Chapter 1: Fool - The Book of Many Things

Chapter 1: Fool. Welcome to The Book of Many Things, whose twenty-two chapters give you character options, magic items, spells, monsters, ready-to-play adventures, DM advice, and setting elements designed to be dropped into your own campaign. And tying those chapters together is a legendary magic item that every player both dreads and longs for: the Deck of Many Things. For decades, DMs have used this infamous deck in their games, often with explosive results. Characters have been whisked off to extradimensional prisons, slain by death itself, lost levels, and earned the enmity of powerful fiends. But they've also gained vast wealth or a stronghold of their own, rewound time to reverse disaster, or suddenly advanced in level far beyond the other characters in the group. The awesome powers of the Deck of Many Things have given it a reputation as a game breaker. An encounter with the deck can spell the end of an otherwise successful campaign, as the DM's carefully prepared storyline and the players' lovingly created characters are scattered by the winds of fate to the corners of the multiverse. But it doesn't have to be that way. You can tailor the Deck of Many Things to your campaign, shaping it to fit your needs and the tastes of your players. You can stack the deck with low-level effects that prompt roleplaying instead of mechanical changes or create a deck that has only good cards (or bad ones!) in it. You can do all this without losing the wonder of the deck: its unique nature as a physical object that players-not just their characters-can hold in their hands. This book will show you how to tailor the deck for your game. This chapter presents a history of the deck throughout each edition of Dungeons & Dragons, then outlines the other chapters of this book, which are grouped by theme: DM options, character creation options, astrology-themed options, adventure locations, and finally adversaries and rivals. The Deck in D&D The Deck of Many Things is as old as D&D...