The Deck of Many Things - The Deck of Many Things: Card Reference Guide

The Deck of Many Things. The Deck of Many Things is one of the best-known magic items in Dungeons & Dragons. Players delight in the possibilities the deck offers, such as suddenly advancing in level or gaining fabulous wealth. Since its introduction, the deck has been associated with physical cards-game props Dungeon Masters could use to build a deck their players drew from. The cards and book you're holding are designed to satisfy this demand in the best way possible, providing a beautiful deck of physical cards DMs and players can handle, shuffle, and draw from when they encounter the Deck of Many Things in their games. But this deck is much more than that. The deck has been expanded with forty-four new cards DMs can use to build customized versions of the Deck of Many Things for their games. This deck has also been designed for two additional uses: Divination Dungeon Masters can use the cards for divinatory readings that provide players with clues about the challenges that lie ahead. Divinatory readings are described in the "Divinatory Uses" section. Generating Adventures DMs can use the deck to generate adventure ideas and even outline an adventure's starting situation, journey, encounters, and climax. The guidelines for this are found in the "Adventure Spreads" section and include an example of how the cards can be used to create a story or a dungeon, Customizing Your Deck The Deck of Many Things is as old as D&D, first appearing in 1976. That earliest version of the deck had eighteen unnamed cards, and the DM was encouraged to build the deck from ordinary playing cards, Virtually everything about the deck has changed as the game has evolved: the number of cards has increased, the cards have gained names, the names have changed, and the rules have gone back and forth about whether the Deck of Many Things is an artifact or perhaps even an intelligent item with its own mysterious goals. What this means for players and DMs is that no definitive version of the D...