Deck of Many Things Horror Stories

[Amazing Mumford]

More "They didn't get to keep it because the DM went out of his way to make it painful to keep".

I wouldn't say the DM went "out of the way" to make keep ownership "painful"... Keep upkeep would reasonably be too expensive for a 4th-lvl PC... Check out DMG2 and Stronghold Builder's Guidebook... Also, if you're an adventuring party out adventuring, who's gonna watch the keep? Do you think it will just go unnoticed??

Anyway, oftentimes the Deck of Many Things is a bad idea, ESPECIALLY for lower-level parties. Just simply too powerful. Either reserve the thing for higher level or alternatively if you as a DM or player like the "cool randomness factor" maybe design a deck with effects that are not so powerful...

Another problem is that many of the cards are extremely vague, including the "balance" card, "fates" card, and the "throne" card (which uses both "keep" and "castle" in it's description, not necessarily synonomous terms in my opinion). Maybe house-ruling details before the item is introduced would be a good idea, that way DM arbitrariness/revenge/punishment would be avoided...

Also, I believe that you can only draw one card at a time, one per round, so the "poker" idea wouldn't really work...

 

[Jack Simth]

I wouldn't say the DM went "out of the way" to make keep ownership "painful"... Keep upkeep would reasonably be too expensive for a 4th-lvl PC... Check out DMG2 and Stronghold Builder's Guidebook... Also, if you're an adventuring party out adventuring, who's gonna watch the keep? Do you think it will just go unnoticed??

Let's see. How'd the guy I was quoting say it went?

Firstly, it was "the next day" that it was surrounded by an angry mob of villagers with "Torches and Pitchforks", where they almost got "hanged then and there". Then "immediatly" the "King's tax man" "starts writing out a bill and several fines". Granted, I'm cutting it up a bit, but this isn't upkeep that slowly makes the thing crumble to dust. It's immediate NPC action where the intent is to remove the keep from the equation. Every time the party came up with a solution to the presented problem, another obstacle was immediately thrown in their way. After a couple, they just gave up and made it someone else's problem.

Seriously. I've cut up the guy's post a bit for clarity, but that's what happened.

Anyway, oftentimes the Deck of Many Things is a bad idea, ESPECIALLY for lower-level parties. Just simply too powerful. Either reserve the thing for higher level or alternatively if you as a DM or player like the "cool randomness factor" maybe design a deck with effects that are not so powerful...

Mostly? Randomness is fairly bad. With The Deck, there's a lot of both "Very good" and "very bad" cards. No matter which way it goes, you've got problems - either a suddenly powerful player relative to the rest of the group (which causes balance issues), a character that's suddenly much weaker than the rest of the group (which causes balance issues), or a character that pretty much needs to be retired (which feels like an arbitrary death in many cases).

Another problem is that many of the cards are extremely vague, including the "balance" card, "fates" card, and the "throne" card (which uses both "keep" and "castle" in it's description, not necessarily synonomous terms in my opinion). Maybe house-ruling details before the item is introduced would be a good idea, that way DM arbitrariness/revenge/punishment would be avoided...

Mind you, unless the players already had all those rules and details in front of them before they started drawing, they couldn't know the difference.

Also, I believe that you can only draw one card at a time, one per round, so the "poker" idea wouldn't really work...

Sure it would. It just takes on oddly long time to deal.

 

[akbearfoot]

Deck of Many things is a surefire way to end your game.....all of the characters will either be completely screwed and lose all their stuff or die/be imprisoned, or they will end up lucky and get a ton of wishes and end up about 5 levels too high for you to manage.