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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 8663757" data-attributes="member: 6750502"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/mP3MkfR.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /><a href="https://www.dmsguild.com/product/345058/Madam-Evas-Tarokka-Deck-of-Friends-Foes-and-Fortune" target="_blank">DM’s Guild Page.</a>When it comes to the Ravenloft setting, the Tarokka Deck is perhaps as iconic as Strahd Von Zarovich himself. It plays a prominent role in each of the classic modules featuring the vampire count, from the original I6 to the current Curse of Strahd. By determining major factors of the adventure from the allies the PCs can recruit to the placement of important items in the module, it adds a sort of randomness to the composition of the castlecrawl.**Like a dungeoncrawl, but in a castle!And yet, this method of plot generation hasn’t seen much use for more general-purpose adventures in the Land of Mists or other settings. Madam Eva’s Tarokka Deck of Friends, Foes, and Fortunes expands this concept into procedurally-generated short adventures. The NPCs and plots make specific references to elements in the Curse of Strahd modules, although many of them are generic enough to be repurposed for other adventures. There are 40 unique NPCs in this book, each corresponding to a “common” card of the Tarokka deck, whose role in the story can differ depending on whether the cards mark them as friend, foe, or quest-giver.Basically, the DM separates the Tarokka Deck into a Common Deck of suites (hearts/glyphs, diamonds/coins, etc) and a High Deck of major cards (jack, queen, king, and joker cards). Between gaming sessions the DM draws three cards from the Common Deck in unconventional orders. The results will generate one NPC who plays a role in the Objective (patron, quest-giver, etc), another as a Friend to serve as their ally, and a final card as a Foe to hinder the party’s progress. The High Deck is typically drawn from zero to three times and provides optional setbacks, twists, and overall complications to the plot and which modify one of the Common Deck NPCs.As the book’s entire contents can be accessed via the preview option on the Guild page and detailing every character would be beyond the scope of this review, I’ll instead cover the cards in broad strokes while highlighting some of the more interesting results.The High Deck cards are not meant to provide results on their own so much as add something to an NPC that is not part of their default entry. The results are rather open-ended in what they can do, although some have more specific effects such as particular monsters. Some of the more interesting results include Dark Lord (the NPC is secretly in service to Strahd or an appropriate Dark Lord), Ghost (the NPC is an undead but is unaware of their state or how they came to be so, along with a list of small enhancements to a stat block), Innocent (the NPC has good intentions for their goals in this particular adventure, even if they overall aren’t good-aligned), and Mists (the Mists gradually close in on the PCs during their mission, spawning monsters if they tarry for too long or are slow in their progress).One particular result, the Artifact, makes the NPC be in possession of a powerful artifact, with a list of existing suggested ones as well as a new one: Madam Eva’s Tarokka Deck. This particular deck is actually of legendary rarity rather than being an artifact proper, and is drawn from like the Deck of Many Things save that the results are one of the 14 High Deck cards. The results vary from beneficial to deleterious, and some of them are pretty cool. Darklord for example, has the card-drawer gain a temporary audience with Strahd in a conjured demiplane where he is obligated to answer a question or perform a favor that won’t be harmful to him.The Cards of Swords are themed around those driven to fight and otherwise pursue a life of violence. They include such figures as Arlenna Naskovna the militia woman-turned-werewolf; the lumberjack Theodosia Hezekiah who finds herself barely in control to a building anger that seems to lie in wait like an opportunistic monster; an undead vigilante known as the Hood who believes that adventurers are a plague on Barovia whose quests and activities bring collateral damage to innocent villagers; and a cursed warrior known as They of Battle forced to serve as the embodiment of war and is enthralled to their hellspawned nightmare mount.The Cards of Stars are those people who are touched in some way by magic, even if they themselves do not wield the arts of spellcasting. They include the four-armed drow Eve “Four-Hands” Heron who finds her new life as a hedge witch in Barova preferable to the unspoken horrors of the Underdark; the tiefling Magdalene Zajic who believes that a dread entity lurks in one of Barovia’s lakes and gathered a group of followers to worship and protect it; and the doppelganger Prosopon whose discovery of souls being trapped in Barovia drove them insane, and thus seeks to “free” these unfortunate people by taking on as much of a victim’s identity before killing them.The Cards of Coins are those who engage in trade, artisanship, and the various tasks necessary for the maintenance and upkeep of feudal fantasy living. They include the swashbuckling skeptic Melusine Ember who doesn’t believe in monsters and believes them to be trickery and superstition with the culprit being human evil instead; the skilled thief Indra Sejdrescu who is in indentured servitude to a nobleman for being caught in the act; the conflicted and semi-corrupted tax collector Henly Beumont who earnestly seeks to use funds to improve the lot of Barovia’s commoners but finds the accumulated wealth too tempting not to indulge in; and the Scroogelike Drisden Von Polvinch who forged a pact with the Dark Powers for wealth and luxury, but found himself eternally haunted by three warring ghosts who all seek to use him for their own ends.The Cards of Glyphs detail those who don’t fit anywhere else or who otherwise have unique magical features. They include the gnomish shepherd Omolara who discovered the secret to herding a huge clowder of cats and hires themselves out to villages as a ratcatcher; the firbolg revolutionary Szandor Zadijic who sought to overthrow Strahd only to end up shackled in the middle of a village to starve to death as a witness lesson to all who follow in his footsteps; and the vampire priest Athan Caltvic who pretends to be a redeemed monster in service to the Morninglord but still feeds on blood via the use of medical leeches.All of these NPCs have roughly 1 to 1.25 pages devoted to their backstory, personality traits, and overviews for Objective adventures, the assistance they can provide as a Friend, and why they’d oppose the PCs as a Foe. The potential adventures can provide a lot of variety and inspiration for a DM. For example, let’s do a randomly-generated reading right now:We draw the 3 of Stars, ending up with the half-elf enchanter Aelwen as the Objective, the 2 of Swords for the paladin Sir Reginold Dawnbreak as the Friend, and the Master of Coins for Luciel Menze as our Foe. And just to make things interesting, we’ll draw a High Deck card for the Friend: the Executioner.So from these results, Aelwen tries to sell some potions to the party in the village of Vallaki, and then confiding that her pet pig Henry can answer questions in the form of prophecies via causing temperature fluctuations in water (steam for yes, iced over for no, undisturbed if unclear). She uses a free demonstration to prove its foresight, and requests the party to escort her and Henry to the Wizard of Wines for safety in fear that Strahd’s minions will use the pig for foul ends.Our good friend Sir Reginold Dawnbreak is a traveling paladin and servant of the Morninglord, who is impulsive and is more at home in solving straightforward problems like smiting undead rather than more morally complicated scenarios. Aelwen’s task isn’t exactly his strong suit, but it would be beneath him to let such a potent tool fall into the hands of evil.Our foe is Luciel Menze, a local guide who specializes in learning and selling the secrets of the rich due to his family being ruined at the hands of the Wachter family of Vallaki…or so his story goes. A pig which can predict the future would be a massive asset to Menze’s operations, so it’s no question that he’d try to claim the swine for himself. It’s nothing personal, merely business.As for Sir Reginold Dawnbreak, the Executioner indicates that death’s door lurks close to him, either due to a desire to slay someone or to be slain themselves. Perhaps he’s become victim to a necrotic disease eating away at his body, or must find and slay a particular monster before it can complete a ritual to destroy an innocent soul. So a powerful divination spell can point him in the right direction for a rescue or cure, which will make him eager to get Henry to safety in Vallaki so that the animal can perform its work without the threat of sabotage.All this took was the drawing of four cards and a few minutes of thought in linking the NPCs together.Thoughts: Madam Eva’s Tarokka Deck of Friends, Foes, and Fortunes is a short yet indispensably useful addition to coming up with short quests on the fly. It can be adopted for non-Ravenloft campaigns with minimal tweaking (although still hews closely to horror and dark fantasy), and many of the NPCs can be useful characters for adventure ideas on their own outside of the quest-generating card system.</blockquote>

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