The Fool’s Journey

About this board game

The Fool’s Journey is a solitaire card game for one player, designed for a standard 78-card Tarot deck and played in about 30 minutes.

In this thematic adventure, the Fool travels through a series of challenges while acquiring wisdom, taking chances, and overcoming obstacles with help from mysterious allies. The Fool is removed from the deck and placed in the setup as the character, while the remaining cards take on different roles during play.

An adventure is created by laying out cards in groups of four. To progress, play three of the four adventure cards; the remaining card becomes the foundation for a new adventure. This structure gives each decision a lasting effect as the journey unfolds.

• Trumps represent challenges that must be overcome.
• Volition can be equipped to engage individual challenges and reduce their power.
• Strength can endure multiple challenges, though excess challenge power drains the Fool’s vitality.
• Vitality cards replenish the Fool’s vitality.
• Wisdom deploys Helpers that double the value of Vitality, Strength, or Volition cards.
• Chance cards reshuffle all adventure cards and begin a new adventure.

The game ends when the Fool’s vitality reaches zero, or when every challenge has been overcome and the journey is successfully completed. Managing your resources and choosing which cards to carry forward are central to surviving the path ahead.

Inspired by thematic solitaire games including Scoundrel, Donsol, and Card Crawl, as well as Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth, The Fool’s Journey was originally created for the 2016 Solitaire Print and Play Contest.