Encounters with: Deck of Many Things

[Percivellian]

So, yesterday one of our two weekly games underwent some drastic changes! We've been at it for a few months, fairly casual in tone for this particular game - a fun, not too serious trek around the Forgotten Realms to contrast our plot intense Eberron game that runs a few days later. Our original DM, Richard, was losing interest a little, so Ion (his handle on these boards) and he agreed than Ion would DM for a bit, and Richard would pick up again later.

During Richard's stint, we had acquired a pirate's ship with a neat little orrery type contraption which, with an appropriate masterwork map under it and correct magical lens, could teleport the whole ship anywhere on that map. We used it to ship trade goods around the Sea of Fallen Stars in amazing time, and hunt down this white dragon's floating iceberg lair... it was good fun, but quite powerful for 4-5th level characters.

So, Ion took over at the end of the previous session, where a gnome from the High House of Gond was examining our little teleportation device, and testing out one of our new lenses we hadn't used yet. Everything went black, and when we came to, the ship was caught "in between" the Material and Shadow planes, where a darkened copy of Waterdeep was being ruled with an iron fist by some being the locals called Antares (never actually met him). Ship was damaged heavily, and one of our party members was frozen on the deck (Ion's former character ). Long story short: An ex-Red Wizard helped us sneak into Antares' tower to grab a map, so maybe we could use our planar device to locate a way out of this place, and instead, we found a Deck of Many Things .

Of course, everyone wanted to draw. This was terribly entertaining. The results were as follows:

Our warmage draws both Jokers in his first two attempts, which prompts a third and fourth drawing, which are... the King of Diamonds - 50,000xp! and King of Hearts - +6 to Diplomacy and a Keep! Must have hoarded his four leaf clovers for that one . The gnome (NPC taken over by Richard as his PC now) was Imprisoned, ending his session count as a player at 1 . I had my alignment changed (and so, as a cleric, access to spells from my deity it was ruled) and lost all of my possessions... but upon my third draw, had a +10 weapon randomly rolled up for me. Our barbarian got the service of a 4th level fighter, but also had a friend turn against her (yet to be revealed!). And finally, our Monk got to roll 1d4 wishes. Sadly, she rolled a 1, but she selflessly used it to free us all from 'Dark Waterdeep' and take us to the warmage's new keep.

At this point, we decided to pass some considerable time (about 5 years) as a solution to the sweeping changes that would be needed. The warmage was now 12th level after that session's XP, so 5 years to get the rest of us up to 10th level. I'm using the time to rediscover the meaning of my life through a new religious commitment (Helm now, as opposed to Corellon before) and write some back story about a quest that explains what I did with that artifact level weapon . Richard is going back to DMing and Ion is rolling up a new 10th level character, so it should be interesting to see where it goes from here?

I am curious about any other Deck of Many Things experiences you've had though. It's really a gamble, obviously. It served to revitalize this campaign, but it has the potential to utterly ruin others. Any encounters with The Deck you feel like tellin'?

~Percy

 

[Aeric]

I've run into one of these things in nearly every D&D game I've ever played. The first time, my thief (back when they were still called thieves ) got a follower and a keep, but then got the void; thankfully, one of the other players used one of his wishes to teleport us to the place where my soul was being imprisoned--in a magic orb next to the throne of a powerful demon lord. They smashed the orb and then teleported back, in the process showing us exactly who one of the other player's powerful enemy was (the demon lord). The barbarian got a ridiculously high strength and one other character went up two levels (I think), but as it was a fairly high-powered hack-and-slash game, none of it was game-breaking. The only card that really comes close to being disruptive is the one that gives you a ridiculous amount of XP; in your example, the DM fast-forwarded the game five years to catch everyone up. In the games I've played, it's just been something we've had to live with.

Most encounters with the deck tend to run like that for me--stuff is gained, stuff is lost, but ultimately most everyone comes out better than they were before. It's fun watching the PCs scramble to avoid the bad stuff; one guy got a follower, then drew the Donjon, and then his new follower drew the card with wishes on it and wished his new boss back from the Donjon! It was great.

 

[megamania]

Used but once and boy did it mess with the group!

A cleric of Kord wanted three cards. He talked his gambling buddy into two cards. Gambling buddy "accidently" took three. (we drew them in "real life" and Cleric "bumped" buddy as he drew)

I, the buddy, lost my gear, got a wicked weapon instead then was cast to hell. Thanks gambling cleric!

He got a castle, new weapon and some sort of buff.


Recently I did a version of the deck of Wonder. It was called Deck of Events. It was to be a DM tool for when I / They are stumped or bored. 24 cards. Each with a name and image (used old 1990-92 TSR cards). Somewhere in the next 12 months these events will occur.

One can summon a red Wyrmling which helped a great deal dealing with Huge elementals and fires. a few buffs have happened. Not done yet- Huge red and black dragon event cards and a demon card. As we near epic those will be useful.

 

[Ion]

I think it was this thread from a week or so ago that gave me the idea to try using the Deck.

 

[Percivellian]

The Deck of Events sounds like an exceedingly cool idea. Foreknowledge of some significant happening does seem like an excellent wake to shake players up.

Sorry for the extremely similar, relatively soon-after repeat thread, I must have missed the other one. After reading the wary and negative opinions of the Deck there, though, I am quite surprised that every single person in our group was eager to draw multiple times . I suppose if we had have been more invested in it all, the stances would have been different.

 

[Asmor]

In a headed-toward-epic game, my character was vetoed so I had to come up with something else on the spot... Complete Scoundrel having just come out, I decided on a monk loaded to the gills with luck feats and that luck feat prestige class (Fortune's Friend, I think).

One of the characters had a deck of many thing, so my character, being luck-based, said "Sure, I'll take a draw!" And sure enough, I drew the one that summons the dread wraith. A couple characters tried to help, but the DM ruled that if they killed their own wraith and then attacked mine, another one appeared for them... So a few rounds later, my "lucky" character was sent to oblivion...

I ended up playing the character's twin brother, joking about how his brother had horrible luck. Later we did the deck of many things with him and I convinced the DM to let me use 10 luck rerolls for a redraw. I drew once, got something bad, so I drew again and I honestly don't remember what it was. Not of any consequence one way or another.

 

[Monstrosity]

My players found a deck of many things while exploring old castle ruins. They recovered what they were looking for from the ruins but during the final battle in the castle 3 of the characters died horribly. The remaining characters, a sorcerer and a cleric of mask, decided to draw 3 cards each from the deck of many things, hoping to get wishes so they could wish their friends back into existence.

On his first draw, the sorcerer gets gems worth a large amount of money. He then draws the Void. The cleric, alone now, draws his first two cards and gains a major magic weapon and a small keep. On his third draw, he finally gets the card that grants him wish, but is unlucky and only gets one wish, which he has to formulate in one minute. Thinking that if he formulated his wish wrong the situation would get worse, he decides to wish for another deck of many things so he can draw the wish card again. The faces the players made were priceless. It was a mix of shock, horror and amusement.

He did end up getting another wish, after being stripped from all his possessions and having to fight a dread wraith. Getting 2 wishes this time, he wished for the rest of the party to come back to life and then wished for a third deck of many things.

 

[sydbar]

Years ago, in a second edition game, we found a deck and drew till we were left with 13 bad cards, and 1 red card, so we made a deal with the dm, that if we drew the red card, all of the black cards would be nullified, the dm weighed the chances and accepted our deal, and after using my fortune telling cards we decided on the card to pick, and it was the 5 of hearts, you never saw anybody so surprised in your life, and this is in a group that has a knack of thwarting the dm's plans, sometimes with just blind, dumb luck.

 

[Presto2112]

I haven't had much experience with the DoMT, but you've given me an idea for something to be found in the pocket of a Harvester Devil...