Deck of Many Things: Your experiences and advice?

[Twowolves]

This is called justifiable homicide.

Well, I kinda meant either remove the Void, Skull, Talons or Ruin, or "help" them get to the bottom of the deck.

I did notice that the Green Ronin deck (can't remember if the DMG suggests this too) says to replace and reshuffle each card after each draw, even from the same character. This means that one character could draw the same card multiple times. I'm inclined to only reshuffle after each character, instead of each draw. Anyone think that would make the deck better or worse?

 

[VirgilCaine]

Well, I kinda meant either remove the Void, Skull, Talons or Ruin, or "help" them get to the bottom of the deck.

Some people would say that is contrary to the spirit of the Deck.

Personally, I wouldn't risk a character on the deck, unless we had a Wild Mage with Limited Wish in the party, so he could make sure I was reincarnated as something awesome. Too much time invested ptherwise.

 

[Benben]

It's a great tool in the hands of a party's arch enemy.

In my last campaign I had a half-fey assassin with a grudge against the party get his hands on the deck. He didn't draw but he offered it to the party so they could use it.

The assassin got the better part of that deal.

 

[Rothe]

Love the Deck, as player and GM, but only have experience with the 1e version.

It can certainly destroy a campaign if you do not have some wishes handy. I don't have the info in front of me but IIRC even the worse cards could be undone by a wish.

We found it very addictive, came across it 3 times as a player in the main campaign back in the day. Drew 4 cards each time, never had anything really, really bad happen and gained 2 levels from it I think.

Any way, wicked cool in my book on either side of the table, plenty of player tension, shouts of joy, moans of pain. Just make sure you have some wishes (or the desire to rescue) so a character is not gone forever.

 

[Ciaran]

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

That looks pretty awesome. It would be tempting to use as a mundane tarot-like fortune telling deck in a D&D game.