Leigh Alexander is a writer and narrative designer focused on storytelling systems, digital society and the future. She won the 2019 award for Best Writing in a Video Game from the esteemed Writers Guild of Great Britain for Reigns: Her Majesty, and her speculative fiction has been published in Slate and the Verge. Her work often draws her ten years as a journalist and critic on games and virtual worlds, and she frequently speaks on narrative design, procedural storytelling, online culture and arts in technology. She is currently designing games about relationships and working as a narrative design consultant for game development teams. More of her projects are at https://linktr.ee/leighalexander
01/10/2025, 13:28 - Finbarre: Thanks for adding my number, grabbing a couple of buttered crumpets and I’ll be with you soon. Got the cards ready.
01/10/2025, 14:04 - Finbarre: Ready when you are, my cat (a ginger nonsense called Beigli) was trying to see your first card but has decided to perch on my desk while I’m typing instead.
01/10/2025, 14:05 - Leigh: Ready! Just let me know what to do!
01/10/2025, 14:06 - Finbarre:
Hi, Leigh. It’s Finbarre. It’s so good to be able to speak to you. I thought I’d send you a voice message to break the ice. Hope you’re having a splendid day today. You mentioned before that you have previous experience and love of the tarot. Could you in text or a voice message tell me about your first deck of cards just before we get started.
01/10/2025, 14:07 - Leigh:
Hi. Yeah, I’ve read all my life. I don’t actually remember when I started or how I got into it. Like, I just, I can’t remember a time that I didn’t have them around, like, although it’s waxed and waned. My great-grandmother that my middle name is after, she was in the French Resistance, and she apparently was a tarot reader as well. And my father, who’s usually skeptical of such matters, says that she was very gifted. Maybe it was just her speaking through me, I guess. No, I mean, I’ve always just read a really classic Rider Waite deck. I really like the Pamela Coleman Smith illustrations. I tend to be really purist in that regard. And I don’t like when people riff on the concepts too much. Although I have several decks right now. Oh gosh, I have to look up one of the names of them, but I’ll just leave this for the moment.
01/10/2025, 14:08 - Leigh: & hi nice to meet you! Thanks for having me!
01/10/2025, 14:10 - Finbarre:
It is an absolute pleasure and thank you so much for giving your time today. Now, I do have a surprise in that today we’ll be using the Phantom Wise Tarot, one of these variations on the classic Rider Waite Smith decks. I believe this is the one by... The author’s name has escaped me. It will come back to me in just a moment. The person who wrote The Night Circus made an extraordinarily gothic. Very, very stark looking Victoriana-style deck. It’s very lovely, but you’re right. It is no Rider Waite Smith. Your first card, which will be coming up, will be the Devil, because, of course, we’re coming up to Halloween, and this is Devil Season. So I’ll be asking you a question about that in a minute. But yeah, no, thank you for the insights into your family. Having family members in the French resistance, you must have stories galore!
01/10/2025, 14:11 - Leigh: Not really, I wish I knew more!
01/10/2025, 14:11 - Finbarre: Erin Morgenstern! That’s her. The official site is currently down but here’s a link for flavour
01/10/2025, 14:12 - Leigh: Ok, I’ve got the picture
01/10/2025, 14:12 - Finbarre:
My no-thoughts-head-empty cat has appeared to say hello
01/10/2025, 14:13 - Leigh: The cat knows we are in a similar state of mind
01/10/2025, 14:13 - Finbarre:
This one is your first card - The Devil. Here goes:
01/10/2025, 14:15 - Finbarre:
Speaker 1:
Thinking back of your journalism work with, say, Variety, LA Times, Kotaku, Polygon, Vice... Rock Paper Shotgun, one of my favorites, and so many more. I know that you’ve done an illustrated book called Mona. The illustrations by E.M. Carroll in that are superb, by the way. And of course, you have extensive knowledge of the computer games industry and retro games from you
r YouTube projects, plus much more. The question from The Devil is...
What powerful desires or fixations or intense drives have shaped your creative path. And how do you work with them rather than let them control you?
01/10/2025, 14:18 - Leigh:
Wow. You are able to remember more of my past journalism work than I would remember, which is impressive. So thank you so much. So these days I work as a video game developer. I’m a narrative designer, which means I tell stories through the call and response between the player and the system and self-direction in those virtual spaces. Tarot and narrative design are practically the same thing. We are sort of taking these relatively infinitely different, infinite components that can be assembled into like an infinite variety of chains of meaning. And, you know, the tarot is a narrative design system, basically, in that you can mechanically extract a few cards and then you can connect a narrative from them. And in fact, I use tarot in game design often because of sort of its classic beats in the shifting of one’s attention or one’s objective setting.
Yeah, so I guess like on the topic of the devil in general, I always think of it as a card that... provokes me to ask about agency as well as bondage. And I guess it pertains to my work in that I don’t want to tell the player something. I’m not a director of their attention. But rather, you know, I’m an enabler of their agency because, you know, whenever I see the devil and I see it fairly often, it asks me to think about where I’m giving my power away. And my work is about empowerment in a storytelling context.
01/10/2025, 14:19 - Leigh: sorry long answer lol but this is very much my kinda thing hehe
01/10/2025, 14:21 - Finbarre:
Oh never apologize for long answers here! On the subject of computer games and tarot, I know with, say, Sayonara Wild Hearts… is it the Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood I believe, have tarot motifs. Do you have a favorite?
01/10/2025, 14:22 - Finbarre: (I’m giving away my Steam library secrets here)
01/10/2025, 14:22 - Leigh:
I think a lot of video games use them over the years. I used a tarot motif in Reigns: Her Majesty, and I think probably I was thinking of the Persona series, which is one of my favorite series. But yeah, it’s all over the place. I think the combination of like arcane symbolism and a numerical structure makes it something that you can really easily apply in a lot of fantasy environments.
01/10/2025, 14:25 - Finbarre: Reigns: Her Majesty was a great game to while away my commutes with but as I played it I couldn’t help thinking that must have involved a *lot* of post-it notes dotted about your house. How do you map the narrative of these games?
01/10/2025, 14:27 - Leigh: It really depends on the tools. Reigns: Her Majesty used a procedural system to serve cards, so I was able to think of “next choice” in a modular way based on conditions player had activated and likelihoods of what they’d see next in the deck as a result.
01/10/2025, 14:28 - Finbarre:
Speaking of decks, I have them in my hand as we’re up to the second card. Tell me when to stop. I will shuffle this until you either say “stop” or type it. I’ll pull a card out and we’ll see what we get.
01/10/2025, 14:29 - Leigh: Stop!
01/10/2025, 14:30 - Finbarre:
01/10/2025, 14:31 - Finbarre: The Four of Wands there
01/10/2025, 14:32 - Finbarre: Usually a card of stability, community and getting to enjoy your accomplishments. Also, who doesn’t like cake?
01/10/2025, 14:33 - Leigh:
I associate it with having a stable energetic foundation too. Like I do a lot of my work from home and, you know, I think the independence of my workspace is really essential to everything I do creatively.
01/10/2025, 14:35 - Finbarre:
Yes, those four wands are like the stout legs of a trusty table. It’s very much a card of stability. What accomplishments or milestones do you feel proud of lately? And even better, how do you celebrate them?
01/10/2025, 14:36 - Leigh:
Oh my God, what a terrible question. I take no pride in myself. I do not celebrate myself. I prefer to dissociate when I get tired and I have celiac, so I don’t really eat cake. Yeah, I don’t know. I’m not a big self-celebrator, I guess.
01/10/2025, 14:39 - Finbarre:
Yes, my teenage daughter also has celiac disease. And every year when it rolls around to her birthday, my incredible wife will conjure up from gluten-free flour, lovely cakes, but trying to just pop out and grab one, as I’ve tried to do from local supermarkets or whatever is nigh on impossible. Our cake is great if you’re ever in the UK passing Nottingham and you fancy a gluten-free whatever and a cup of tea. You’re always welcome.
01/10/2025, 14:41 - Leigh:
Yeah, no, I guess I’m probably going to get my British citizenship revoked for saying this, but I don’t really like sweets. I’m not like a cake person. Yeah, sorry, a whole list of my food allergies comes up. So yeah, I don’t know. Maybe I’m having like a kind of Four of Wands issue right now. Um, feeding and celebrating myself. Maybe I should at least get a little vegan chocolate or something.
01/10/2025, 14:43 - Leigh: I’m such a fun interview 😂
01/10/2025, 14:44 - Finbarre:
You are a terrible influence because I now have a craving for a particular type of vegan chocolate, which is sold from one of the health food shops around the corner from me. OK, so last card. Now, this one has been picked by the previous interviewee, and that was Laura Binnie. And I said she could have any card she wanted, and she was feeling kind so she brought out The Star. So with The Star, and it’s one of my favorite cards. I have, all of the Major Arcana as pendants. I originally had just The Moon. I lost it and I thought, I’ll just replace this and then realized that all of these pendants were relatively cheap. So I got the entire set and I wear all of them as per my mood. But it’s normally The Star that comes out.
All right, what hope or guiding light do you carry into the future? For yourself or for storytelling?
01/10/2025, 14:47 - Leigh:
Man, that’s such a hard question in these times. You know, I think that the stories that we tell ourselves can be really powerful and can have the ability to... to affect our material reality. So I think maybe storytelling is one of the only tools that we still have left that the machine can’t take away from us to do magic for ourselves and for society in the future. So, yeah, I hope that storytelling continues to be a way of providing comfort in the world. Individual and collective storytelling can be a path to healing in a difficult time.
01/10/2025, 14:49 - Finbarre:
You mentioned the machine there, Leigh. Is that the implacable drudgery of the daily grind, or are we talking AI?
01/10/2025, 14:50 - Leigh: ( the fascist white supermacist machine )
01/10/2025, 14:54 - Finbarre:
Oh, I absolutely and 100% agree with that. Just today, I saw a speech being delivered by a particular president and his particular generals, and it was the most chilling I think I’ve heard possibly in my lifetime. I mean, the idea of, say... The Prime Minister of the UK speaking to a Field Marshall and speaking to you know, the Lord Admiral of the Navy and the Head of the Air Force, about getting an army to be sent into somewhere like Brighton against British citizens. We would think he was medically incapable of doing his job. You know, he would be dragged out of his post. Yeah, it’s a scary world.
So things like The Star and that incredible analysis that you gave that card. are the kind of things that give us hope. Add magic to the table. Speaking of adding magic to the day, the last thing I’d ask you to do is to gift a tarot card to the next person, and that can be any card. You could be mean and say The Tower, or you could be mysterious, give them The High Priestess or it doesn’t even have to be a Major Arcana card it could be anything it’s just a particular card that you would like the next person to think pull the card out, or if you’ve just got one in your thoughts, if you could share it.
01/10/2025, 14:57 - Leigh:
Well, I did bring my little deck. I have a Rider Waite deck, but it’s a miniature size because full-size tarot cards are too big for my hands. And these are actually smaller than playing cards, I think. I don’t know why I like them like that. Just easier, I guess. So I’m kind of torn because I could draw a card, but... I have a full-size calf tattoo of the Wheel of Fortune, and that’s the card that means the most to me. But let me see. If I ask my deck for the next person. It’s the King of Cups. Yeah, so I guess my favorite card is the Wheel of Fortune, but as suggested by the deck, you should continue your series with the King of Cups.
01/10/2025, 14:59 - Finbarre:
01/10/2025, 14:59 - Finbarre: Are they anything like these teeny ones?
01/10/2025, 15:01 - Leigh:
I have those ones but these are smaller still I think
01/10/2025, 15:02 - Finbarre: The colours of those really draw the eye, thank for sharing the snap!
01/10/2025, 15:04 - Finbarre:
Thank you very much, Leigh, for spending your time with me on Tarot DMs this afternoon. I particularly liked what you said about the Tarot being a narrative design system. Those are wise words that will be taken with me from this interview. And just as a very last question, what plans do you have for the rest of the day?
01/10/2025, 15:05 - Leigh:
Thank you, Finbarre. This has been really fun and it’s been so nice to meet you. So thank you so much for having me here. I’m going to head back to work. I can’t really say who I’m working for, but I’m doing some documentation for a client and I have fly pole class tonight. I do pole and aerial for fun. So that’s what I’ll be doing. Thank you so much. This has been awesome. Speak to you soon.