My brother and I had a subscription to Dragon Magazine through most of the 80’s and 90’s.  Among the joys I got from those magazines was a full-color version of the Deck of Many Things.  As you can see from the pictures, after I cut them out I was smart enough to laminate them and lucky enough to have a girlfriend who volunteered to sew them a pouch from a scrap of black velvet.

For those of you not familiar with it, the Deck of Many Things was like a Tarot deck, where every card you drew had an immediate and life-changing effect.  On the upside, you could be granted experience points, magic items, a keep, or even 1d4 wishes!  Of course, on the downside, you could lose all your magic items, all your wealth, 1d4 points of Intelligence, or even your soul!

One draw and your character can be changed forever, and when you find it you can draw up to four times.  (Caveat: you have to declare the number before you start drawing, and the magic of the deck compels you to draw that number, unless one of the cards declares otherwise.)

This item had the power to alter campaigns.  Weeks of preparations could be overridden in a single draw.  No sane game master would put the Deck in a game.  Every draw had a fifty-fifty shot at ruining a character you’ve played for months or years, a character you’ve come to love.  No sane player would touch it.

Naturally, we all loved the Deck.  Maybe it was the chaos factor, maybe the risk made the rewards sweeter, or maybe we all fell victim to the psychological effect of intermittent rewards.  Whatever drove us, the Deck appeared in games again and again over the years, and though the players always fretted, almost none ever refused to draw.

To me the Deck of Many Things is a quintessential symbol of Dungeons and Dragons.  Only D&D could have produced it.  It would never have fit into a game like Runequest, and point-based games like GURPS Fantasy and Fantasy HERO would not support the mechanic.  If it had come from fiction, it would have been an ancient artifact, one of a kind and crafted by some god of fortune (or chaos) to thumb his nose at destiny.

But in D&D it’s just another magic item.  In theory, any wizard could create it with a sixth-level spell (or in later editions, Craft Miscellaneous Magic Item).  A game world could have hundreds of these decks running around.  Heck, I can just imagine some Chaotic Neutral (or Unaligned, if you prefer) wizard who cackles as he churns out a deck every few months, just to mess with the establishment.

And bless him for it.

What’s your craziest Deck of Many Things story?  Personally, I once drew Fates (avoid any situation once) and used it immediately because the next card I drew was Void (body functions but soul is trapped elsewhere).  As I recall I went on to draw Moon (1d4 wishes, I rolled a 3) and my last draw was Throne (gain 18 Charisma and a small keep).  A great set of draws, because they came up in the right order.

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