Why I'm Glad I Gave My Players a Deck of Many Things

"As the dust settled on the edge of the refugee camp and the rest of the party rushed to their aid, Vendrin and Kandra breathed a tentative sigh of relief. Kandra had just watched Vendrin draw a card from the mysterious deck and had seen an Avatar of Death appeared and attack him. Vendrin explained to the party that his grief over their inability to save the city of Alkori and the millions of souls lost weighed on him so heavily that he was prepared to risk everything and draw from the deck for the chance to undo it. As the party took in the possibilities and the risks, an unexpected voice broke the silence first. 'I draw three cards from the Deck,' said the barbarian, Thokk."

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This was the scene that played out at my table last Saturday night. My players had just suffered the largest defeat of the whole campaign thus far, having seen the city of Alkori raized by a swarm of Kyuss Worms. I suppose, in retrospect, I shouldn't be so surprised that they turned to the Deck of Many Things. But, in my defense, they weren't really supposed to have it.

Let's back it up a few sessions. My party was in the city of Thrynn investigating allegations of corruption against the city's baron. They had discovered a cache of illegal magical items hidden beneath a store of relief supplies in a city warehouse. Digging through the crates, they found Potions of Mind Control, Mind Blades, and Mind Lashes. In the kingdom of Romalia, any magic that deals in mind control is illegal, and so the party believed that they had found the jackpot. Then they opened the final crate and found a small black wooden box.

I described to the party that when they lifted the box, a rush of excitement passed over them. Knowing my players, I was aware that they would immediately distrust this box and rush it to their wizard, Vendrin, who was keeping watch outside the warehouse. Vendrin opened the box, found the Deck inside, and, much as I had expected, immediately hid it from the rest of the party. Vendrin is a lawful good human noble, and I was aware that he would never allow his friends to risk their lives by using the deck. I had expected Vendrin to simply turn over the Deck, along with the illegal magic items, to their trusted contact on the city council when they removed the Baron from power.

What I didn't take into account, however, is the fact that, though Vendrin Daltumel is lawful good, his player Brian, is very much chaotic neutral. 

You have to understand, the Baron of Thrynn paid a great deal of money for the Deck and had made even more money by charging his noble friends for a chance to draw a card from the Deck in his casino. It was meant to make the Baron seem crazy and greedy and to underscore the corruption of the nobility in Thrynn, not give my party the most dangerous item in the game!

But, it seems, I had forgotten a core tenant of Dungeons and Dragons. As anyone who has been a DM for any length of time can tell you: If you dangle a unique and obscenely powerful magic item in front of your players, they will find a way to roleplay it so that they can keep it, regardless of alignment. Because, in the end, collecting powerful magic items is a big part of what makes D&D so fun.

Now, fast forward to the refugee camp. Vendrin was in a place where he felt like he had failed millions of innocent people and he knew full well the power of the deck. He figured he had a 1 (maybe 2) chance in 22 to pull a card that would undo what had happened. He drew his first card away from the rest of the party, but his fight with the Avatar of Death alerted the group. Once the cat was out of the bag, they each had to decide what they were willing to risk.

Now, we come to Thokk's cards.

And, just to be clear, I shuffled the shit out of that deck of cards. So what happened next was literally destiny... Thokk drEW THE FATES! It's literally the card about explicitly undoing something that happened in the past!

My table exploded in disbelieving laughter: Dice were flying, papers were crumpled, and my two dogs were jolted out of their slumber by the uproar. Then Thokk asked an unexpected question, "So how far back should we go?"

I nearly shit myself. Because when Vendrin had started pulling cards, I was nervous but figured that if he did somehow draw The Fates, he would just undo the fall of Alkori. But Thokk realized that he could undo what was essentially, the main thread of my campaign.

Basically, in the first adventure of my campaign, my party was dealing with a group of Vecnite cultists at the behest of a local lord, blah blah, yadda yadda. The interesting thing happened when, in the middle of their fighting the Vecnites, Vecna was killed and usurped by one of his servants, Kyuss.

And Kyuss, being a little more hands-on than Vecna was, had taken to essentially destroying the world, piece by piece, much more quickly than Vecna ever would have.

So, Thokk's player, JT looked me dead in the eye at the table and said, "Sorry bud. I use the fates to make it so that Kyuss never killed Vecna and never ascended to Godhood." And my table lost it again.

BUT HERES THE THING: The moment he said that I wasn't overcome by grief or anger at the loss of my plans, as JT had expected. Instead, I found myself overwhelmed by excitement at the possibilities!

If Kyuss never killed Vecna, then Vecna is still the God of Undeath and all of his plans are still in play. This also means that almost everything the players did either didn't happen or happened for a different reason. And most excitingly, it means that a subplot I've been toying with could lead to a new BBEG. (Big Bag Evil Guy).

Thokk drew two more cards, and Kandra drew one as well. I'll cover those cards in a future article because honestly, they deserve their own story as much as the first card. And that's really the point of this article, the potential for awesomeness that comes from the Deck of Many Things!

A lot of DMs might say that the Deck of Many Things is a game-breaking item. But, I think that feels a little bit like a cop-out, knee-jerk reaction. JT expected me to be upset that he was totally changing the story that I had worked so hard on; he actually came up to me after the game to check if we were cool. But the thing is, it's not just my story. It's our story.

Am I a little bummed that the party may never discover Kyuss' ultimate plan? A little. Are there storylines I had been seeding that don't really work anymore? Of course. But is everything lost? No. Absolutely not. If anything, this has given me the opportunity to toy with plots I had never even considered and revive ideas that I had thrown out before the campaign began!

The group isn't able to get together for a couple of weeks because of scheduling conflicts, which is giving me more than enough time to figure out a new story and work out the minutia of what has changed and how it did. (I get the feeling that will also end up being it's own article.)

Frankly, I couldn't be more excited.

In conclusion, giving your party a Deck of Many Things is like giving a first-year art student a chainsaw. It's a tool. It's very dangerous and very powerful, and there's a chance they might slice right through your table, but there's also a real possibility that they might use that chainsaw to carve something beautiful that you never would have dared to dream of.

Thanks for reading and stay chaotic!

Photo by Michael Fenton on Unsplash