Form Letter Chronicles: Deck of Many Flings
To everyone who posted comments or sent me emails on Friday’s comic and post, thank you. It means a lot to me. Your stories and encouraging words hit home with me and several commenters as well. It created an awesome community of supportive people, which is always a great thing. I will continue to work to stay up here out of the well and help anyone else who needs a sympathetic ear. Like I said, we can all do this.
Today brings another installment of the Form Letter Chronicles featuring a variation on one of the most iconic items in history of gaming.
I have a love/hate relationship with the Deck of Many Things. Over the years as a player, I have run across the deck a few times (drawing a few cards each time because why the hell not). As a DM, I have used the deck twice. In every instance, the deck produced some of the greatest gaming stories I have ever been privy to and in every instance the deck RUINED THE CAMPAIGN.
Every time.
It raises the question as to why DM’s would ever inject such a tool of pure chaos into a campaign and expect anything less but I think that is the appeal. There is a genuine sense of excitement that comes along with drawing cards, gambling with your characters life, and possibly hitting the mother load. Sure, you could end up nude, broke, soulless, dead, or worse but when that deck of cards hits the table, 90% of the gamers walking the planet lose their shit. We abandon reason (DMs and players alike) but like I said, I think that is the fun of it all and really, when it comes down to it that is what it’s all about.
Everyone should experience the deck once in their lives. Once.
As for the Deck of Many Flings, that was a legit half-joking proposal I made to a gaming publication for a February issue. They could have at least kissed the rejection letter with some lipstick in honor of the occasion. I know folks will ask, so here is full list of the cards and their effects.
- Balance – Changes the character’s sexual habits (the chaste become promiscuous, vice versa)
- Comet – If the character’s next orgasm occurs during a meteor shower, gain a level.
- Donjon – Don Johnson appears. Let fate take it’s course.
- Euryale – Causes a permanent penalty on all saving throws vs. disease
- Fates – The Fates arrive and they are ready to party. When the party ends, they divine your next sexual encounter.
- Flames – It’s as bad as you think it is. You’ll need to see a cleric no lower than 14th-level.
- Fool – A spectral prostitute appears, seduces you, and takes all of your gold.
- Gem – A wealthy patron offers to trade you immense wealth for a single favor. A sexy favor.
- Idiot – The character’s Intelligence score is permanently lowered and you forget how to have sex.
- Jester – The opposite sex finds you hilarious. This does not guarantee sexual encounters but it does give the character a +4 bonus on all Charisma-based checks.
- Key – No chastity belt is safe from your charms.
- Knight – A handsome knight appears to love you, valorously.
- Moon – You now like big butts and you cannot lie (about that).
- Rogue – An NPC friend will attempt to seduce the characters lover.
- Ruin – The Terrasque appears and is ready to get it in there. Run.
- Skull – Undead creatures love you. LOOOOOOVE you.
- Star - You are transported to the Midnight Glade. The Fey King Winter is here. Seduce him and gain a level.
- Sun – You are transported to the Marital Meadow. The Fey Queen of Summer is here. Do it up, Tiger and gain a level.
- Talons – DICK TALONSSSSSSSSSSSS. DICK TALONS!
- Throne – The characters Charisma increases by 4 points and they now own a high-class bordello in a capital city. Nothing trashy. All classy.
- Vizier – The character learns the secrets to satisfying any lovers deepest desire and is immune to all sexually transmitted diseases.
- The Void – You no longer derive any pleasure from sex.
I put the Deck of Many Things into almost every campaign I have. I’ve yet to have it ruin a campaign fortunately, but yeah, that degree of chaos is something that tends to attract people for some reason. 🙂 I even had one PC get Donjon and vanish – so the rest of the group searched for a way to rescue him. They did – but one of the PCs had to give up a portion of their soul to do it.
That is awesome.
Deck of Sexy Things
I also putted it in a couple of campaign but the players were too scared to use it 😀
Speaking of random chaos, I highly recommend to all of you to watch the Spoony Experiment’s “Counter Monkey” episode entitled “Vegan Steve & The Djinni of Jengai Fomogo.” This is the height of Deck-of-Many-Things related madness.
This reminds me of the time I had to make home brewed sex rules for a Changeling, the Dreaming campaign I ran in college. Good times…
Did you ever see the “official” handbooks for Sex in D&D? Save vs. Herpes
That was one of the funniest/weirdest books I ever read.
Speaking of Changeling, The Dreaming, we had a DOMT show up in our LARP. It was pretty insane. The very first card was Death, and of course the combat monkeys jumped in to try and help… very nearly lost six characters that night.
Later, someone else got their hands on it. They asked me what it was, and I told them it could grant great power but at the same time, I warned him of the many dangers… He turned to one of the others and said “What do you think?” “I think I’d like to see what you do.” and promptly used Tip of the Tongue to make him forget that I had mentioned any dangers…
So.. yeah… a Nocker who wound up with NO Crafts skill, and who lost everything… It was pretty sad.
I had a DM that once used cards from a Deck of Many things as part of a series of dungeon traps. In order to open some doors you had to effectively draw a card from a Deck of Many things. Our group lucked out and got three good draws, much to our DM’s consternation, since he seemed determined to make some really dangerous traps and instead ended up rewarding us. None of us dared draw more than necessary though.
That is where players fall down, I believe. It’s easy enough to draw one card and be done (for good or ill) but NOOOOOOO, we have to draw 2-5.
Oh.. also, with regard to the Deck ruining campaigns, you’d want the version I came up with. Basically, a Deck of Minor Things. Standard Poker deck, all single-shot bonuses or penalties. Things like ‘The next object you purchase from a merchant will be bought for whatever they paid for it’ or ‘You may cast Magic Missile as a mage of your level once’, on the good side, to ‘You are automatically Surprised at your next encounter with the undead’, or my favorite: ‘You are ravenously hungry until you have eaten ten days worth of rations/meals. This does NOT increase your ability to consume more food.’
We had one turn up in a Ravenloft campaign. Only time I’ve seen a player weep at drawing the Tower.
We just started a Pathfinder campaign last Sunday. The GM put on the table the critical hit deck, the critical fumble deck, and the deck of many things. I am already scared…
The Critical Hit deck is amazing and terrifying. I used it for a short time during my first foray into Pathfinder. Everyone loved it until they discovered I allowed major “boss” villains to access the deck as well. A few maiming criticals later and the players begged for it to be removed from the table. I can only imagine the Fumble deck will be much the same.
Was the critical hit deck as crazy as the critical hit tables from 2nd ed combat and tactics? Leg severed severe bleeding… I used that so much one guy was thrilled to have his wooden leg cut off (real leg lost in a previous encounter) and thus he took jo damage. I thought about picking up that critical miss deck…
…
And now a thought strikes me….
Do Big Bads in Karthun have “Limit Breaks” too?
The critical fumble deck… don’t get me started on that one.
We had a new party member about to enter the campaign, so we planned a little ‘side-dungeon’ to learn him the basic and to get his character’s level up to par with ours. Each of us used a side-character. During the final fight, our palladin rolled a natural 1, drew a card from the deck, and beheaded the character we were about to enter into the main campaign XD Needless to say, he had to roll a new character after that.
My question is, what is that knight’s pin pinned to?
His chest. That son of a bitch is hardcore.
(It’s just pinned to the cloak and draped over his shoulders)
That must be one heavy brooch, or his cloak should be throttling him! 😛
Ok Now you need a New Kickstarter to get those cards printed! Thats awesome. Making a small deck of cards shouldnt cost too kuch right? Or you could do a freeish version n people can print em and put them in magic card sleeves. Awesome idea. Awesome that its Bob. And yes a normal deck of many things is also awesome!
One method I use to incorporate the Deck of Many Things into a campaign relatively safely, was to have it in the possession of a mysterious NPC, kind of like a fortune teller in a small tent. It can be planned or included on a random encounter table. The characters could draw from the deck, either under the impression it’s just a harmless fortune reading, or perhaps less in-game knowing what will happen. They can pay per card or it could be free, perhaps alluding to some deeper design. But it is true, that the Deck is absolutely a game changer. Temptation to fudge the result ran high, but you have to let the cards fall where they may in the end.
If my friends and I ever get our Pathfinder group off the ground, I swear as potential future GM to put a Deck of Many Flings into as many campaigns as I have to until someone finally draws the Ruin card. “Upon drawing the card, the earth behind you bursts apart as the terrible Tarrasque claws its way to the surface with an ungodly roar, its titanic one-eyed wonder weasel twitching in anticipation. If you get caught, it’s a DC 40 Fortitude Save vs. Wrecking That Ass.”
Ha ha ha! Oh, Bob, you never do anything halfway, do you?
I love the idea of using cards to create chaos! Chaos makes challenge, challenge makes fun! Heck, let’s make it a magic system! Or center a campaign around it…
The Demigod hero Surath, driven mad by powers unknown, seeks to use the unbelievably powerful “Fate Trumps” to bring anarchy and destruction to both this world and the worlds beyond. Your party has been chosen by the gods themselves to eliminate Surath before the damage is irreparable! Beware, however, for your party will not be immune to the effects of…THE DECK OF DOOM!!
Just thought of something else…Anybody know the “Amber” series? In those books, some of the characters communicated/teleported via cards with the portraits of those who were contacted, called “Trumps.” That would be a good tool to have for parties who split up for one reason or another, if it doesn’t exist already.
You know, a few weeks back by Badass Werewolf Duke had an encounter with a magical STD and a Nat 1 on the doctors diagnosis roll. Now he is a Duchess 50% of the time…
The Deck of Flings in the blog post kinda reminds me of that, some of the options would have been less evil to my character. Even the mean options.
On the plus side I did get to increase my Charisma score by 4. Men and women love me. Though I’m now considered beautiful, even when I’m a man. I’ll never be called handsome, kinda like an Elf. Which works because my aura now matches an Elf ancestor from 7000+ years ago even though I’m a human/werewolf.
I have never used/experienced the Deck of Many Things/Flings, but I don’t think anyone can deny that sex is a game breaking weapon in D&D. Why oppose Vecna when you can set him up with Ioun? Why ask the duke for the plot-advancing MacGuffin as a reward when you could demand a night of carnal pleasure with his daughter? WHY FIGHT THE YUAN-TI CHAMPION WITH SWORD AND SORCERY WHEN YOU CAN KILL HIM WITH YOUR $&#*ING KEGELS????
I have no feelings on this matter whatsoever.
I had the BEST time with a DoMT…. the entire party had pretty much wiped out to the last man (me) battling a Lich… I was playing a thief/cleric, so I checked out the treasure before starting the healing that would bring around the main cleric for the resurrections…. and came across the Deck. I basically tucked the entire deck away in my bag and went about my business. No one asked about it, they were all so grateful I had been able to end the Lich and bring everyone back, they let the “private treasure session” pass, since I left most everything else there. And then I waited. For YEARS. The DM had forgotten about it and we were up against it in the worst way, and this epic badass had us trapped and was monologuing and I actually got him to “pick a card”…. and even though it wasn’t the BEST one he could have gotten, the DM’s face when I informed him the bastard’s magic items all disappeared was something I will always cherish…
Dammit, now I’ll have to come up with variants of these Decks that match the Pathfinder Harrow Deck. And I’ll have to get another Harrow Deck just to mess with players.
Love the idea of a deck of minor things! Totally stealing that!
Ah, chaos. In the first campaign I DMed the incredibly meek guy who played the incredibly meek healer brought in a sourcebook. It detailed rules for having the DM create a rod of wonder type item with custom effects, frequently much more powerful. Well I got talked into making the thing, and that meek little healer bought SIX of the rods. SIX. IT WAS A PER DAY EFFECT. Every time there was a lull in the action she’d swing the rods just to see what happened.
IMPOSSIBLY, the rails survived mostly intact and the campaign went to its conclusion, albeit in a manner exponentially sillier than predicted. But that doesn’t mean that the very last session didn’t get an ending of the last remaining player character arc resolving itself when said healer’s missing father finally showed up and turned out to be the god of chaos who fought the now-epic party for shits and giggles… without surprising a single player.
So I showed this to the our DM after she said she’d never use the Deck of Many Things in her game.
Lo and behold a few sessions later…… This showed up.
I said nothing to the other players. I blame myself…. and I laughed… a lot.
I did draw one card.
Oh boy this is a perfect item to add in my Lewd Mad Mage game.