Introducing the Deck of Many Things

[Crothian]

The Deck is a good thing. It at the very least is an adventure seed creater. Loose all your wealth? THen seek out more? Get soul trapped elsewhere? Party can adventure to get it pack? Loose some XP? Anby adventure will bring that back.

Sure, it my debalance the party but after a while that will come rebalance iteslef, things always do.

 

[Mr. Patient]

I used it as the motivator behind an entire campaign. Years ago, an evil, fiend-consorting wizard had the Deck, but her innocent six year-old daughter inadvertently got into it. The daughter drew the Skull, and was immediately slain, of course. Said wizard, having later become a vampire, tried to cut a deal with Orcus to somehow restore the daughter. The deal would have obviously involved some very bad things, so it was the party's job to prevent it. Ultimately, with the help of Graz'zt (!), they discover the means to restore the daughter, and thus placate the vampire and undo the deal. At the end of the campaign, the no-longer-quite-so-evil wizard (now a living human again) gave her Deck to the party, wanting to be rid of it. The party's wizard immediately drew the Void card, natch. But the campaign was already over, so it was just good for a laugh.

 

[Psion]

Oooh, ooh, I forgot one war story.

I thought of a cool way to include the deck. It turned out not to be quite as cool as I thought it was going to be, but was still cool.

You know those logic puzzle thingies? Y'know, that they sell on magazine stands. One of those had a nifty little puzzle where a magician (the card-trick and sexy assistant in a tux-and-tights kind) lays out cards and you have enough clues to pick the good ones out IF you think it through.

I adapted that puzzle, replaced the playing cards with DoMT cards, and replaced the magician with a capricious dragon whose challenge to the party was to solve the puzzle and pick out the right cards.

Well, my group wasn't quite up to solving the logic puzzle the way they were supposed to, but were willing to take a few "hits for the team" to get some missing peices of information and made it easier to figure out which remaining cards were where. Which I did not forsee, but in retrospect should have.

 

[The_Universe]

Queen Dopplepopolis gave the basic run down of how I've used the Deck of Many things in my campaign - my players seem to have a propensity for drawing the "wish cards" and I (as any good wish-granting entity would) always try to make sure the wish comes true, but always with something other than the intended consequence.

I've never explained the deck's presence in the game, but it does have a purpose and a long backstory - it usually crosses paths with the characters in the store rooms of wizards or sorcerers (friendly and not) and has even come to them in dream to offer its wares. What the PCs don't know is that it is the remaining embodiment for a mostly-dead demigod of chaos and malice, which is why there are *just enough* "good" consequences to make them want to start drawing cards, but as most character know, even the best result from the deck can cause problems. Just because the deck gives you a castle doesn't mean that it's in a convenient place....

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

The deck is a tricky thing. Most people, first time, will pull and pull and pull cards. These days, I would throw the thing into the ocean.

It only worked out for one PC, who ended up with his own wizard's tower with walls that secreted acid as a defense. Everyone else got into some kind of trouble with it.

While similar to the wand of wonder, in that it brings harm, heal, and chaos, I think it's a lost more potentially destabilizing.

 

[GlassJaw]

Loose all your wealth?

Lose in this case.

I played in a campaign where we found a deck. I definitely think the deck is cool but it must be used with caution. If you have some grand design of where your campaign is headed, do NOT introduce a DoMT into your campaign. If you don't have any major plot arcs currently ongoing, throw a deck at them. You'll get some plot for sure, especially if someone pulls the Void or the one where an oursider becomes your enemy. At the same time, if you are in the middle of a major story arc and someone pulls the Void, things are going to come to a standstill in a hurry.

Most people, first time, will pull and pull and pull cards.

Hmm, I found that most people will pull one or two but usually do so cautiuosly. In the group I was in, 4 out of 5 people pulled cards. Most picked 2, I think 1 person took 3. Another player didn't take any.

 

[Henry]

I never ended a campaign with it, but I screwed a couple with it. First time I used it back in 2nd edition, the player of the Dwarf Wizard (yes, that's correct) kept rolling (no cards, so we used dice) The Moon over and over! He ended up with TWENTY WISHES!!!! He used them on a Staff of the Magi, all his stats to 16 or higher, and nine levels. He was 18th level, and the rest of the party was 9th. Encounters became a bit... er, weird after that. It ended maybe a few months later.

The only time it was ever used successfully by me was ONE time, when I used it rules-correctly. Each person gets a stated number of draws, and after that they can never draw again. Everybody took somewhere between one and 4 four draws, I recall, and no one was irrevocably harmed by it. One guy got the Visier, and kept it for about 6 months before he used it, quite wisely, to avoid a death-dealing event to himself. (Kinda reminds me of Hypersmurf's Phantasmal Killer episode he recently mentioned... )

There was once upon a time a Dungeon Magazine module that used a Deck of many things as a key element to the Dungeon! However, it listed what card was attached to each entryway, so it wasn't random, per se.

 

[Tinner]

There was once upon a time a Dungeon Magazine module that used a Deck of many things as a key element to the Dungeon! However, it listed what card was attached to each entryway, so it wasn't random, per se.

So THAT's where our DM got that idea!
We recently went through this in our campaign, and it turned out fairly well.
We each had to pass through of series of strange doors. Each door was keyed to a card in the Deck. My gnome bard came away with +2 CHA, and a bunch of gp. My wife gained a level and a cohort after fighting her double.
It actually worked out quite well.
Realistically, that's the only way the deck would have been used in our game. Just handed the deck, I would have tossed it in the sea as well.

 

[Andre]

My only experience with the Deck in 3E was in a major module by a well known designer:

Spoiler

Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil

. We'd been playing the campaign for over a year and were very close to the finish. Then we encounter the Deck. I quickly explained to the others what it was (yeah, that was metagaming...) and flatly refused to draw. We walked away.

One of the absolute worst ways to use a Deck, IMO. We'd spent a year slogging through the module. We were ready to get the final payoff by stopping the bad guys. And the designer throws this monstrous monkey wrench into the module????? If we'd drawn, it almost certainly would have derailed the entire campaign. At the very least, it would have forced the GM to try to shoehorn the results into the overall arc in a manner which didn't completely shatter verisimilitude. At the worst, the entire campaign would have come crashing down.

Personally, I think the Deck should have been encountered about half-way through the module, when things really began to bog down. Integrating new characters (if necessary) would have been less disruptive, and some of the card draws could have given the party some interesting side-treks to flesh out the adventure. Putting it at the end makes no sense to me.

 

[DonTadow]

I have never seen wreck campaigns but did have two crybabies quit because they drew badly. The deck has no back story imc just legends of it appearing and either cursing the greedy or rewarding the smart.
Most were satisfied with the results since they knew either great riches or great woe could result from a draw and they were willing to lose a pc if they were unlucky.
most of the I just had in some random treasure and watch greed appear on the players faces. Once I scattered the cards through out the dungeon and the last two were in the BBEG pouch.
If your players hate to lose pcs or even get ticked when they have a bad run on the dice don't put in your game.

LOL That's funny, losing two players is not wrecking a campaign? Man what is?

I've played with it in non-structured humorous campaigns but nothing series. THey are fun to play with in campaigns that are not too serious. If you're playing that type of campaign you can do anything with them. But if you're thinking of centering a serious campaign around this deck heed warnings, tone down some of the negative and positive benefits.