Ways to play

1. Name the system. 10 minutes. Write one sentence at the top of the sheet: who decides, what they decide, and with which resources. For example: “Forty researchers decide how to spend a shared grant budget each quarter.”
2. Set the doors. 5 minutes. Put the two jokers on the table. Entry: how does a person come in? Exit: how does a person leave, and what can they take with them? Write one line under each joker.
3. Lay out the suits. 5 minutes. Sort the deck into its four suits. Put each suit in its own row, face up.
4. Pick one card per suit. 20 minutes. For each suit, ask its question (see the four suits above). Each person can propose a card, and the table chooses one. Read “Use it when” on the card’s page before you decide.
5. Test the set. 20 minutes. For each card on the table, read “Watch out for” aloud. Ask: does another card on the table stop this failure? If not, change a card or add one. A suit can hold two cards. Keep the full set to eight cards or fewer.
6. Write it down. 10 minutes. Write one line per card: the card, why it is there, and what it must not do. Take a photo of the table.

As in Texas hold’em, every group plays the hand it gets, and the hands are shown at the end.

1. The deal. Split the room into groups. Deal each group the two jokers and one or two cards from each suit.
2. Build an organization. Create an organization that works with your hand. Name the entities in it, for example members, a treasury, a council or contributors. Use the mechanisms on your cards to describe how these entities interact. The jokers tell how people come in and how they leave.
3. Find the loopholes. Attack your own design. Where can someone cheat, take over a vote, or leave with more than they brought? Read “Watch out for” on each card’s page.
4. The showdown. Bring the groups together. Each group describes its organization to the whole room: the entities, how they interact, and the loopholes it found.
5. Reorganization. If you have time, each group draws two or three more cards and shows how the new cards change its organization.

Not recommended, unless your group lives and breathes governance.

Each player draws a random card without looking at it, and holds it so that the others can see it. On the forehead works. Take turns asking the others questions about your card: “Do I decide anything?” “Do I need a token?” “Can a whale game me?” The first player to name their card wins.

Read a real DAO

Pick a DAO the group knows. Find the cards it uses today, one suit at a time. A suit with no card is not a missing part. It is a part that nobody designed.

Fix a failure

Start from a failure that happened: a large holder buys a vote, turnout drops, a treasury is drained. Use “Watch out for” to find the cards that let it happen. Then find the cards that would have stopped it.

Primavera De Filippi, who studies blockchain governance at the CNRS in Paris and at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center, once said she would use this deck to tarot her DAO. So, shuffle. Draw three cards for your DAO: where it comes from, where it stands, and where it goes. Read them together. No refunds on prophecies.