular group, hey, how many people need to be missing before we cancel the game? Are we okay with pushing forward with one person missing and just kind of we pilot their character or have a reason they're not there.

One of the things we actually put out as Chaoticalism is we put out a Google Sheets based lines and veils doc that you send a copy to everyone. It's a dropdown. You fill it out Green, red, yellow and then we also have orange and teal. Oranges it's fine for other people, but please don't give it to me. And then teal is. This is generally a yes, but I need you to ask first.

And then you copy that into one master sheet and it automatically does the highest level of discomfort for everyone, so everyone can reference hey, this particular thing is a yellow. I need to make sure I ask and say how detailed it's going to be before I go into it. So that's kind of the safety aspect of let's make sure everyone is having fun. And even in horror games it's kind of like a roller coaster. Roller coasters are only fun because you really feel like you're safe. You can be safe in a scary thing and that's how I treat horror games is you're going to be able to be more involved, more into it and and let yourself be more scared if you know where the guardrails are and that you're not going to be pushed into a situation that you personally are beyond uncomfortable with.

I love that as an idea and, as I said, straight after this, when I speak to my kids, I will be downloading Zed Sheet, taking a look at this and introducing this to them as if it's something normal, because it should be.

This is something that every game should be running with one's kids' TTRPG camps and she actually implements the rewind feature, which is great for kids, especially kids who are TTRPGs are such a great way to kind of learn about yourself and experiment, and without the consequences of everyone's going to judge me, this is going to be with me until I change schools. And she has a rewind feature where if a kid says something and another character or an NPC reacts in a way that they were like oh, they can go, hold on pause. I want to rewind and retake that because I just didn't expect that and so it has nothing to do with roles, but it's a great social tool of like oh, I didn't realize that sounded mean, let me be able to redo that. And it's a great tool for teaching empathy and teaching respect no, I love that.

I've played countless games where I'm so happy to. You know, maim behead, chop people into tiny pieces, but hurting somebody's feelings gets me there, so I will often just go back to the last save point.

Yep video games cause violence until you hurt the npc's feelings, and then no, no, no, no, no right last card where it got this sword.

I wonder. Let's find out. Okay, let's shuffle away. And when?

You want to come out and play today?

justice

on the subject of swords, but with a twist major arcana, finally yeah I've not seen.

You know it's something about 2025, but also proceeding is. I've not seen justice for possibly a decade. This is an elusive card and we need it now do we ever good gravy? Right justice. What's this card saying to you?

Oh, this is a very red and passionate card. Uh, it is a woman bedecked in red and gold seated on a throne. She's holding a sword aloft and, uh, between two pillars, with is that a tapestry backdrop hanging from between.

It's some kind of hanging. It doesn't have any pictures upon it. I think such things will be Gordian. Too much of like frippery for justice. Absolutely. No, she means business. She really does, Absolutely. If you were to get a feeling from this card, what does it say to you? Talk to me about vibes.

If you were to get a feeling from this card. What does it say to you? Talk to me about vibes. It is calm but direct power. It is someone who's like I know what needs to happen. I'm not sprinting to get it done. I have the authority and I'm just going to hold up the sword. Give the order, make it happen.

You know I was about to say to that. My instinctive reaction was, yeah, fair, and yes, it would be. Yeah, so a card of integrity where accountability, accountability, don't you love that word, accountability.

I mean not always, certainly not in tabletop, in real life.

Yes, Is that when a D20 rolls under the table and you're like, yeah, sure it was a 19.

Like oh no, if it isn't the consequence of my actions, I hope those would never show up.

Okay, so a card of honesty and fairness in all dealings. Can you discuss a situation where you've advocated for fairness and equality within the gaming community?

Oh goodness. So I began my career as a moderator for DeviantArt, as I said, so there was quite a bit of advocating for fairness and accountability, often for people who really didn't want to give it. But through both my time in video games and in TTRPGs it's a dirty word in my country right now, but DEI has always been something really important to me, especially as, like I said before, I am femme presenting and I have more than once been the only woman in a room full of gaming journalists. It's not comfortable being the only person in the room full of gaming journalists. It's not comfortable being the only person in the room like yes, there's a certain amount of like. Yes, I've, I've done it, I'm paving the way, but it's also like I shouldn't. It's this day and age, I shouldn't have to be the one paving the way, I shouldn't have to be the only one in the room, and especially in ttrGs.

I will not go into Gary Gygax, I will spare everyone that rant. But like, d&d definitely came up from people with my skin tone. But people who certainly didn't look like me straight up said women are not built to play D&D. They can't play it. They have no interest in playing it.

Yeah, I have rants about Gygax and it became even worse with look, I love me some Drow, I love me the orcs, but they are black coded and problematic the way they were written and it has been awesome and incredibly frustrating to see how hard my channel and other folks have had to work to just make the gaming space more welcoming and safety tools.

Making it more welcoming and more safe is a big part of it, because Candice, one of my really great friends, showed up to a table, said oh, are there safety tools? They're like no, you won't need it. It was a Wild West game. A lynch mob showed up in the middle of said game and Candice is a person of color, candace is black and was like I am not okay with this happening and there was no good way for them to tap out because the tools just weren't there. Most of it is ignorance and just people don't think how other walks of life might experience these things that seem normal to us. Uh, yes, this was historical, but that doesn't mean people, especially who are still dealing with the very real consequences of modern day racism, want to experience it uh, I think that is a very respectful way of doing it.

I feel like that yeah, it's like I said you can have more fun when you're not worried about is this thing going to happen, and even down to respecting player choices and what players would want. One of my favorite moments I was watching a stream game by Todd Kendricks and it had Opa Loren playing a cleric of her god. She was meeting her god for the first time and while talking with this god, the god basically said I don't like it that people can summon me, right, it's bad when people summon me. And this cleric who has the ability to summon her god asks do you mind it when I summon you? Is it bad when I summon you?

And the GM completely broke character in the middle of the game and said are you looking for one particular answer or are you okay with whatever I answer? And Lauren's response was I think I know what it's going to be, but I am okay with whatever you decide, and it was such an amazing moment to see of the GM going. You put me in a situation I was not prepared for. We didn't discuss this ahead of time. We're going to discuss it right now so that we don't have to go back and retcon something, so that you don't leave this feeling bad so that you leave feeling like your character was fulfilled and it didn't break the pace of the game, it didn't break immersion, it was just a wonderful moment.

And that's a wrap on today's episode of Tarot Interviews. A huge thank you to Kay Purcell for sharing their insights and experiences as a storyteller and a community builder. Be sure to check the link out in the show notes for more incredible TTRPG content and follow Kay's latest adventures. And if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, share and leave us a review. We'll be back soon with more stories and card pulls with inspiring creatives. And until next time, keep listening, keep creating.