@@thefallencat2080 Not sure what you mean. The orginal comment wasn't a joke, there was a disconnect between the comment and what the op understood. Why i keep getting tagged with comments that don't jive with original convo is weird. Some comments have been edited and a couple deleted.
A campaign I've always wanted to run was something we'll call "The 22 Pickup." Essentially, the players find the Deck of Many Things, but something goes wrong and the deck scatters to the winds. Unleashed from its normal limitations, each card picks its own victim where it can do the most damage and evil ensues. Even the good cards are now free to go full Monkey's Paw and spread that benefit where it will sow the most chaos. The players are now responsible for reassembling the deck, with each card essentially causing its own mini-adventure. It would require taking a few liberties, to make the gamier mechanics (like lost 10,000 XP) into something with a bit more narrative punch (like altering/losing memories), but I think it could be an interested grand adventure.
I had similar idea while watching but yours is better, maybe the cards like lose 10, 000 xp. Could happen to a king and hr becomes a begger and you have to restore him to his throne
(Lost 10,000 xp) A week on the road takes the party to a land ruled by a noble lord. He has always had a reputation as a benevolent and skilled ruler, but something has happened recently. The party has heard rumors that the lord has lost virtually any skill he once possessed. His sword arm no longer recalls his training. His voice quivers when he attempts to make speeches. Every conceivable action he takes seems to have lost some of its luster. And his ambitious courtiers murmur with plots and whispers. Some claim he has grown feeble and incapable. Some claim sins from his past have cost him his virtues. But there are still some who claim that he was cursed.. Can the party rekindle the lord's spirit and return him to his rightful place before the land is overthrown in a coup?
My favorite campaign I ever played in we had a permanent Avatar of Death following us around. The card was drawn by an essentially unharmable undead NPC joke companion of the party with no combat skills. This resulted in the party being stalked by a very annoyed and mildly depressed Avatar of Death, and on some occasions it ended up inadvertently helping the party if other enemies attacked it.
I had a game where another player was a Druid, he drew a single card, got Sun, the DM decided to give him a choice on the magic item. Druid took an amulet that let him breath under water and other stuff, we kept calling him aquaman ingame for kicks xD until aqua lad stuck better for reasons.
@@ElricTheWhiteWolf What clip is it and how can I find it? Edit: It was the first recommended video on the sidebar. It's called "Grog discovers the Deck of Many Things".
@@Keovar You should watch her in this campaign, she just gives out magic items and gold as if it were money. It was definitely a RP choice (IMO) because of Vex's backstory. She also didn't want the deck for herself, she just didn't want Travis to throw it away for no reason. I get where u are coming from tho, and obviously you don't have to like everyone on the internet, but I just wanted to throw my opinion out there
I had one rule with my wishes as a DM, "Your wish has to be in the form of a single sentence" They can use as many conjunctions as they want. This provides the player with instant stress and most save their wish until they can write down a good sentence. I also, try to use spells to accomplish what they want (i.e if they wish for a vorpal sword. I teleport it to them from another adventure in the world. It means that adventurer will eventually show up tracking down his lost weapon.
reuel25 I go with, "It's a deck of magic playing cards, not a god." That lets me put hard limits on wishes without a fight, same trick I use with genies.
“Things can get a little bit crazy with the deck” *laughs in inverted alignment, a demon murdering everyone I care for, an avatar of death, trapped in the endless black void, and super rich*
In a recent session of a VoIP campaign, our level-4 party came upon a Deck of Many Things, which the DM assured us he had rolled on the random loot table for a random encounter we'd just fought. Two of us immediately knew what was up, and three were new to D&D. I and the other experienced player advised the others not to draw from the deck lightly, so immediately one of the new players drew from the deck. The first draw was Ruin. The player was somewhat sad, but figured that he could only go up from here (at this point, each of us only had one magic item, and we're stranded in the Underdark at the moment, so loss of gear was a bigger deal). His second draw was Talons, which pretty much solidified the loss. Then he drew the Fool losing about 1200 XP. Then Euryale, taking a permanent penalty to saves. Finally, on the fifth draw, he drew Vizier. He declared the exercise "werf" and I sort of scoffed at that, so he drew again, this time getting Jester. Seeing one of the new players jump two levels, the other experienced player couldn't stop himself. He drew, and got Skull. He was nearly bested by his avatar, but another player stepped in, saving him and then soloing his own as a result. The experienced player drew once more, and lucked into the Jester (which I guess gets reshuffled back into the deck each draw). He drew a third time, and got Key, which he used to rearm the first player. Not to be outdone, the first player drew once more. The deck hadn't disappeared, and these two were pretty much hooked now. This draw was Star, which he (being a Barbarian) applied to his STR. Another new player, drawn in by the spectacle, drew twice, getting Jester and Gem. The first player drew once more, and alas, it was Void. Seeing one of the players, this being his second session of D&D, insta-killed by arbitrary luck, and also believing the deck to be mostly out of bad cards (I knew Dungeon was in there, but I'd forgotten about Balance, Donjon, and Idiot somehow), I decided that I might as well toss my hat in the ring, and drew a card. I lucked into Jester, and called it a day. The other experienced player drew in the hopes of getting Fates or maybe Moon, but got Throne instead, and then the deck disappeared. Overall, our party drew on the deck 15 times, removing 10 cards in the process. The result was that 3/5 party members gained two levels, 2/5 party members drastically increased their wealth, and 1/5 party members was super killed. Overall, considering the DM was not fudging the rolls at all, I was impressed that we drew that many times and didn't destroy the entire campaign in the process.
Yes! Definitely more relic videos. You could build a format around them, history of the item, pitfalls, tips and tricks, anecdotes, etc. My vote would be for the wand of wonder. Nikto!
“If you’ve played every week for 6 months” I played every week for 5 years in 1 campaign. We haven’t played that campaign in over 2 years and we are waiting for the last 2 sessions to be ready with fully painted models and terrain, and more importantly, a day where everyone is off work
Most people overlook it, but if you check the DC chart in the DMG, it reads: "DC 50: Maintain a regular gaming schedule for 5 working adults. (+5 DC for each additional adult.)"
@@Spiney09 sadly not. We want to, but since we had to ban one of the players out of our group due to him siding with someone who abused 2 of us in the group we can’t really finish it as we planned
I gave one to my Pathfinder players. They were too chicken to use it, but the one holding onto it went on a bit of a bender one night. Now a goblin owns the moon. She drew three wishes, and being that she was a throwaway NPC, I let my players decide what her wishes would be, though I coloured them a bit. The results were amusing.
I gave a low level group a used deck of many things. I took out literally ALL the bad stuff. They never used it, at level 17, they got it at 3rd level, someone said what about this deck of many things? They destroyed it. I laughed. Then drew the cards one by one. They laughed. Was good times.
@@tangoxrayniner5659 This kind of stuff makes me sad. When players prevent their character from doing something natural because of player knowledge. People need to learn that bad things can be GREAT for a story! Like Matt said, the bad stuff doesn't have to be all permanent. Or just take the stuff that extremely punishes a character out like you did.
Concept: The Deck of Mini Things. This is a altered, much more watered down, version of the normal DOMT that lessens the effects, to be used as a less game-breaking substitute, like the EXP giving cards giving much less EXP (depending on how you want to use it it could give different fractions like a half, a fourth, or an eighth) or the “instant death” ones only being temporary, like void ether being escapable or on a time limit. What changes would you make? (I’d just like to know)
Mega Master all of your Magical items shrink one size category. The deck of Mini things making them less useful or requiring them to go to a smaller character. Armor shrinks. Weapons shrink. Scrolls take longer to cast because the font is small and difficult to read. Wands do less damage. Rings have to be moved to the pinky or given to a smaller character and have one element of the effect reduced. (Duration, area, etc.)
I'm a new DM and I am definitely in the grouping of "I don't wanna give them something cool yet they're just level 2" but you're right, come a month or two from now the campaign may be done, so I'm gonna up my magic item/adventure game a few notches, thanks for that👍
You don't need to smother them with magic items. Consumable magic items are equally good. Let's say, you don't want to give a level 2 character a wand of fireballs, but you can give him 2 dragon eye looking gems that explode into fireballs dealing 4D6 damage each with a DC of 16. It IS a boon, but not game breaking. Same for blades. You want to pitch them against an extremely hard fight, they could have a pretty solid chance of destroying, if they had ways to overcome their enemies' magic resistance and some ingenuity, then devise a magic oil, that gives a magical modifier to a mundane weapon for a couple of hours. Grant a wish to each of the characters during a sidequest, with clearly communicated caveats. Let them wish. At their own peril.
I like to include the Deck toward the mid-end range of my campaigns, almost completely unaltered. As a younger DM, I put it in without removing any other cards, but now that I'm more experienced, I remove the worst ones (Soul lost, Body trapped, and Die no save are the main ones that come to mind), but I like the way it can completely alter the trajectory of my campaign and I have to adapt to that. My players, meanwhile, are familiar with it (and remember my younger days, so never bother to count the cards and notice I'm taking it easy on them), KNOW good and well that they have a higher chance of something bad than something good... but that promise of power always draws them in. One of my favorite sayings as a DM: "I'm not out to get anyone, I'm just a very convincing rope salesman."
I have a great memory from when my DM gave us the Deck of Many Things. Being the compulsive type I started drawing many cards from the deck. I got the Fool, the Idiot, the Jester, Throne, Talons, Euryale, Vizier, Skull, Gem, Flames, and Key. Another party member got the Ruin card. Finally, the sweetest, newest, and most naive player drew a card and got Donjon…. I decided to risk it all, to try and bring them back. Low and behold, I drew the Fates card. I could have used it to undo any of my lesser (albeit still terrible) evil cards, but instead used it to bring back our Fairy Cleric.. she was terrified for the two minutes she thought her character she made was gone, and vowed never to draw any cards from the deck again. It was easily one of the most memorable moments from the campaign. And I want to be clear, we saw the DM shuffle the cards right in front of us, so there was no way he ordered the cards to let that scenario play out.
It would be fun to do a campaign where they have to reassemble the Deck of Many Things. Not necessarily with the same cards that are traditionally in it.
its funny you mention that. im currently running a homebrew campaign where the deck of many things was created when the sister goddess Tymora and Beshaba challenged each other to a game of cards. the deck was thrown to the natural plane by Beshaba when she could not overcome her sisters good luck. the deck had been passed around in the world for thousands of years until Beshaba commanded her cult to find it and defile the cards her sister used in it (the good ones). So now the deck is fully cursed. I created a quest line for the players to restore the deck and lift the curses so that it could be returned to Tymora to defeat her sister. This, they believe, will bring about a golden age of luck and fortune.
There is one official mini campaign / super adventure already: Madness at Gardmore Abbey. It's for 4E but you can probably play it with 5E easy enough. www.dmsguild.com/product/153648/Madness-at-Gardmore-Abbey-4e The cards affect the adventure and its plot - very much like the tarokka deck in I6 Ravenloft.
Made a custom Deck of Many Things. I removed all the "Insta-kill" cards and put in a bunch of other ones of my own design and found some online. One for example, Mutation, makes you grow strange and bizarre physical features based on a D12 die roll. These range from glowing eyes, to feline claws, to lizard skin, to molten skin, to a frog's tongue. I thought it would be super cool. Another is the Empress, where the nearest royal or lord of the opposite sex falls madly in love with you. This can be great! Unless you break their heart, in which case they become spiteful and jealous and will stop at nothing to kill your future lovers and have you all to themselves. They're gonna find the Deck in the Feywild in an ancient treasure trove. Here's to hoping it goes well.
Kaipyro67ALT my instant kills are body swaps there mind a new body and class and they have to find there body have do a ritual to return both to normal. catch you become a elamental a goblin a bugbear or a dragon hatchling that can't talk until you spend 1d4 days studying that language but you can learn 5d4 languages and retain them all when you get your body back. I shuffle the character sheets and had a random one out
if you're playing 5e, you may wanna check out the section of fifth editions Dungeon Master's Guide that goes over creating magic items on page 284-285. It gives a fairly concrete guide to keeping magic items within a certain balanced power level.
donjon has some nice stuff related to this! donjon.bin.sh/5e/magic/shop.html The link is for items in a magic shop, which gives like a couple random magic items and that's usually good enough for randomization BUT there's also a treasure generator and then donjon.bin.sh/5e/magic_items/ This big list of magic items with their rarity, which should give you a hint at their usefulness
I am currently running a campaign using only 1e/2e modules and apart from a few alterations (level drain) I'm using everything as it is by following the basic conversion guidelines for enemy attack bonuses, AC, DCs and Saves. The only thing I am changing when it comes to magic items is reducing pluses to +1 to +3 instead of +1 to +5, and ocasionally changing some OP item powers into effects that can only be used a limited number of times before they stop working.
I love adjusting items to my custom fantasy world and I have a deck of my own creation based on the Deck of Many Things. Just found your channel, it's awesome. Thanks Matt
The first time my friends and I played 5th edition, de DM had us find this deck at the end of a dungeon. Our paladin drew the eight of swords and had her soul sucked from her body. We then engaged on a whole new path with the objective of rescuing her soul, which included performing some really dark ritual to opening a portal to the abyss, going insane in the abyss, some of us making pacts to bizarre entities, giving up part of our souls, fighting demons, and eventually succeeding in rescuing her. Pretty epic stuff.
Hawkwinter01 I have the same thing happening in a campaign I'm running. It takes a high level spell to find the player or a wish spell to locate them so the player that had his soul removed is rolling a high level mage and the next campaign is that party questing to another dimension to rescue his original character. I'm pretty excited for it, going to be my first epic level campaign!
I'm starting my first DM session soon and had no clue what to do until i started watching your videos! I really appreciate these! I don't feel so incapable now. Thank you for your help and i look forward to the next videos!
I just let my players draw from a deck of many (some) things last session and it was awesome. This video inspired me and I think it was a really awesome memorable moment for my players!
So our DM decided to throw in a contained AOE described as looking like some kind of "wild magic" and of course we all stood around it, counted to three and thrust an arm into the effect... and then he pulled out a deck of cards. I (the druid) was trapped in a gem in another plane, the warlock gained the attention of a powerful being (Tiamat), the sorcerer would gain a level from defeating the next combat single handed (our boss fight) and the paladin... well the paladin was now an oath breaker (alignment switch). This was a huge disruption to our current quest but we fixed it all and it's something we all remember and laugh about from time to time - such a great way to teach your overconfident players that they are in fact, not, golden Gods.
love this episode, i'm about to DM an AD&D 1e campaign with my family and their first adventure is going to start out at a festival where there's a fortune teller. i thought she could have a "mock" deck of many things where maybe the results are the same (or played down a bit), except the effect of the drawn card happens at a later date. so maybe one day they have to play a game of chess with death, or a demon will eventually begin to follow them, or eventually they will acquire a castle! in my opinion it helps justify the sometimes insane effect of the cards without immediately fucking the game up
My friend and I (mainly my friend) really loved the idea of the deck of many things. But we didn't particularly enjoy how you could accidentally ruin a campaign with it just because the chaotic neutral bard was bored and drew 5 cards at once. So he made one of my favorite homebrew items. The 5-Sided Coin. It is a large, golden coin with one side being the two thespian masks of comedy, and the other two masks of tragedy. When you get heads (comedy) it is one of the beneficial aspects of the chart we made (it has like 3 roll charts that go into the results). Landing on the comedy side results in a loud laugh that can be heard clearly by anyone within a mile. Landing on the tragedy lets out a "wah, wah, waaahhhh" in a comparable fashion. The coin is sentient but cannot speak or convey thoughts. It's chaotic neutral, and just wants to be used. It will find someone who it knows will use it to be used. If you don't flip it after enough time, it will "force" you to flip it. It'll fall through a hole in your pocket you didn't know was there. It'll fall out of your hand as you're handing it to someone else. You pull something out of your bag of holding and didn't realize the coin was sitting on top of said thing and you pull them both out. While a lot of the things can be incredibly dangerous, none of it is like the Vizier or Void, or Death. You could literally roll and summon 5 young/adult dragons half a mile away. It could start raining battleaxes for the next 10 minutes. You could flip it and everyone within a mile could have their genders swapped. If you all want, I could write out the charts for you all as a reply in this thread
Just me, I thought of a magic item. "The Deck Of Minor Things" A magical item that will always be identified as a "Deck of many things" But every card inside only has a minor effect rather than the extreme ones in the deck of many things.
I imagine the 50,000 xp as being like the character Matrim Cauthon from "Wheel of Time" getting the life experience of generations of generals and warriors. He lost memories but became a tactical genius.
I've pretty much binged these first 10 videos. Matt these are really well done. I love seeing people passionate about something, and you can tell you are really passionate about it. I've never played D&D but I wanted to. After listening to you, now i REALLY want to play. No one in my "game night" group has played D&D and there are only 3 of us. Trying to figure out those details, and these have been super helpful.
On giving out or being stingy with magic items: Being stingy makes for a very different game experience, and it's one that I've enjoyed at times. In a lot of my early games, playing basic and ad&d, we were lucky if we had weapons that were actually capable of hurting what we were fighting, and so we had to run away a lot and come up with crazy solutions to everything, and I enjoyed it. HOWEVER... I feel magic items are... not just D&D's biggest strength, but an integral part of the game's soul. See there's games that deliver better on being mythical heroes, and games that deliver better on gritty crime drama, on transcendence narratives, on grittiness, or whatever. What D&D does better than any of them is fulfill the treasure hunter fantasy: Kill monsters, raid tombs, get STUFF. It's a very immediately gratifying fantasy, and of course, it's rewarding you for playing the game well, so you feel good about that too. But there's something more to it too. In most tabletop games, you have close to 100% control over the mechanical growth of your character; where stats go, where skills go, etc etc. In D&D (though I can't speak to 4th or 5th edition), you have all these different equipment slots, and a lot of what you do revolves around getting magic items and deciding who gets the magic items and fighting over the magic items, and bequeathing them to other PCs when you die and so on. But you don't pick your options for magic items; they're things you find in the game. And so this growing panoply of cool things that defines your character's sheet as much, if not more than, the stats you deliberately choose, becomes a very organic way for the world to drive your character's development and make her what she is. So when someone asks you why you can do all these different things, or why you have a certain bonus, or why your character looks a certain way, it's not just because you picked that out of a book, there's a story to it that you actually played through. And I've never seen a game that achieves this as well as D&D does.
Treasure hunting is a fun fantasy, but I do think that allowing people to play their own idealized or power fantasy is fine as well. Speaking as someone who used to do that with other kinds of games, and as someone who appreciates the necessity for escapism, I don't think it's fair to pull the rug out from under someone who's trying to do that. It might be 'boring' or whatever for the other people playing but to me, it's just basic respect for everyone's fun. If everyone playing is fine with the random element though, I don't see a reason not to have it, especially if they like surprises the way most of my friends do. They like being dealt strange hands in games as long as they aren't permanent losses or can be recovered from, so I'm tryna make a game using this guy's tutorials and some other online resources (and bugging friends who play) that will tailor to their sense of fun. It isn't my sense of fun but I'm not the one putting characters I care about projecting onto in the game so I don't care as much and would rather make something I know the others would like. :D
Pretty sure it's an official item in Hackmaster 4th Edition EDIT: Yep, Page 280 of the GMG, but for copyright purposes it is called the "Head of Vectra"
Eh... it's not THAT bad... so a devil, or demon or something hates your guts in particular... but it's not like they apparated out of the deck immediately. Could make for a REALLY excellent story arc.
THis is a fantastic series, thank you for sharing your love for the game. I am running a game for my daughter and her friends and this has been a huge help
I'm so sad that I only just discovered this channel a few days ago! I'm currently binging the series. Let me go back two years and be part of the original building community!! For real though, I'm about to DM for the first time and this has been the best resource I've found anywhere. Thank you, Matthew!!
I'm planning on the Deck being a plot point in my upcoming game. One NPC is going to anonymously send it to his (NPC) enemy, just to cause chaos. And I'm going to say that the person that was sent the deck pulled Balance, becoming evil. And then that newly evil NPC is going to lie to the PCs that he drew Rogue, leading them to doubt all of their other allies. Too many layers? Probably. But I like the idea of taking campaign destroyers and writing them into the world as if they were a part of it. I also have a halfing child character that died and was reincarnated as a dragonborn adult. Now he's Tom Hanks from Big, but also a dragon.
Now I'm thinking about designing a minor campaign with possibly tragic undertones where a Deck of Many Things was kept in a secure lockbox by a mysterious but ultimately benevolent organization out of fear of what havoc could be unleashed upon the world by such a chaos-inducing artifact, but had been stolen by a petty thief that might've been initially friendly to the PCs (even asking them to help him clear out a recently-inherited castle of monsters), and that may have had some altruistic reasons for stealing the deck (such as trying to afford enough money to cure a sick person that he cared for, believing that the lockbox contained money instead of the deck), but gradually turns hostile and evil as (like a gambling addict with a developing thirst for power, a-la Light Yagami, a.k.a. Kira, from Death Note) his mind becomes consumed by the very boons that the deck had granted him (including his own castle, faithful servant, various riches and magic items, and improved combat prowess). Unfortunately for the villain, even as he started to draw cards that were ultimately detrimental towards him (such as changing the villain's alignment from good to evil from early on into the campaign, albeit in a more gradual sense; causing the very person that the villain tried to cure of his/her sickness to turn on him out of fear, which causes him/her to get the PCs to face off against the villain, clouding the villain's judgment; causing the villain to suffer from a bout of bad luck; attracting the attention of a demon that may or may not become a future villain in a future campaign; and even start to lose ownership of his wealth and castle), he would end up starting to use the deck in a vain attempt to turn his declining fortunes around, which would eventually result in his soul getting stolen and imprisoned by said demon (as a result of drawing the Void card). (Optionally, the players could try to rescue the villain's soul from the Abyss, and give him a chance at redemption for his power-hungry misdeeds, including letting go of the Deck of Many Things before it does something worse.)
+Tiki Omzee It's true! They literally got on the phone and called Gary Gygax and pitched him this new class they developed called the Thief. Gary put his own spin on it, obviously. And none of the folks at Aero now were at Aero then, but it's all in John Peterson's Playing At The Game. Aero should put up a plaque or something, I bet a lot of people have played thieves AT Aero Hobbies and never guessed the class originated there.
+Matthew Colville Yeah I talked them (the couple running the store now) yesterday and they told me all about it. It happened a lot longer ago than I thought; owner said he was about 5 lol. Sometimes I forget how long DnD has been a thing. They absolutely should get a plaque or something, that's huge! Pretty proud of my hobbie store now, it seems way too small to be that important to DnD's timeline.
Matthew Colville I got a question for ya I'm a semi new DM and I'm making a game we're a demon virus is getting spread around in the town and they need to escape . I'm wording if it's a good idea to have rival party that helps and goes against them ?
I played when I was a teenager. Now I am the DM running my boys through the box set adventure. It’s been a blast getting them into it, and I appreciate your videos helping me help them.
My friend turned me into these videos once I told him I was going to learn how to both be a DM and write my own campaign to play. Aside from the fact that I'm fairly certain you're a Nerdfighter, which is pretty cool on its own, but your videos so far have been so enlightening. I've already taken 6 front and back pages of notes. I'm very optimistic about my game
Strongest Intro in RUclips history! Re- The DUNGEON! Rather than make it a prison I would make it that the PC is teleported to such a place in an actual dungeon and the last person trapped ther is put in place of the person who drew the card. Then the Player plays this new character who might travel to the dungeon to save their character.
Wow, I know I’m late to the party on these videos but this is some of the best content on the whole of RUclips imo and it goes beyond just D&D. I’m only just starting out as a player, not even as a DM, and these videos not only are hugely helpful but also provide real insight into how interactions between people irl occur. I’m blown away with how relevant these are to the real world and as someone who is very outgoing and loves to understand what makes people tick; this is just a great video series to watch and listen to your opinions and ideas. Oh and of course this is really going to enhance my playing experience as a newbie. I’ve subscribed without hesitation!
The 4e module printed a deck of many things with magic the gathering card backings so you could shuffle any of your magic cards in. p.s. I appreciate how fast and directly you talk.
"Forget the bad things" I was crushed in my own armor by my own god, thrown into the ocean, and nearly drowning. I lost my armor and had previously lost my weapon by breaking it on a Zombie's head. I'll never forget that. ADDITION: We were in the middle of a Zombie apocalypse as well, i didn't get a weapon besides a rusty dagger for the next three or four sessions.
Hey I’m a new DM who started playing because of quarantine. DND turned into an amazing way for me and my players to connect, and actually become way closer than we ever had been in addition to meeting and playing with new people. I’d never even played before, and neither had any of my player (except one), and your videos have been a lifesaver. You’re my favorite tabletop rpg channel, thank you so much!!!
I wish I'd found your channel sooner, that D20 is amazing. Also your content. Also your voice. I'm surprised one of your coworkers hasn't roped you into voicing a character.
I’ve just binged this series to date. Thank you very much, Matthew. I’m creating my own campaign (for the first time) and everything you’ve said has been a question or reservation I’ve had. Nailing it!
+Anthony Yertzell Completely spontaneous. I had no idea I was going to do that until I did it. I think I'd just watched a Venture Bros. ep where 21 does it.
Hey wanted to say thank you for putting these videos together. I started DMing for my group of friends a few months back and this is definitely helping me feel more comfortable with doing it after each video ive seen so far
step 1: find the deck step 2: dont draw a card, instead take ALL cards and search for a mage to sort out all the good cards step 3: draw from the good deck yourself step 4: take the bad deck with you step 5: find the ultimate bad guy step 6: get him to draw from the bad deck step 7: ??? step 8: profit :D
Isn't there no way to identify which cards are which? At best a mage could identify the whole deck as the Deck of Many Things, because the entire deck is considered one item. And you can draw multiple cards at a time and unleash their effects. So just by attempting to separate them you are in fact drawing cards. And once cards are drawn they disappear forever.
In my experiences with the DOMT it was only used by novice DMs that had next to zero story writing ability who used a tropey magic item in an attempt to carry the session. It was employed only to create poorly constructed drama and chaos to make the DM feel that they were “good” at DMing. I’m sure a skilled DM can find use for it but at best I claim it to be tacky for gameplay.
from my experince (as a player and now as a DM) the deck of many things seems pretty fun but never turns out fun- at least for me. the first time i saw it when i first played DnD. the big bad handed the cards to another player's character and the player picked the card from the deck the dm had. we later found out the deck was rigged to be all the "bad" card. the second time was my second campaign (different dm). another player character had the deck and pulled 4 cards every time. it made the campaign pretty easy at first since the first 12 were the lvl up, money, and knight. the DM had a rule that some cards went back into the deck and my friend just kept pulling those 3 cards. then he pulled the card that sent your soul to another plane. this didnt derail the campaign since the character had connections with a plane jumping druid uldra so she just brought the soul back. it made the game pretty dull and he was the only one out of the four of us who ever played since his character didn't like sharing. when i became a DM i knew i wanted to use the deck of many things mostly because it didn't feel fun with the two previous events. i made scenarios for each card, mini plots to fix the bad cards and ways to make the good cards fun for everyone and not just the one who drew it. how ever i didn't expect to get a player who was so sure the deck would ruin the game he had his character chuck it into the ocean the moment they got the cards. i then gave another deck of many things (the dm's guide has three ways to read it so i figured three decks would exist for the fun of it) to a different player who stole it from a very powerful magician who was using the cards in a magic show (she was the self insert i think i mentioned in a comment on the dm self insert video). that player then couldn't continue playing with us due to medical school kicking his butt. its been a year after that event and the game is still going but the deck of many things just feels like a drag to try and use- either its rigged to be bad, a player hogs it, or a player gets it and gets rid of it.
I know you can pick this up relatively simply, but for someone who just wants to pick up the game and is looking for a quick start, it seems like a simple example of combat is something that's missing from these guides?
Absolutely agree on being generous with magic items. Gandalf, Thorin, and Bilbo got their magic swords (essentially, magic swords) very early in their quest. I love how you not only had a prop to hold the deck, but made the deck a more interesting prop than a regular deck of cards. I also really like the idea of eliminating the game-ruining cards, and replacing them with beneficial cards. No kidding here-two weeks ago, I was preparing some random encounters for a trek through a forest my party was going to be making. I wanted them to discover a few lairs, and one of them in particular was going to be loaded with treasure. I rolled a Deck of Many Things. I thought about it. Typed it up in my notes. Thought about it some more. Deleted it from my notes and re-rolled. Now I'm kicking myself. They're not there yet, but I probably don't have time to replace it. I think they'll be there next session. BUT... I am going to be patient, incorporate your ideas, and place the Deck somewhere else, but direct the fates a little bit in the party's favor, so the game doesn't explode by chance. Thanks! "Why are we here? Because we're here, roll the bones..."
Back in the early 90's when I was in the military I played ALOT of D&D - I have literally seen dozens of campaigns ended by this magic item - this magic item is a campaign killer when used without some kind of manipulation. Your advice is spot on. Beyond stacking the deck or making custom cards there is another trick you can use. Providing you are using a regular deck of cards, you can swap the results. When you look up the results in the DMG if the card will break the campaign, just apply the result of a different card that won't ruin everything. A player draws the card that imprisons his soul, well, when you read the result from the DMG, he instead just loses 2 points of Intelligence for example.
You're wrong about the Void and Donjon forcing players to roll new characters, by the way. One of my fellow party members drew Donjon last session, and he's decide to take control of a Kobold NPC while we go to find his character.
I implemented a version of the DoMT to resolve crit fails, nat 1's, I stole the idea from the DiceStormers (who play Pathfinder). I took a generic deck of cards and created an Excel sheet where each card has a negative effect associated, the higher the card the worse the effect, but nothing too bad, usually just things like -1 to your next skill check or ability roll, or you are poisoned or fatigued instantly, something you can deal with or remove at the next rest. Adds a fun, random aspect to the game.
Sounds like something that would be an intresting addition to another item. say a magic sword, the stats are good when compared to other weapons the player finds, for every life taken using the sword a random negative effect is given, but the swords stats get better. As the player continues to take lives with the sword the negative effects become more damaging and longer lasting until the player if they keep using the sword is consumed by it. To keep the storyline intresting it might be useful if the player who weilds the weapon is partly in on the story and roleplays it like his character is becoming addicted to the power he weilds much like the ringbearer in lord of the rings. Potentially a useful plot device if you have a player that wants to kill off their character at some point Potential ends to the storyline could be, finding a way to destroy the weapon, the party being forced to turn on their counterpart if they go to far. Not sure if thats an intresting idea or even if its properly workable in the game, but if you can find a way to make it work feel free to use it
hey, I'm a new player from Belgium. i recently played with 3 different DM's and know i want to try it my self. so i bought de dungeon master guide and monster manual (players handbook and guildmasters guide to ravnica i already owned). when i'm not reading the book i was looking on youtube for tips for a secret door and i came across your channel. you learned me a lot in the few episodes that i seen so far. way to late for the D20 meteor-stone. :p but i want to thank you for your channel (sorry for my englisch.) Melvin
Am I too late for the contest? Oh well, you're videos are awesome all by themselves! You gave me lots of ideas to make the games really personal and interesting :)
![Megan Thee Stallion - Roc Steady (feat. Flo Milli) [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/HozPPyqW0dY/mqdefault.jpg)
“My prop deck of many things....”
As opposed to your legit one stored under the table
No, as opposed to the abstract one in the game.
@@christianoliver25 You seem to not know that Matt has one.
@@thefallencat2080 Not sure what you mean. The orginal comment wasn't a joke, there was a disconnect between the comment and what the op understood. Why i keep getting tagged with comments that don't jive with original convo is weird. Some comments have been edited and a couple deleted.
@@christianoliver25 No, the original comment absolutely WAS a joke.
@@christianoliver25 you do realise the original comment was a joke......
"It's perfectly safe."
Any time your DM says this, *run*.
Debatra Damn straight.
Debatra If you ask your DM something important and they shrug and grin, RUN!
..."Oh, it's perfectly safe. It's *us* who are in trouble." -Ford Prefect
me DM made a spoof of the dec of many things called the deck of many time consuming tasks
'You don't have to check every door for traps you know.'
They say just before you get to the one trapped door.
the void: no upside
Matt Mercer: *laughs in search for grog*
the main upside is lots of ad money
@@Alpacnologia What about a fun story?
@@akrinornoname2769 also the ad money
if my character would happen to draw the Void
the rest of the party would just carry on with their lives and forget about it's poor soul.
@@JMS_Hunter It happened in a game that I DM. They are now on their way to get their friend from Avernus
"I play an idiot every day." -Matthew Colville, Comedy Gold
this quote is just *too* good :D
A campaign I've always wanted to run was something we'll call "The 22 Pickup." Essentially, the players find the Deck of Many Things, but something goes wrong and the deck scatters to the winds. Unleashed from its normal limitations, each card picks its own victim where it can do the most damage and evil ensues. Even the good cards are now free to go full Monkey's Paw and spread that benefit where it will sow the most chaos. The players are now responsible for reassembling the deck, with each card essentially causing its own mini-adventure. It would require taking a few liberties, to make the gamier mechanics (like lost 10,000 XP) into something with a bit more narrative punch (like altering/losing memories), but I think it could be an interested grand adventure.
sick idea! might use it some time, thx man
I had similar idea while watching but yours is better, maybe the cards like lose 10, 000 xp. Could happen to a king and hr becomes a begger and you have to restore him to his throne
(Lost 10,000 xp)
A week on the road takes the party to a land ruled by a noble lord. He has always had a reputation as a benevolent and skilled ruler, but something has happened recently. The party has heard rumors that the lord has lost virtually any skill he once possessed. His sword arm no longer recalls his training. His voice quivers when he attempts to make speeches. Every conceivable action he takes seems to have lost some of its luster. And his ambitious courtiers murmur with plots and whispers. Some claim he has grown feeble and incapable. Some claim sins from his past have cost him his virtues. But there are still some who claim that he was cursed.. Can the party rekindle the lord's spirit and return him to his rightful place before the land is overthrown in a coup?
I like it.
Could even tell them "do not look at the cards once collected".
Should drive them wild.
Someone's watching too much Card Captor Sakura. LOL. Seriously, this is a cool story arc! Thanks for the idea.
"I play an idiot every day"
that spur of the moment made me sub
My favorite campaign I ever played in we had a permanent Avatar of Death following us around. The card was drawn by an essentially unharmable undead NPC joke companion of the party with no combat skills. This resulted in the party being stalked by a very annoyed and mildly depressed Avatar of Death, and on some occasions it ended up inadvertently helping the party if other enemies attacked it.
That sounds wonderfully Pratchett.
YOU KNOW, THESE GOBLINS MAKE SUCH A MESS.
Reminds me of The Horribly Slow Murderer With The Extremely Inefficient Weapon.
I love that so much
I had a game where another player was a Druid, he drew a single card, got Sun, the DM decided to give him a choice on the magic item. Druid took an amulet that let him breath under water and other stuff, we kept calling him aquaman ingame for kicks xD until aqua lad stuck better for reasons.
Best use of the Vizier card: What is the exact order of the Deck of Many Things?
When the players are smart and weaponise the deck of many things
... Thats fucking genius.
Can't you only announce how many you will be drawing and then draw them?
@@beardalaxy yes, and once drawn the deck is supposed to disappear.
@@zephyrstrife4668 nothing says so in DMG for 5e
"everyone forgets bad stuff and remembers good stuff."
Sir, all of neurology, behavioral biology, and clinical psychology would like to have a word.
He's talking in reference to items and strategies in videogames.
"bad stuff" here doesn't really mean negative outliers, because everyone dies all the time back then.
Grog: "I'll just throw it into the lava."
Suddenly, Laura: "NO TRAVIS!"
Grog rolls 20 on Funniness
Taneth you told me not to look. So I didnt
Thats the clip that got me into DnD. Not even kidding
@@ElricTheWhiteWolf What clip is it and how can I find it?
Edit: It was the first recommended video on the sidebar. It's called "Grog discovers the Deck of Many Things".
@@Keovar You should watch her in this campaign, she just gives out magic items and gold as if it were money. It was definitely a RP choice (IMO) because of Vex's backstory. She also didn't want the deck for herself, she just didn't want Travis to throw it away for no reason. I get where u are coming from tho, and obviously you don't have to like everyone on the internet, but I just wanted to throw my opinion out there
"Its perfectly safe"...kinda reminds me of Gandalf's "Its quite cool."
I had one rule with my wishes as a DM, "Your wish has to be in the form of a single sentence" They can use as many conjunctions as they want. This provides the player with instant stress and most save their wish until they can write down a good sentence. I also, try to use spells to accomplish what they want (i.e if they wish for a vorpal sword. I teleport it to them from another adventure in the world. It means that adventurer will eventually show up tracking down his lost weapon.
reuel25 I go with, "It's a deck of magic playing cards, not a god." That lets me put hard limits on wishes without a fight, same trick I use with genies.
“Things can get a little bit crazy with the deck”
*laughs in inverted alignment, a demon murdering everyone I care for, an avatar of death, trapped in the endless black void, and super rich*
"You find a box with a few cards in it, you believe this once was a full deck"
In a recent session of a VoIP campaign, our level-4 party came upon a Deck of Many Things, which the DM assured us he had rolled on the random loot table for a random encounter we'd just fought. Two of us immediately knew what was up, and three were new to D&D. I and the other experienced player advised the others not to draw from the deck lightly, so immediately one of the new players drew from the deck.
The first draw was Ruin. The player was somewhat sad, but figured that he could only go up from here (at this point, each of us only had one magic item, and we're stranded in the Underdark at the moment, so loss of gear was a bigger deal). His second draw was Talons, which pretty much solidified the loss. Then he drew the Fool losing about 1200 XP. Then Euryale, taking a permanent penalty to saves. Finally, on the fifth draw, he drew Vizier. He declared the exercise "werf" and I sort of scoffed at that, so he drew again, this time getting Jester.
Seeing one of the new players jump two levels, the other experienced player couldn't stop himself. He drew, and got Skull. He was nearly bested by his avatar, but another player stepped in, saving him and then soloing his own as a result. The experienced player drew once more, and lucked into the Jester (which I guess gets reshuffled back into the deck each draw). He drew a third time, and got Key, which he used to rearm the first player.
Not to be outdone, the first player drew once more. The deck hadn't disappeared, and these two were pretty much hooked now. This draw was Star, which he (being a Barbarian) applied to his STR. Another new player, drawn in by the spectacle, drew twice, getting Jester and Gem. The first player drew once more, and alas, it was Void.
Seeing one of the players, this being his second session of D&D, insta-killed by arbitrary luck, and also believing the deck to be mostly out of bad cards (I knew Dungeon was in there, but I'd forgotten about Balance, Donjon, and Idiot somehow), I decided that I might as well toss my hat in the ring, and drew a card. I lucked into Jester, and called it a day. The other experienced player drew in the hopes of getting Fates or maybe Moon, but got Throne instead, and then the deck disappeared.
Overall, our party drew on the deck 15 times, removing 10 cards in the process. The result was that 3/5 party members gained two levels, 2/5 party members drastically increased their wealth, and 1/5 party members was super killed. Overall, considering the DM was not fudging the rolls at all, I was impressed that we drew that many times and didn't destroy the entire campaign in the process.
I LOVE the deck of many things! So many crazy things happens because of it!
Yes! Definitely more relic videos. You could build a format around them, history of the item, pitfalls, tips and tricks, anecdotes, etc. My vote would be for the wand of wonder. Nikto!
i agree, more artifacts please
We need to bring more of these out. Kinda did it with the vecna episode but not on purpose
me 3 me 3 :) I agree
“If you’ve played every week for 6 months” I played every week for 5 years in 1 campaign. We haven’t played that campaign in over 2 years and we are waiting for the last 2 sessions to be ready with fully painted models and terrain, and more importantly, a day where everyone is off work
Most people overlook it, but if you check the DC chart in the DMG, it reads: "DC 50: Maintain a regular gaming schedule for 5 working adults. (+5 DC for each additional adult.)"
@@TheCrazyPlayer we must’ve gotten lucky!
I hope your group finally got to finish playing.
@@Spiney09 sadly not. We want to, but since we had to ban one of the players out of our group due to him siding with someone who abused 2 of us in the group we can’t really finish it as we planned
@@Spiney09 and another player just stopped talking to us so there’s 2 players down
I gave one to my Pathfinder players. They were too chicken to use it, but the one holding onto it went on a bit of a bender one night. Now a goblin owns the moon.
She drew three wishes, and being that she was a throwaway NPC, I let my players decide what her wishes would be, though I coloured them a bit. The results were amusing.
I gave a low level group a used deck of many things. I took out literally ALL the bad stuff. They never used it, at level 17, they got it at 3rd level, someone said what about this deck of many things?
They destroyed it. I laughed. Then drew the cards one by one. They laughed. Was good times.
@@tangoxrayniner5659 This kind of stuff makes me sad. When players prevent their character from doing something natural because of player knowledge. People need to learn that bad things can be GREAT for a story! Like Matt said, the bad stuff doesn't have to be all permanent. Or just take the stuff that extremely punishes a character out like you did.
Concept: The Deck of Mini Things. This is a altered, much more watered down, version of the normal DOMT that lessens the effects, to be used as a less game-breaking substitute, like the EXP giving cards giving much less EXP (depending on how you want to use it it could give different fractions like a half, a fourth, or an eighth) or the “instant death” ones only being temporary, like void ether being escapable or on a time limit.
What changes would you make? (I’d just like to know)
As long as one of the previous death effects becomes polymorphing into a newt for 24 hours solely for the Monty Python reference I would be happy 😜
SerDerpish yes!
Mega Master all of your Magical items shrink one size category. The deck of Mini things making them less useful or requiring them to go to a smaller character. Armor shrinks. Weapons shrink. Scrolls take longer to cast because the font is small and difficult to read. Wands do less damage. Rings have to be moved to the pinky or given to a smaller character and have one element of the effect reduced. (Duration, area, etc.)
1d1 limited wishes.
I'm a new DM and I am definitely in the grouping of "I don't wanna give them something cool yet they're just level 2" but you're right, come a month or two from now the campaign may be done, so I'm gonna up my magic item/adventure game a few notches, thanks for that👍
You don't need to smother them with magic items. Consumable magic items are equally good.
Let's say, you don't want to give a level 2 character a wand of fireballs, but you can give him 2 dragon eye looking gems that explode into fireballs dealing 4D6 damage each with a DC of 16. It IS a boon, but not game breaking. Same for blades. You want to pitch them against an extremely hard fight, they could have a pretty solid chance of destroying, if they had ways to overcome their enemies' magic resistance and some ingenuity, then devise a magic oil, that gives a magical modifier to a mundane weapon for a couple of hours.
Grant a wish to each of the characters during a sidequest, with clearly communicated caveats. Let them wish. At their own peril.
I like to include the Deck toward the mid-end range of my campaigns, almost completely unaltered. As a younger DM, I put it in without removing any other cards, but now that I'm more experienced, I remove the worst ones (Soul lost, Body trapped, and Die no save are the main ones that come to mind), but I like the way it can completely alter the trajectory of my campaign and I have to adapt to that. My players, meanwhile, are familiar with it (and remember my younger days, so never bother to count the cards and notice I'm taking it easy on them), KNOW good and well that they have a higher chance of something bad than something good... but that promise of power always draws them in.
One of my favorite sayings as a DM: "I'm not out to get anyone, I'm just a very convincing rope salesman."
This intro will forever be my favourite. Pure art!
I have a great memory from when my DM gave us the Deck of Many Things. Being the compulsive type I started drawing many cards from the deck. I got the Fool, the Idiot, the Jester, Throne, Talons, Euryale, Vizier, Skull, Gem, Flames, and Key. Another party member got the Ruin card. Finally, the sweetest, newest, and most naive player drew a card and got Donjon…. I decided to risk it all, to try and bring them back. Low and behold, I drew the Fates card. I could have used it to undo any of my lesser (albeit still terrible) evil cards, but instead used it to bring back our Fairy Cleric.. she was terrified for the two minutes she thought her character she made was gone, and vowed never to draw any cards from the deck again. It was easily one of the most memorable moments from the campaign. And I want to be clear, we saw the DM shuffle the cards right in front of us, so there was no way he ordered the cards to let that scenario play out.
As a fresh DM these videos have been helping me to realize it's all about fun improv, not "winning."
Fun improv IS winning. ;)
It would be fun to do a campaign where they have to reassemble the Deck of Many Things. Not necessarily with the same cards that are traditionally in it.
its funny you mention that. im currently running a homebrew campaign where the deck of many things was created when the sister goddess Tymora and Beshaba challenged each other to a game of cards. the deck was thrown to the natural plane by Beshaba when she could not overcome her sisters good luck. the deck had been passed around in the world for thousands of years until Beshaba commanded her cult to find it and defile the cards her sister used in it (the good ones). So now the deck is fully cursed. I created a quest line for the players to restore the deck and lift the curses so that it could be returned to Tymora to defeat her sister. This, they believe, will bring about a golden age of luck and fortune.
There is one official mini campaign / super adventure already: Madness at Gardmore Abbey. It's for 4E but you can probably play it with 5E easy enough.
www.dmsguild.com/product/153648/Madness-at-Gardmore-Abbey-4e
The cards affect the adventure and its plot - very much like the tarokka deck in I6 Ravenloft.
turd ferguson I might just have to borrow some of that for my campaign
So he is at 249k subs. Im a little late for the contest
Who knows... maybe we still have a shot.
me too
There is always the 500,000 and 1mil sub prizes.
+500k in 10 month, that is impressive
Made a custom Deck of Many Things. I removed all the "Insta-kill" cards and put in a bunch of other ones of my own design and found some online. One for example, Mutation, makes you grow strange and bizarre physical features based on a D12 die roll. These range from glowing eyes, to feline claws, to lizard skin, to molten skin, to a frog's tongue. I thought it would be super cool. Another is the Empress, where the nearest royal or lord of the opposite sex falls madly in love with you. This can be great! Unless you break their heart, in which case they become spiteful and jealous and will stop at nothing to kill your future lovers and have you all to themselves.
They're gonna find the Deck in the Feywild in an ancient treasure trove. Here's to hoping it goes well.
Kaipyro67ALT my instant kills are body swaps there mind a new body and class and they have to find there body have do a ritual to return both to normal. catch you become a elamental a goblin a bugbear or a dragon hatchling that can't talk until you spend 1d4 days studying that language but you can learn 5d4 languages and retain them all when you get your body back. I shuffle the character sheets and had a random one out
Yeah, that's kind of shitty. I'd never force a player to change their race/class and make them quest to find their original character.
A spell already exists that very likely causes a race change. Reincarnation. You aren't getting an opportunity out of it if you don't like it.
Kaipyro67ALT where did you find the info?
Elani Arkady I'm a DM I make rules that for my team are fun. we love the randomness that can be and I make alot of thinks for that
Can there be an episode about creating magic loot? I have a hard time making things that are balanced between overpowered and useless.
if you're playing 5e, you may wanna check out the section of fifth editions Dungeon Master's Guide that goes over creating magic items on page 284-285. It gives a fairly concrete guide to keeping magic items within a certain balanced power level.
donjon has some nice stuff related to this!
donjon.bin.sh/5e/magic/shop.html
The link is for items in a magic shop, which gives like a couple random magic items and that's usually good enough for randomization
BUT there's also a treasure generator and then
donjon.bin.sh/5e/magic_items/
This big list of magic items with their rarity, which should give you a hint at their usefulness
I am currently running a campaign using only 1e/2e modules and apart from a few alterations (level drain) I'm using everything as it is by following the basic conversion guidelines for enemy attack bonuses, AC, DCs and Saves. The only thing I am changing when it comes to magic items is reducing pluses to +1 to +3 instead of +1 to +5, and ocasionally changing some OP item powers into effects that can only be used a limited number of times before they stop working.
I love donjon. It's a great resource.
I once made a gravy boat that poured infinite gravy and the party actually used it a lot. A resourceful party will make just about anything useful.
I love adjusting items to my custom fantasy world and I have a deck of my own creation based on the Deck of Many Things. Just found your channel, it's awesome. Thanks Matt
The first time my friends and I played 5th edition, de DM had us find this deck at the end of a dungeon. Our paladin drew the eight of swords and had her soul sucked from her body. We then engaged on a whole new path with the objective of rescuing her soul, which included performing some really dark ritual to opening a portal to the abyss, going insane in the abyss, some of us making pacts to bizarre entities, giving up part of our souls, fighting demons, and eventually succeeding in rescuing her. Pretty epic stuff.
What did she do during that process? Play a new PC, or take over an NPC?
Hawkwinter01 I have the same thing happening in a campaign I'm running. It takes a high level spell to find the player or a wish spell to locate them so the player that had his soul removed is rolling a high level mage and the next campaign is that party questing to another dimension to rescue his original character. I'm pretty excited for it, going to be my first epic level campaign!
I'm starting my first DM session soon and had no clue what to do until i started watching your videos! I really appreciate these! I don't feel so incapable now. Thank you for your help and i look forward to the next videos!
the idea of all cards that give you a castle would be a deck of many kings
If all the cards give magic items or gemstones it’s a deck of many blings
A deck with only the Four Swords cards is a Deck Of Many Stings.
Loving your video mate. I just turned 31 and had my 3rd game last week. Wish i stated years ago :(
Play every day to catch up.
I just let my players draw from a deck of many (some) things last session and it was awesome. This video inspired me and I think it was a really awesome memorable moment for my players!
*Players draws the visior*: "what is the purpose of (my) life"
*DM*: "..."
Luke S you pull cards from the deck
Crush your enemies, and see them driven before you. Oh, and to hear the lamentations of the women.
So our DM decided to throw in a contained AOE described as looking like some kind of "wild magic" and of course we all stood around it, counted to three and thrust an arm into the effect... and then he pulled out a deck of cards. I (the druid) was trapped in a gem in another plane, the warlock gained the attention of a powerful being (Tiamat), the sorcerer would gain a level from defeating the next combat single handed (our boss fight) and the paladin... well the paladin was now an oath breaker (alignment switch). This was a huge disruption to our current quest but we fixed it all and it's something we all remember and laugh about from time to time - such a great way to teach your overconfident players that they are in fact, not, golden Gods.
LOL Even after 6 years I still come back to this video just for the opening sequence 🤣
papapapam
I'm trying to think of what exactly that music was.
I just remember hearing it in Hyrule Warriors.
@@ReverendRedMage its Mars from the Planets suite by Gustav Holst. Listen to it, it fucking slaps!
love this episode, i'm about to DM an AD&D 1e campaign with my family and their first adventure is going to start out at a festival where there's a fortune teller. i thought she could have a "mock" deck of many things where maybe the results are the same (or played down a bit), except the effect of the drawn card happens at a later date. so maybe one day they have to play a game of chess with death, or a demon will eventually begin to follow them, or eventually they will acquire a castle! in my opinion it helps justify the sometimes insane effect of the cards without immediately fucking the game up
“You shouldn’t want to play games with me, it wouldn’t be fun...”
Yeah, I knew it. It would.
My friend and I (mainly my friend) really loved the idea of the deck of many things. But we didn't particularly enjoy how you could accidentally ruin a campaign with it just because the chaotic neutral bard was bored and drew 5 cards at once.
So he made one of my favorite homebrew items. The 5-Sided Coin. It is a large, golden coin with one side being the two thespian masks of comedy, and the other two masks of tragedy. When you get heads (comedy) it is one of the beneficial aspects of the chart we made (it has like 3 roll charts that go into the results). Landing on the comedy side results in a loud laugh that can be heard clearly by anyone within a mile. Landing on the tragedy lets out a "wah, wah, waaahhhh" in a comparable fashion.
The coin is sentient but cannot speak or convey thoughts. It's chaotic neutral, and just wants to be used. It will find someone who it knows will use it to be used. If you don't flip it after enough time, it will "force" you to flip it. It'll fall through a hole in your pocket you didn't know was there. It'll fall out of your hand as you're handing it to someone else. You pull something out of your bag of holding and didn't realize the coin was sitting on top of said thing and you pull them both out.
While a lot of the things can be incredibly dangerous, none of it is like the Vizier or Void, or Death. You could literally roll and summon 5 young/adult dragons half a mile away. It could start raining battleaxes for the next 10 minutes. You could flip it and everyone within a mile could have their genders swapped. If you all want, I could write out the charts for you all as a reply in this thread
5 years old and just as, if not more, helpful to this day. Thank you Mr. Colville
Just me, I thought of a magic item. "The Deck Of Minor Things" A magical item that will always be identified as a "Deck of many things" But every card inside only has a minor effect rather than the extreme ones in the deck of many things.
@@poilboiler Imp Live Reaction ->
)-:
I imagine the 50,000 xp as being like the character Matrim Cauthon from "Wheel of Time" getting the life experience of generations of generals and warriors. He lost memories but became a tactical genius.
I've pretty much binged these first 10 videos. Matt these are really well done. I love seeing people passionate about something, and you can tell you are really passionate about it. I've never played D&D but I wanted to. After listening to you, now i REALLY want to play. No one in my "game night" group has played D&D and there are only 3 of us. Trying to figure out those details, and these have been super helpful.
On giving out or being stingy with magic items: Being stingy makes for a very different game experience, and it's one that I've enjoyed at times. In a lot of my early games, playing basic and ad&d, we were lucky if we had weapons that were actually capable of hurting what we were fighting, and so we had to run away a lot and come up with crazy solutions to everything, and I enjoyed it. HOWEVER...
I feel magic items are... not just D&D's biggest strength, but an integral part of the game's soul. See there's games that deliver better on being mythical heroes, and games that deliver better on gritty crime drama, on transcendence narratives, on grittiness, or whatever. What D&D does better than any of them is fulfill the treasure hunter fantasy: Kill monsters, raid tombs, get STUFF. It's a very immediately gratifying fantasy, and of course, it's rewarding you for playing the game well, so you feel good about that too.
But there's something more to it too. In most tabletop games, you have close to 100% control over the mechanical growth of your character; where stats go, where skills go, etc etc. In D&D (though I can't speak to 4th or 5th edition), you have all these different equipment slots, and a lot of what you do revolves around getting magic items and deciding who gets the magic items and fighting over the magic items, and bequeathing them to other PCs when you die and so on. But you don't pick your options for magic items; they're things you find in the game. And so this growing panoply of cool things that defines your character's sheet as much, if not more than, the stats you deliberately choose, becomes a very organic way for the world to drive your character's development and make her what she is.
So when someone asks you why you can do all these different things, or why you have a certain bonus, or why your character looks a certain way, it's not just because you picked that out of a book, there's a story to it that you actually played through.
And I've never seen a game that achieves this as well as D&D does.
Treasure hunting is a fun fantasy, but I do think that allowing people to play their own idealized or power fantasy is fine as well. Speaking as someone who used to do that with other kinds of games, and as someone who appreciates the necessity for escapism, I don't think it's fair to pull the rug out from under someone who's trying to do that. It might be 'boring' or whatever for the other people playing but to me, it's just basic respect for everyone's fun.
If everyone playing is fine with the random element though, I don't see a reason not to have it, especially if they like surprises the way most of my friends do. They like being dealt strange hands in games as long as they aren't permanent losses or can be recovered from, so I'm tryna make a game using this guy's tutorials and some other online resources (and bugging friends who play) that will tailor to their sense of fun. It isn't my sense of fun but I'm not the one putting characters I care about projecting onto in the game so I don't care as much and would rather make something I know the others would like. :D
Have you heard of the Head of Vecna? =P
Pretty sure it's an official item in Hackmaster 4th Edition
EDIT: Yep, Page 280 of the GMG, but for copyright purposes it is called the "Head of Vectra"
Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise?
"I don't know if what I drew is bad."
Me: OH IT'S BAAAAAD
Eh... it's not THAT bad... so a devil, or demon or something hates your guts in particular... but it's not like they apparated out of the deck immediately. Could make for a REALLY excellent story arc.
Getting back into D&D after a 10 year hiatus. started in 1978-79 and I love you keep tying in the history of the game.
THis is a fantastic series, thank you for sharing your love for the game. I am running a game for my daughter and her friends and this has been a huge help
I'm so sad that I only just discovered this channel a few days ago! I'm currently binging the series. Let me go back two years and be part of the original building community!! For real though, I'm about to DM for the first time and this has been the best resource I've found anywhere. Thank you, Matthew!!
I'm planning on the Deck being a plot point in my upcoming game. One NPC is going to anonymously send it to his (NPC) enemy, just to cause chaos. And I'm going to say that the person that was sent the deck pulled Balance, becoming evil. And then that newly evil NPC is going to lie to the PCs that he drew Rogue, leading them to doubt all of their other allies.
Too many layers? Probably. But I like the idea of taking campaign destroyers and writing them into the world as if they were a part of it. I also have a halfing child character that died and was reincarnated as a dragonborn adult. Now he's Tom Hanks from Big, but also a dragon.
Now I'm thinking about designing a minor campaign with possibly tragic undertones where a Deck of Many Things was kept in a secure lockbox by a mysterious but ultimately benevolent organization out of fear of what havoc could be unleashed upon the world by such a chaos-inducing artifact, but had been stolen by a petty thief that might've been initially friendly to the PCs (even asking them to help him clear out a recently-inherited castle of monsters), and that may have had some altruistic reasons for stealing the deck (such as trying to afford enough money to cure a sick person that he cared for, believing that the lockbox contained money instead of the deck), but gradually turns hostile and evil as (like a gambling addict with a developing thirst for power, a-la Light Yagami, a.k.a. Kira, from Death Note) his mind becomes consumed by the very boons that the deck had granted him (including his own castle, faithful servant, various riches and magic items, and improved combat prowess). Unfortunately for the villain, even as he started to draw cards that were ultimately detrimental towards him (such as changing the villain's alignment from good to evil from early on into the campaign, albeit in a more gradual sense; causing the very person that the villain tried to cure of his/her sickness to turn on him out of fear, which causes him/her to get the PCs to face off against the villain, clouding the villain's judgment; causing the villain to suffer from a bout of bad luck; attracting the attention of a demon that may or may not become a future villain in a future campaign; and even start to lose ownership of his wealth and castle), he would end up starting to use the deck in a vain attempt to turn his declining fortunes around, which would eventually result in his soul getting stolen and imprisoned by said demon (as a result of drawing the Void card). (Optionally, the players could try to rescue the villain's soul from the Abyss, and give him a chance at redemption for his power-hungry misdeeds, including letting go of the Deck of Many Things before it does something worse.)
AEROHOBBIES MADE THE THIEF CLASS!? IN SANTA MONICA!? THE ONE I GO TO EVERY WEDNESDAY!?
NOBODY TOLD ME THESE THINGS!!!!
+Tiki Omzee It's true! They literally got on the phone and called Gary Gygax and pitched him this new class they developed called the Thief. Gary put his own spin on it, obviously. And none of the folks at Aero now were at Aero then, but it's all in John Peterson's Playing At The Game.
Aero should put up a plaque or something, I bet a lot of people have played thieves AT Aero Hobbies and never guessed the class originated there.
+Matthew Colville Yeah I talked them (the couple running the store now) yesterday and they told me all about it. It happened a lot longer ago than I thought; owner said he was about 5 lol. Sometimes I forget how long DnD has been a thing.
They absolutely should get a plaque or something, that's huge! Pretty proud of my hobbie store now, it seems way too small to be that important to DnD's timeline.
Matthew Colville I got a question for ya I'm a semi new DM and I'm making a game we're a demon virus is getting spread around in the town and they need to escape . I'm wording if it's a good idea to have rival party that helps and goes against them ?
I played when I was a teenager. Now I am the DM running my boys through the box set adventure. It’s been a blast getting them into it, and I appreciate your videos helping me help them.
Can you do more magic item reviews? This was great and Im super curious as to what your favorite magic items are.
Matt: "It's perfectly safe. I promise you, I'm not playing with a full deck."
My friend turned me into these videos once I told him I was going to learn how to both be a DM and write my own campaign to play. Aside from the fact that I'm fairly certain you're a Nerdfighter, which is pretty cool on its own, but your videos so far have been so enlightening. I've already taken 6 front and back pages of notes. I'm very optimistic about my game
The idiot is fun, unless your playing a Mage then your screwed and now have about half as powerful
at least, if you are a wizard, you get to shift all your prepared spells around to not need to use any Save based spells
KKDragonLord
Unfortunately it also affects your attack modifier, so you’re honestly better off playing support.
Not even a year later and you have 10x the number of subscribers. Congrats!
Strongest Intro in RUclips history!
Re- The DUNGEON! Rather than make it a prison I would make it that the PC is teleported to such a place in an actual dungeon and the last person trapped ther is put in place of the person who drew the card. Then the Player plays this new character who might travel to the dungeon to save their character.
Mars, the Bringer of War. Love the intro.
7:41 NO ONE CAN DEFLECT THE EMERALD SPLASH
Wow, I know I’m late to the party on these videos but this is some of the best content on the whole of RUclips imo and it goes beyond just D&D. I’m only just starting out as a player, not even as a DM, and these videos not only are hugely helpful but also provide real insight into how interactions between people irl occur. I’m blown away with how relevant these are to the real world and as someone who is very outgoing and loves to understand what makes people tick; this is just a great video series to watch and listen to your opinions and ideas. Oh and of course this is really going to enhance my playing experience as a newbie. I’ve subscribed without hesitation!
The 4e module printed a deck of many things with magic the gathering card backings so you could shuffle any of your magic cards in.
p.s. I appreciate how fast and directly you talk.
"Forget the bad things"
I was crushed in my own armor by my own god, thrown into the ocean, and nearly drowning. I lost my armor and had previously lost my weapon by breaking it on a Zombie's head. I'll never forget that.
ADDITION: We were in the middle of a Zombie apocalypse as well, i didn't get a weapon besides a rusty dagger for the next three or four sessions.
Gotta ask what ya did to provoke that, unless this was evil aligned all along.
SolarFlair Oh no, i was a Lawful Good character who followed Heironeous.
Hey I’m a new DM who started playing because of quarantine. DND turned into an amazing way for me and my players to connect, and actually become way closer than we ever had been in addition to meeting and playing with new people. I’d never even played before, and neither had any of my player (except one), and your videos have been a lifesaver. You’re my favorite tabletop rpg channel, thank you so much!!!
"Lum the I-just-get-these-headaches" is my new favourite character name.
It's good to know Terry Pratchett is still bringing joy to this world.
A madman talking about his condition: "I just have this headaches..." LOL
I know this is an old video but hells I'll leave a comment.
I just came up with a dungeon based on the deck of many things. Thank you Mr. Colville.
My first thought at ruin was : MY CABBAGES!!!
I wish I'd found your channel sooner, that D20 is amazing. Also your content. Also your voice. I'm surprised one of your coworkers hasn't roped you into voicing a character.
I’ve just binged this series to date. Thank you very much, Matthew. I’m creating my own campaign (for the first time) and everything you’ve said has been a question or reservation I’ve had. Nailing it!
I love the idea of drawing death. It sounds like a good challenge.
Did you just a cappella Mars? And I thought this channel couldn't get better...
+Anthony Yertzell Completely spontaneous. I had no idea I was going to do that until I did it. I think I'd just watched a Venture Bros. ep where 21 does it.
Wow. I haven't heard "The Planets" in probably 15 years. Thanks for reminding me of this.
marry me hehehehehe jk great channel man
While you were brandishing your Deck of Many Things Holst-er. Eh? Ehhhhh?????
Hey wanted to say thank you for putting these videos together. I started DMing for my group of friends a few months back and this is definitely helping me feel more comfortable with doing it after each video ive seen so far
step 1: find the deck
step 2: dont draw a card, instead take ALL cards and search for a mage to sort out all the good cards
step 3: draw from the good deck yourself
step 4: take the bad deck with you
step 5: find the ultimate bad guy
step 6: get him to draw from the bad deck
step 7: ???
step 8: profit
:D
Satan thanks, Satan!
It's "sat-een"
How does a mage do that at all without misconstruing it as it being considered it being drawn.
Hackerman
Isn't there no way to identify which cards are which? At best a mage could identify the whole deck as the Deck of Many Things, because the entire deck is considered one item. And you can draw multiple cards at a time and unleash their effects. So just by attempting to separate them you are in fact drawing cards. And once cards are drawn they disappear forever.
I love how much effort you put into your videos :)
In my experiences with the DOMT it was only used by novice DMs that had next to zero story writing ability who used a tropey magic item in an attempt to carry the session. It was employed only to create poorly constructed drama and chaos to make the DM feel that they were “good” at DMing.
I’m sure a skilled DM can find use for it but at best I claim it to be tacky for gameplay.
from my experince (as a player and now as a DM) the deck of many things seems pretty fun but never turns out fun- at least for me.
the first time i saw it when i first played DnD. the big bad handed the cards to another player's character and the player picked the card from the deck the dm had. we later found out the deck was rigged to be all the "bad" card.
the second time was my second campaign (different dm). another player character had the deck and pulled 4 cards every time. it made the campaign pretty easy at first since the first 12 were the lvl up, money, and knight. the DM had a rule that some cards went back into the deck and my friend just kept pulling those 3 cards. then he pulled the card that sent your soul to another plane. this didnt derail the campaign since the character had connections with a plane jumping druid uldra so she just brought the soul back. it made the game pretty dull and he was the only one out of the four of us who ever played since his character didn't like sharing.
when i became a DM i knew i wanted to use the deck of many things mostly because it didn't feel fun with the two previous events. i made scenarios for each card, mini plots to fix the bad cards and ways to make the good cards fun for everyone and not just the one who drew it. how ever i didn't expect to get a player who was so sure the deck would ruin the game he had his character chuck it into the ocean the moment they got the cards. i then gave another deck of many things (the dm's guide has three ways to read it so i figured three decks would exist for the fun of it) to a different player who stole it from a very powerful magician who was using the cards in a magic show (she was the self insert i think i mentioned in a comment on the dm self insert video). that player then couldn't continue playing with us due to medical school kicking his butt. its been a year after that event and the game is still going but the deck of many things just feels like a drag to try and use- either its rigged to be bad, a player hogs it, or a player gets it and gets rid of it.
I know you can pick this up relatively simply, but for someone who just wants to pick up the game and is looking for a quick start, it seems like a simple example of combat is something that's missing from these guides?
Absolutely agree on being generous with magic items. Gandalf, Thorin, and Bilbo got their magic swords (essentially, magic swords) very early in their quest. I love how you not only had a prop to hold the deck, but made the deck a more interesting prop than a regular deck of cards. I also really like the idea of eliminating the game-ruining cards, and replacing them with beneficial cards. No kidding here-two weeks ago, I was preparing some random encounters for a trek through a forest my party was going to be making. I wanted them to discover a few lairs, and one of them in particular was going to be loaded with treasure. I rolled a Deck of Many Things. I thought about it. Typed it up in my notes. Thought about it some more. Deleted it from my notes and re-rolled. Now I'm kicking myself. They're not there yet, but I probably don't have time to replace it. I think they'll be there next session. BUT... I am going to be patient, incorporate your ideas, and place the Deck somewhere else, but direct the fates a little bit in the party's favor, so the game doesn't explode by chance. Thanks! "Why are we here? Because we're here, roll the bones..."
I'm happy I went back to watch through the backlog of Videos I haven't seen yet to come across this one, it was rather entertaining! Thanks MATT!
I got the D&D 5e starter set I wanna dm someday and your vids are very helpful 👍
Back in the early 90's when I was in the military I played ALOT of D&D - I have literally seen dozens of campaigns ended by this magic item - this magic item is a campaign killer when used without some kind of manipulation. Your advice is spot on. Beyond stacking the deck or making custom cards there is another trick you can use. Providing you are using a regular deck of cards, you can swap the results. When you look up the results in the DMG if the card will break the campaign, just apply the result of a different card that won't ruin everything. A player draws the card that imprisons his soul, well, when you read the result from the DMG, he instead just loses 2 points of Intelligence for example.
You're wrong about the Void and Donjon forcing players to roll new characters, by the way. One of my fellow party members drew Donjon last session, and he's decide to take control of a Kobold NPC while we go to find his character.
Donjon is by no means a character ender.
However Void is if your character isn't a high enough level to justify planeswalking yet.
I know the first time I pull from the deck in a campaign, I am going to lose my character.
However, I will absolutely pull that card as fast as I can.
God, I love this guy, he gives a wonderful easy-to-go kind uncle vibe really cool
opening with Gustov Holst mars: bringer of war acapella was amazing
Thanks, was trying to find out what that piece was
Been trying to figure out what this was since Venture Bros did it. Thanks for naming it. (it's really hard to google mouth noises)
I implemented a version of the DoMT to resolve crit fails, nat 1's, I stole the idea from the DiceStormers (who play Pathfinder). I took a generic deck of cards and created an Excel sheet where each card has a negative effect associated, the higher the card the worse the effect, but nothing too bad, usually just things like -1 to your next skill check or ability roll, or you are poisoned or fatigued instantly, something you can deal with or remove at the next rest. Adds a fun, random aspect to the game.
Sounds like something that would be an intresting addition to another item. say a magic sword, the stats are good when compared to other weapons the player finds, for every life taken using the sword a random negative effect is given, but the swords stats get better. As the player continues to take lives with the sword the negative effects become more damaging and longer lasting until the player if they keep using the sword is consumed by it.
To keep the storyline intresting it might be useful if the player who weilds the weapon is partly in on the story and roleplays it like his character is becoming addicted to the power he weilds much like the ringbearer in lord of the rings. Potentially a useful plot device if you have a player that wants to kill off their character at some point
Potential ends to the storyline could be, finding a way to destroy the weapon, the party being forced to turn on their counterpart if they go to far.
Not sure if thats an intresting idea or even if its properly workable in the game, but if you can find a way to make it work feel free to use it
hey,
I'm a new player from Belgium. i recently played with 3 different DM's and know i want to try it my self.
so i bought de dungeon master guide and monster manual (players handbook and guildmasters guide to ravnica i already owned). when i'm not reading the book i was looking on youtube for tips for a secret door and i came across your channel.
you learned me a lot in the few episodes that i seen so far.
way to late for the D20 meteor-stone. :p but i want to thank you for your channel
(sorry for my englisch.)
Melvin
LMAO! I want a full version of that music! :-D
I recognize it from somewhere, I can't place it. I'm thinking old-school gaming.
It's from The Planet Suite, by Holst. I think it is Mars.
David Shepheard I was thinking Outpost. Old MIDI file with that song. It was Mars.
Yes, it's Mars. And it's known for having been used to amazing comedic effect in the past... ruclips.net/video/j73gYxsxRrs/видео.html
Thank you for all your tips. I love watching your videos.
As a dm I've been watching you and using you as an amazing resource for a long time! Thanks for how awesome you and other commenters have you been!
....crap, not even 30 seconds in and i already give the video a like. earned by the splendid rendition of mars, the bringer of war.
I would love more magical item videos, and removing some of the cards is exactly what I did in my game.
The Devil - could be , He Who Walks Behind from Butcher's books LOL love the idea of that card
The like was solely for the intro. (I’m kidding but i love the intro 🤣🤣)
that thing about remebering good things more. it's actually the opposite
holling harris chaotic depressive
Best opening to any video
Am I too late for the contest? Oh well, you're videos are awesome all by themselves! You gave me lots of ideas to make the games really personal and interesting :)
"Let's assume this is a bad card" ...
*draws The Devil