Rediculous stuff from the PC aspect of the game

[Barak]

It's a very cool item to use if you know what you are doing, because everyone knows it.

My players had to get something from a djinn merchant in the city of brass. Said merchant wouldn't sell the item to them until they had bought had least one draw each from the deck he possessed. Draws were 1000 GP each.

I had toned down some of the beneficial results. And the djinn merchant was able (for a price, of course) to remove all of the bad results. So the whole thing ended up taking lots of GPs from my players, which was my plan, since I had realized they had too much for their level. But they never knew I did it for that purpose, and, in fact, were quite happy to have gotten away "so lightly".

 

[Crothian]

I introduced the Deck of Many things to my group when they were about 7th level. 3 of the five players got keeps, though one lost his with the very next card draw. No one died and no one got anything unbalancing though I wasn't worried about it.

My favorite part about the deck was the peer pressure some of my players started to do to get others to draw more cards. It was feaking awesome!!

 

[Tolen Mar]

My PC carried a deck for three or four sessions. It was a lot of fun. He only drew once from it, which earned him a stack of gold for his troubles.

His habit was to sit and shuffle the deck when he was mulling something over. It made all the other players nervous. That is, until they realized that the only one who would be hurt was him. Then it lost its psychological impact.


(EDIT: sigh...Crothian and I appear to have joined at the same time. My post count will never come close to his...)

 

[jcfiala]

I had it come up in a 3.0 campaign based around prewritten modules, and got of fairly lightly. One person who drew was having ooc issues with other players, and (for those reasons, and not the deck), ended up leaving the game after that session, even though he'd drawn the best of any of them. No one insta-died, although one player who got 'defeat the next monster by yourself and go up a level' went up against a nasty critter and failed her save against disintegration. Beyond that, it wasn't much worse than some of the 3.0 cheese that had built up by then.

That said, I'd be careful to use it in the future - I like the idea of the guy above who used it to set up future plots, or the one who used it to drain GP from the party. That's creative use, those are.

 

[Psion]

The best use of the deck of many things that I've ever seen was in Baldur's Gate: Throne of Bhaal, where, in Watcher's Keep, you eventually get into a game with a plane traveller over a necessary item. Essentially, you and he would take turns drawing from a custom deck of many things, try to survive the result, and whoever got the most beneficial result would win that round.

One time I used a deck of many things as part of a logic puzzle. Basically, I (quite by accident) found a logic puzzle in one of those Dell magazines dealing with cards. I replaced the deck of many things cards and provided clues.

The players weren't quite up to the challenge, but got some vital clues by taking a few hits.

 

[frankthedm]

Saw this blasted thing twice, once in a bad 2e game, the other time was in a 3.0 game where the quality of players was low and the DM had stopped caring about the game and would likely end the campaing soon {one reason the deck was there]. All I remember is I got a wish and wished every one back to "normal". "In character" I did not know about all of all the permanencied effects on the other party members. Man were they pissed. That amused the dm enough that the game actaully lasted for a few more months.

 

[Prime_Evil]

I was in a Ravenloft game once where a really bad DM gave out a Deck of Many Things. In the end, the campaign was so godawful that the whole party sat down and played a hand of poker with the cards...

The look on the DM's face was truly priceless.