Never Deal Me The Odds? 1 Star Reviews of the Deck of Many Things (D&D5e)
Sometimes, there might not be enough in a product for me to put out a meaty review. For everything else, there's Mastercard….Actually, instead what I do is find 1 Star Reviews of the product (See Disclaimers) and use those to help me inspiration to comment on the product.
The Deck of Many Things has a long history in D&D. I know this because the recent book "The Book of Many Things" that came with the special version of the deck told me so. As one of the last products before we get the "5.5e" series of books later this year, This Deck/Book is all about the lore behind this magical deck of cards and how you can use them in your Dungeons & Dragons games.
The Cards Made Our Healer Disappear!
In case you aren't away, The Deck of Many Things is a magic item for D&D. The deck is the ultimate gamble for your players: is it worth pulling a card if there's a 50% chance of greatness? What if I told you there's also a 50% chance that is royally screws over your character as well? The way the Deck works is that a character declares how many cards they wish to draw. Then, the character draws that many cards, one at a time. Each one has an effect that resolves immediately. If they don't continue to draw the cards they declared, the cards will be drawn automatically for them after a period of time.
What types of effects are in this deck? It ranges from getting a ton of gold, maybe getting a castle for yourself, or being able to cast the "Wish" spell a certain amount of times. However, it also has the ability to instantly teleport you to a dungeon on a magical plane, imprison your soul in a random object of the DM's choosing, or summon an avatar of death that immediately kills you. If that wasn't bad enough, characters that die from the avatar of death are resurrected and become a part of an unholy mob of creatures who have also been killed by the Deck.
The product "The Deck of Many Things" from Wizards of the Coast contains a physical copy of the in game "Deck of Many Things". This way, introducing the Deck to your players can be even more memorable as there is a tangible deck of cards for the players to draw when they decide to use the deck. The product also comes with "The Book of Many Things", which is an aide for the DM on the lore of the deck and new ways to use each of the cards as they get drawn.
Maybe It's A Sign?
Do not use that deck of cards! You've just doubled your chances of badness - someone is playing a bad trick on you. Probably one of those Fey that roam around getting people to use the Deck. What am I talking about? The Book of Many Things talks about how there are many (heh) Decks scattered among the multiverse. There are also several different groups of people that devote their lives to either obtaining or spreading these Decks to/from people. The Solar Bastion tries to keep the Decks from falling into the hands of innocent people. The Grim Harrow are the mob of undead I mentioned earlier - all of them fell prey to the Deck and now are trying to destroy all the decks (no matter who is holding them) in the hope that it will end their curse. Rifflers are the Fey that try to spread the Decks around and cause chaos and manipulate the multiverse to their whims.
In the past, there have been ways to include the Deck of Many Things into games, even using physical playing cards to similar the different cards. What the Book of Many Things does is make the Deck into the central event of your next campaign, instead of a one-off reward. Players draw the Throne card that gives them a keep, but the DM isn't prepared with one? Boom - there's a whole chapter with a pre-fab castle available to drop on your players, even with NPCs and mysteries to unravel as they explore their new castle. The pre-fab castle even has a cute ghost cat called Gus! If players are nice to it, it'll even stay and hang out with the party - I mean that's just asking for it to be the new favorite aspect of your D&D game
If you like the idea of the Deck of Many Things, but are still coming up with your next D&D campaign, there's help there as well. There's a separate booklet that talks about how to use the cards in a tarot-style reading. You can either have a fortune teller in the game use it to read the fates of your players, or shuffle up the deck and use it for plot inspiration. Just like in a tarot reading, there's different meaning based on the orientation of the cards when they are drawn and where they are laid out at, so it can be used as a plot generator when you get stuck.
Not What We Expected
Sure, the decks of cards don't have words on them, just like your standard tarot cards. But the Book of Many Things isn't exactly perfect either. You'd think the book would start out with the classic "here's what each card does", but it doesn't. You still have to reference the Dungeon Master's Guide to see a concise list of the standard card effects. What the Book of Many Things does is take each card and use it as a theme for each chapter. So it talks about the different card effects in several places in the book, but I couldn't find an easy reference guide.
I understand the thinking behind organizing the Book by theming the chapters, but the execution is kind of poor. There's a couple of really good standout chapters in the book - the keep described in the "Throne" chapter is pretty sweet. The "Donjon" chapter and the "Void" chapters also have dungeons that are really creative and would be cool to insert into a D&D game. But then there's also several chapters where it's nothing but tables on how to generate X or Y using the cards as a GM, or a listing of magic items that are themed around the Deck. In some of the chapters, it'll reference some of the organizations I mentioned above, but just say that it's covered in Chapter X. How about you briefly cover it in the beginning so I don't have to flip back and forth between the different chapters just to understand the current chapter I'm on.
Looking online, this product is listed originally for $100. Luckily, you can get it for much cheaper going through Amazon. Considering we are basically at the end of an edition, as people are waiting to see what the new books offer, this is a very niche product to be asking $100. At that price, it also needs to be hits across the board, not just a couple of chapters here and there. The presentation is really nice, and it looks nice on a shelf and/or on the table, enticing players to draw from it, but it's still the type of product that not every DM is going to want to include in their game. There are other third party decks available for far cheaper that you can use with the descriptions in the DMG to add to your game. Technically, you could even still get "The Book of Many Things" on D&D Beyond for $30 and use a regular deck of playing cards. That's probably a much better value than getting the $100 bundle.
Conclusion
While niche, people that are always DMing different D&D games will get a lot of use out of this product.
The $100 price tag is a bit stiff, but getting it at a good discount would definitely make it a better value vs. what comes in the included Book of Many Things.
Does a Ghost Cat need a Ghost Litter Box? Also, do you need to spay/neuter a ghost cat to keep the feral ghost cat population down?
Notes/Disclaimers: These reviews are all fake. Some have elements from other amazon products reviews I've found but I reworded/edited them for humor/relevance. This "review" is also based on the product itself, I have not had the chance to play this in an adventure. Also, I generally assume I know nothing. So if I've missed something, let me know in the comments. Or let me know on Facebook. If you like these types of posts, consider subscribing to our patreon. Lastly, thanks to Wizards of the Coast for providing a review copy of this box. Oh, and don't draw *too* many cards….