Deck of Many Things: Your experiences and advice?

[Mark Hope]

Born bad!

Define "pretty awful".

Talons, Void, Flames - that kind of thing. Pretty awful

Unless the character had specific reason to use his Wish that way, he wouldn't. And other PCs would not necessarily "know" he'd drawn a wish. Why would they moan and complain about their faithful directions? They would have been happy and blissful.

Absolutely. My gf (who was a player in that game) was saying exactly that when I was writing the post earlier on. But players don't always keep those things in mind when their characters are being screwed over, do they?

It all depends on wording too! Worship of this "roll 'em" deity did not necessarily mean they no longer worshipped their former deity. It is not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Oh, his wording was pretty watertight, lol. The player in question is a fiendishly clever fellow - kept me on my toes for years. Still haven't quite recovered, lol...

You never should have left the other players pressure anyone. And their alignment should have instantaneously become evil when they assassinated their ally. The dragon would likely have slain them where they stood.

Couldn't agree more. Very bad of me. But it was either that or end the campaign. We went with the lesser of two evils, and came away with a cool story to tell - one which still makes us laugh 14 years later. Oh, and speaking of alignment, most of the party was evil to begin with anyway

There is another thread where a DM asked about "negative XP awards" (aka XP loss) and I disagreed, but you've just hit on a sour note where I would have penalized them harshly for using foreknowledge they would no longer have: if the dragon's hoard was not found and the dragon was not defeated, they do not have that knowledge.... Period.

Well, we didn't take it all so dreadfully seriously at the time - it was all quite a laugh to be honest. We had a blast, and that's all that matters. I'm not saying I would handle it that way these days, now that I'm all grown up ( ). But at the time, such was the game that we played.

 

[gunter uxbridge]

I have seen it used twice. Once as a player and once as a DM.

As a player...pulled three cards (L12 Wizard/Evoker). I lost all of my worldly possessions (including spell book) and gained a brand new figurine of wonderous power. Oh...I also shot up two or three levels.

As a DM...it really screwed up the game. One player lost levels, one gained (so now the group had characters running from 12th - 16th level) and some other bad stuff. It didn't KILL the campaign, but it wrapped up soon after.

Personally, I would never throw it into a campaign unless it was winding down anyway. Its fun, but it has CONSEQUENCES.

 

[Pramas]

Many of the effects of the DMG Deck of Many things (don't know about the Green Ronin version) equal death.

It's the same artifact from the DMG, we just made a physical deck of tarot-sized cards out of it. You can see pictures here:

http://www.greenronin.com/catalog/grr3004

 

[Kafkonia]

I'm intendig to offer it to the PCs in the higher-level evil campaign in a few sessions. I figure that either they'll get what they want, or they'll get what they deserve.

 

[billd91]

I'm intendig to offer it to the PCs in the higher-level evil campaign in a few sessions. I figure that either they'll get what they want, or they'll get what they deserve.

That's pretty much my thoughts as well. I have had PCs run into such Decks before in 1st edition games. I just put one in my 3.5e adaptation of the original Ravenloft (yes, there was one in that module back in the day) and the PCs have just recovered it. Should be interesting to see what, if anything, they do with it. They seem awfully cautious about it right now.

 

[Mark Hope]

I just put one in my 3.5e adaptation of the original Ravenloft (yes, there was one in that module back in the day)...

Heh, yeah, that's the one that I found as a player. Right before Strahd polymorphed me into a chicken and drained me down to 6th level, as I recall...

 

[Twowolves]

If the 10th level character meets a lonely kobold, that's it! If it's a demonic critter, same thing!

You "can" seek a CR equivalent fight, but I always ran it as a standard encounter, with other characters stepping in if things go awry (forfeiting the bonus if it happens).

I always awarded XP equivalent to the next level to even out the process: that way, if you're missing 200XP for your next level, you don't feel robbed...

Well, by "CR equivalent" I meant something that would definately be a difficult challenge for the character. The adventure the deck would be in would make it impossible for a character to "solo" any single fight in it, thus the "arena out of space and time" idea. If the PC doesn't win, they would be put right back where they were with the same hp/spells/etc they had before the challenge. In any case, I think the xp gain/loss will be capped. At 10th level, gaining 50,000xp would be 4 or 5 levels!

Would the deck be more managable if the nasty things weren't essentially "wish immune"? That way, one draw of the Moon could at least reverse the worst of the bad draws? Of course, a DM could always just.... stack the deck.

 

[Lanefan]

I love these things! I've never met the original as a player, though I've used it as DM a few times; but I've met an alternate "Deck of Destinies"...I'm not sure if our DM dreamed this up or got it from a module (would have been Return to White Plume if he did) which is even more earth-shaking than the old DoMT, if such is possible.

I also designed a pair of dice - d6's, each with a little picture on each side - that worked like a DoMT. After an adventure (designed by Loki, god of chaos, to pay the party back for some past dealings) each character was given a set of these dice as their reward, by a minion of Loki. Everyone stated they were rolling, so I went around the table in order left to right...and the first player rolling for the first character got the "turn to ash in a blaze of fire, forever gone" roll...and all those who hadn't rolled yet went kinda white.

The rest of the rolls went much better, overall...various people permanently gained on stats, one got complete immunity to fire, and so on...but it wasn't all perfect.

Lanefan

 

[Mark CMG]

Deck of Many Things: Your experiences and advice?

It can defiinitely ruin a campaign. You might want to have an alternative to whatever a cards do, provided the whole group agrees. A sort of safety valve that allows the PCs to go on some sort of quest in exchange for not having the negative (or positive) effects from the cards pulled. You might also want to go through and remove some of the nastiest cards or any that your group would find completely out of line to spring on them.

 

[VirgilCaine]

Would the deck be more managable if the nasty things weren't essentially "wish immune"? That way, one draw of the Moon could at least reverse the worst of the bad draws? Of course, a DM could always just.... stack the deck.

This is called justifiable homicide.