Deck of Many things

[oneofmanynameless]

I was considering using something akin to the Deck of Many Things from Dungeons and Dragons in an up and coming game at some point. I vaguely remember someone having made one for GURPS but I can't remember where I would have seen that. Ravensnpennies? Pyramid? On the forums somewhere?

If no one has made one I'd love any advice or input on making one.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

There's the cursing deck in DF8, p. 40, though there may certainly be other implementations of the same idea.

[dfinlay]

Originally Posted by oneofmanynameless

If no one has made one I'd love any advice or input on making one.

I don't know if anyone has made one, but my advice if you are making one is this: make sure each result will be fun on it's own. Quite often with these sorts of things, creators have a sort of balancing thing in their mind, where they throw in a bunch of good things and a bunch of bad things and think "there, now it's reasonably balanced".

The thing is, the bad things are only fun if they either lead into an adventure of some sort (such as that of trying to reverse them) or bestow a drawback that will be fun for any character build in your game to play around. You die, you can no longer cast spells, etc, are generally not fun.

Similarly, the good things are only fun (beyond that initial rush of "Yes! I got something good!") if they either lead into an adventure of some sort (such as the deck granting you a keep that you now have to either sell or maintain or the deck showing you a route to a powerful artifact) or bestow a unique and interesting ability that will be fun for any character build in your game to play around with and that won't undermine any player's build or vision of their character.

[Andreas]

The results of the D&D 3.5 Deck of Many Things could be used with just minor changes. For examples.

"Change alignment instantly." could be changed to switching your morals related disadvantages.

"Defeat the next monster you meet to gain one level." could be changed to defeat the next monster you meet to gain 30 character points.

"Defeat dread wraith or be forever destroyed." could use a more powerful version of this GURPS conversion of D&D wraiths.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by oneofmanynameless

I was considering using something akin to the Deck of Many Things from Dungeons and Dragons in an up and coming game at some point. I vaguely remember someone having made one for GURPS but I can't remember where I would have seen that. Ravensnpennies? Pyramid? On the forums somewhere?

If no one has made one I'd love any advice or input on making one.

I took a stab at it on my blog - it's one of my favorite DnD items, well, ever.

[oneofmanynameless]

Originally Posted by dfinlay

I don't know if anyone has made one, but my advice if you are making one is this: make sure each result will be fun on it's own. Quite often with these sorts of things, creators have a sort of balancing thing in their mind, where they throw in a bunch of good things and a bunch of bad things and think "there, now it's reasonably balanced".

The thing is, the bad things are only fun if they either lead into an adventure of some sort (such as that of trying to reverse them) or bestow a drawback that will be fun for any character build in your game to play around. You die, you can no longer cast spells, etc, are generally not fun.

Similarly, the good things are only fun (beyond that initial rush of "Yes! I got something good!") if they either lead into an adventure of some sort (such as the deck granting you a keep that you now have to either sell or maintain or the deck showing you a route to a powerful artifact) or bestow a unique and interesting ability that will be fun for any character build in your game to play around with and that won't undermine any player's build or vision of their character.

That's a really good point about how every result needs to be both balanced, universally applicable, and fun in it's own right. It's important. Especially considering that I had two reasons for wanting to look this up:
1. I was thinking of having my players encounter a magical carnival and one of the attractions was having their fortunes read with tarot cards... from a deck of many things where every tarot card would have a very real magic effect. So basically a deck of many things.
2. I was planning to allow my players access to the deck. Sort of along the lines of allowing them to have access to a D&D (or pathfinder) style Prestige class for a caster that was all about having and using the Deck of Many things. Ultimately I will need to look up both interesting and balanced things it could do and ways to model the deck itself as an advantage.

On the subject of 2: does anybody know of any d&d classes, or dungeon fantasy templates, or really any character templates or powers builds of any kind that relate to being a magical card slinger? (guess that's a different thread topic.)

Originally Posted by Ghostdancer

I took a stab at it on my blog - it's one of my favorite DnD items, well, ever.

I THOUGHT you had! But when I checked I couldn't find it so I thought maybe it was in a pyramid article or something! Thanks! This is awesome!

[Christopher R. Rice]

Let me know if it gets any use in your campaigns, I'm curious to see how it went. :-)

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by oneofmanynameless

On the subject of 2: does anybody know of any d&d classes, or dungeon fantasy templates, or really any character templates or powers builds of any kind that relate to being a magical card slinger? (guess that's a different thread topic.)

There are guys in GURPS Deadlands that do it but that was 3E
It was a weird kind of magic system.
For Powers each card grants a coincidence, Destiny or Curse so I could see it being modeled off Serendipty or Affliction (Destiny/Curse) for a character.

For a Tarot magic system...How about RPM with each draw being an Energy gathering attempt.
A M/VH variant of Tarot replacing Thaumatology for the Core skill.
Maybe replace the Paths with the meanings of the Tarot but I tried that for a few other systems and its unwieldy with 22 Major Arcana.
4 Suits is too limited by itself.
But if you guys like that sort of thing you could let a creative person do a spread and cast a Ritual that matched it limited to the energy accumulated by drawing cards and Tapping with no additional Gathering allowed.
Seems worth a limitation or bonus of some kind.
Hmm Major Arcana could just give a bonus with that idea, so keep Paths as Normal but certain cards give a bonus.

[Bruno]

In Deadlands, Hucksters basically drawing a hand of poker vs an (evil) spirit every time they cast a spell. Magical power is represented by the player getting to cheat and get extra card draws to build their poker hand with.

This may have changed with the Savage Worlds version of Deadlands.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by oneofmanynameless

1. I was thinking of having my players encounter a magical carnival and one of the attractions was having their fortunes read with tarot cards... from a deck of many things where every tarot card would have a very real magic effect. So basically a deck of many things.
2. I was planning to allow my players access to the deck.

There was a very old Dragon article that created a "Tarot Deck of Many Things" for A&D 2e. It was very elaborate (23 pages long) with normal and reversed effects for all the cards and not just he Major Arcana. The 22 Major Arcana are the main source for the 22 card D&D deck.

Let me look something up. Ah, it was Dragon #77 and that might be somewhat hard to find. where I looked it up and probably a collector's item in its' own right is the first volume of the AD&D Encyclopedia Magica. This also includes the original 19 card Greyhawk Deck and a 52 card Basic Deck.

In the same sort of general area that volume also has a 100 entry expanded Bag or Beans and a long "Bag of Many Things".

I'm afraid that the Gurps Magic Item books have little in a similar vein. There is a card deck based goblet intended for Gurps Goblins but like the book itself and other items for that book it doesn't translate very well.

There are a few other random items but they are very basic and use a 1D6 table.