Creating Custom Shadowdark Monsters With Help From The Garbage Pail Kids Tarot Cards

Photo of my recovery setup where custom Shadowdark RPG monsters are getting rolled and spiced up with Garbage Pail Kids Tarot Cards. There's dice, a dice roller tray, headphones, the Shadowdark RPG book, notepads, and the GPK Tarot Deck.

Intro | Staying Creative Post-Surgery

Hey! So I had surgery recently and am aiming to use the post op recovery window to get some ideas out (and maybe do a little solo delving). My movement is limited so hopefully all the things I’ll want are here. I thought a write up of my plans might help inspire some of you to cook up some great ideas of your own.

Got a few notebooks out. One for drawing/inking, one for ultra-quick pen thumbnails, one for any old notes that I like to have on me, and a plain paper notebook for learning and practicing some video game math stuff since I’ve been playing around with Godot and don’t want to vibe code it. Off camera is the journal I’ll use if I start up a solo adventure. For sure any adventure hook/story ideas I have will get outlined in there.

A lot of the journaling will be transferred over to my Obsidian app vault down the line, but during recovery I want to hold some damn satisfying writing utensils.

Got 3 sets of dice so that should be covered.

I often get inspired to write music right in the middle of looking at awesome art or illustrating stuff, so off-camera I’ve got my laptop and Logic ready to go. I have a template set up in Logic (that needs to be updated soon) so that I can get writing atmospheric, dark/horror, dungeon synth, and related styles of music with little friction even though the styles are different. I know these Sony WH-1000MX3 headphones aren’t as balanced as some would like for mixing but I’m used to them and can get decent rough mixes out of them most of the time.

Lastly, I’ve got some creepy YouTube videos lined up for aesthetic inspiration.

Using Tables & Tarot Cards To Create New Monsters

To stay relaxed and stave off boredom, I’m going to roll a few monsters up with help from Shadowdark’s tables. It might be the meds but I wanted to add another twist to the creations. That’s where the Garbage Pail Kids tarot deck comes in.

Shadowdark’s monster table generator and mutations table are sweet, and to add extra flavors and memorable bits, I’ll pull a few cards from the tarot deck, choosing one of them with a d6 which will help me think up some unique details to add to the monsters.

How I’m rolling these new enemies in a nutshell:

Use Shadowdark’s Monster Generator + a d20 to determine Combat, Quality, Strength, and Weakness.
Use Shadowdark’s Mutations table + a d12 to roll up to three mutations.
Use a third source + an appropriate math rock to further refine the unique flavor of your monster. In this case it’s the Garbage Pail Kids Official Tarot Deck + a d6, where I pull six cards from the deck and place them in rows, roll the die, and pick the card based on the number rolled.
1. You can get creative with what you use as a third source here. You could use other card decks or tarot decks, or use a collection of photos in an album such as animal photos, video game enemy photos, or even horror movie posters. I could go on and on. If you use a photo album I’d suggest getting exactly 20 or 100 photos together in an album, and using a corresponding die (d20 or d100) to chose the image.

You can totally use other ttrpg systems for this. Shadowdark’s my newest book and and I wanted to give it some attention here.

A selection of six tarot cards laid out on a wooden desk with a pencil and d6 die. The photo is grainy and is edited to have shades of purples and blues.

Monster #1: Cathedral Queen

I rolled up a Beastlike monster with the following attributes and mutations:

Combat	Quality	Strength	Weakness
PL+4	Beastlike	+2 attacks	Electricity
Mutation 1	Mutation 2	Mutation 3
Tentacles	+1d6 damage	Genius intellect
Item 1	Item 2	Feature 1
Wax covered sword	Feline familiar	Wax crown-like headpiece

I’m looking for flavor here so I haven’t rolled up all the stats yet. I’ve focused instead on getting one to two special items and a feature from each card, and am aiming to finish the 25 monsters in this sheet that I rolled up.

Next I’ll pull six Garbage Pail Kids tarot cards. I’m not reading the cards here (I don’t use tarot cards for divination or anything like that) so I’m not precious in how these are pulled. That’s a different subject we won’t be getting into here.

Then I’ll choose one with a d6. Rolled a 2, and got The Queen of Wands (art by Miran Kim).

A Queen of Wands card from the Garbage Pail Kids deck sits on a bed of different polyhedral dice. She sits on a throne with lion motifs, with an earwax covered q-tip going through her head via the ears, and a cat with a similar q-tip at her feet. — The Garbage Pail Kids Official Tarot Card Deck and Guidebook is written by Minerva Siegel and illustrated by Miran Kim. It’s awesome so find it if you can.

We’re looking to pull inspiration and work with elements from this card. From that giant wax-covered q-tip running through her head to the crown to the cat resting at her feet, there’s plenty to work with here when adding custom details to the monster.

The features already rolled combined with the Queen of Wands card are giving me big Demi-human Queen vibes (from the Elden Ring and Nightreign games). I really like that enemy design so it’ll serve to influence the monster design without straight up copying it.

I’ve changed the earwax-covered wand to a corpse wax-covered sword for our monster here. Yes, I’ve been on an Elden Ring kick for years now. Been living that Soulsborne life since Demon’s Souls dropped and haven’t looked back.

It would make sense for her to have a fake crown made of the same nasty death wax so that’s what she’s wearing. She’s also got a feline familiar because that rules. Maybe you can give the familiar a new and loving home if you survive fighting the Cathedral Queen.

This enemy is going to need stats, which I haven’t rolled for. I may update this post with hit points, and the rest of the stats later, but since this is about customizing monster flavors, I’ll leave the stat block up to you for now.

The first unique monster is pretty fleshed out and itching to break out of this laboratory.

Cathedral Queen -

This tentacled beastlike monster with canine features is smart, even genius. She wears a crown-like headpiece made of wax to signal her big brained rule, that other adventurers speculate is corpse wax. She's surrounded at all times by her feline familiar. Her tentacles seem out of place but allow her to grip a victim while plunging her wax-covered sword deeply into her target, often causing an extra +1d6 damage. She fears electricity, and this weakness can be used against her.

Thanks for reading this.

I am aiming to provide backstory to all 25 monsters in a spreadsheet. As of posting this, there are only three finished.

If it doesn’t happen, that’s okay, I’m not putting pressure on myself to get it all done. The main goal is recovery here, and that’s all that counts.

Hopefully this was worth your time! I’d be stoked if you got something out of it. If you did, please take a look at this humble merchant’s wares.

That’s all I’ve got for tonight. Stay healthy, be safe, and get creative.