Releasing November 14, The Book of Many Things will bring new and exciting ways to use the infamous Deck of Many Things in your games, as well as new character options, adventures, and Dungeon Master tools.

But, despite the ubiquitous legends of this infamous item, it’s not unusual to encounter veteran playgroups who have avoided using it in their games. Why? Because there are countless tales of games rent asunder by the whims of the Deck.

I’m here today to tell you to fear not the chaos and potential misfortune the Deck could bring! Read on below to learn how you can lean into that chaos and revel in the disaster!

• Drawing Stories From the Deck as a Player
• How to Prepare to Use the Deck as a Dungeon Master
• Tales of the Deck of Many Things in the D&D Multiverse

Drawing Stories From the Deck as a Player

We make characters as players because something about them sounds like it’ll be fun to play. Whether that’s their sick combat skills for an action-based one-shot, or the sweeping angst-filled backstory for your tiefling as you set out on that long-term campaign. We love our characters and sometimes get a bit scared of letting bad things happen to them, which can certainly happen if they were to draw from the Deck.

Artist: BRIAN VALEZA

There Is No Story Without Conflict

There is nothing interesting about a heroic character who faces no struggles and has no misfortunes along the way. In fact it’s usually the impact of those events that causes a character to become heroic to begin with. If Edmond Dantès is never framed for a crime he didn’t commit, he never becomes the Count of Monte Cristo. Dorothy doesn’t get to go to Oz if she’s not caught up in that tornado.

Your Character Failing Is Not You Failing

Something I often like to stress when it comes to tabletop roleplaying as both a game and a storytelling medium is that failing a dice roll or having a bad thing happen to your character is not the same thing as failing yourself. In fact, having things threaten your character and having your character push through them to emerge heroically is the stuff of adventure.

The Worst Things Can Be the Best Gifts

Drawing the worst possible cards from the Deck of Many Things is such a glorious gift of storytelling for you as a player. The Rogue card makes an NPC hostile to you somewhere in the world. You get to play through how your character reacts to having a nemesis out there lurking in the world. Do they suddenly eye everyone with suspicion? Do they go the opposite route and start trying to make sure they’re extra kind to everyone they know?

If your character draws the Ruin card and suddenly finds themselves bereft of all the things they own, that’s going to be a pretty big shake-up to your story, but it also provides a lot of opportunities for you as a group to figure out how to earn it back. Are you going to take on some dangerous quests to earn some primo treasure? Will you lean more easily into a life of crime now that you know that fortune is fleeting and sometimes even heroes can lose everything with the turn of a card?

Don’t Lose Your Head

And let’s just address it: One of the worst outcomes of cards from the Deck of Many Things is that you could lose control of your character, either temporarily due to a card like the Donjon or the Void, or even permanently if they die due to a card like the Skull. Character death in D&D is an individual comfort level detail that can and should be discussed with your DM and your table. If death from the Skull card would ruin the game for you, that’s a valid thing to discuss ahead of time. But The Book of Many Things has some great suggestions for dealing with both of these scenarios.

The Skull chapter of The Book of Many Things presents a new bit of world lore, the Grim Harrow, where your character could rise as an undead spirit after dying to the Deck. A quest to restore that character could be a fun way of resolving that initial character loss. Similarly, the Void chapter helps with the creation of temporary characters to use in the wake of a particularly nasty deck draw. This can be a fun roleplay opportunity to play as someone with more of a lore tie-in to the Deck, or even just a chance to experiment with a different class or archetype if you’ve been using the same character for a while.

We’re Not in Here With the Deck, the Deck Is in Here With Us!

Finally, there’s another element to a spot of misfortune as you draw from the Deck: camaraderie. How does the rest of a party deal with the impact of one member losing everything with Ruin? How do they maneuver around the Rogue card’s effect on an important NPC who now just outright hates one of you? The card drawn might only land in one player’s hand, but the effects blowback on the whole group.

Backstories are all well and good, but having a life-changing, high-stakes event that the other characters all get to witness and have a hand in as well? Amazing.

How to Prepare to Use the Deck as a Dungeon Master

Artist: CRAIG J SPEARING

The Deck of Many Things is at its heart a story engine. So let’s talk about what that means for you as a DM. Remember that as powerful as the Deck of Many Things is, ultimately it is just a tool available to you as the DM. The powers of fate that the Deck ties into are ultimately still your powers.

Deck Prep

Before you have your players encounter or draw from the Deck of Many Things, it’s a wise idea to peruse all the cards you want to include first and jot down some notes for yourself about how you plan to incorporate those outcomes into your game. Rather than feeling like an abrupt disruption to an otherwise successful campaign, treat the results of a Deck of Many Things draw as the first chapter in a newly unfolding side quest.

Example Outcomes

Let’s draw from the Deck for an example, shall we? Let’s say you’re building toward the Deck making an appearance. If a player draws Euryale, a cursed card that gives characters a permanent -2 penalty on saving throws, then you might want to have an idea of how that character can seek out the necessary divine intervention. Maybe there’s a specific temple in a specific town that holds the key. Or, taking inspiration from Baldur’s Gate 3, maybe there are seemingly a lot of possible solutions dangled in front of the party as a way of removing the curse. Each with its own little attached quest.

Another example is the Rogue card. It would be prudent to have an idea of which NPC would most like to plunge a knife into the characters if they suddenly became hostile to them. It could be a character who the players need to remain on good terms with, a favorite quest-giver, a popular tavern owner, or even a romantic partner. Or it could be someone who was seemingly innocuous before who now spins their newfound relentless anger toward the player character into building an entire criminal empire to bring them down.

Stacking the Deck

Look, there are some pretty rough cards in the Deck. If you honestly suspect a card would be gamebreaking for you in a way that would not be fun, then remove that card from contention. Or just have a plan to modify or adapt it in a way that stays thematically appropriate but more suited to your game.

The Deck as it appears in fifth edition typically has 13 or 22 cards, with the 13-card variety being far more common. So you as a DM have the ability to pick the 13 cards you think work best for your game and have those be present in the Deck your players find.

Tales of the Deck of Many Things in the D&D Multiverse

Some of the wildest things to ever happen in an actual play show have happened because of a Deck of Many Things draw. I’ll avoid spoilers here, but:

Critical Role had a draw in their first campaign that was so memorable that a reference to it years later during the third campaign broke the table with laughter.

Dungeons and Daddies’ first campaign featured a surprise, inadvertent draw from the Deck of Many Things that completely reshaped the landscape of the story.

The Adventure Zone hasn’t dealt directly with the Deck of Many Things, but one of the final arcs of the Balance campaign, the Suffering Game, is a kindred spirit to the Deck thematically, albeit one weighted toward bad cards only. Regardless, fans of the show have gotten tattoos, created artwork, and even written full songs about the resolution of that arc, a moment known among the fandom as “Arms Outstretched.”

Not Another D&D Podcast added a prominent character to the party by drawing from the Deck. They developed their own arc and turned out to be a highlight of the campaign.

Master the Deck, Both Good and Bad

If you’re still a bit too concerned about the ways that the Deck of Many Things could disrupt your campaign, don’t worry, there is help on the way!

Among the many things you’ll find in The Book of Many Things are suggestions for DMs on how to make even the most chaotic decks work for your campaign, as well as advice for players on how to navigate the effects of the Deck on your character. As I said above, it even has suggestions for making a temporary character to play if yours is, you know, voided.

You can add this book to your digital collection by preordering through D&D Beyond. If you want a physical copy of your very own Deck of Many Things, check out the Deck of Many Things Physical + Digital Bundle!

Riley Silverman (@rileyjsilverman) is a contributing writer to D&D Beyond, Nerdist, and SYFY Wire. She DMs the Theros-set Dice Ex Machina for the Saving Throw Show, and has been a player on the Wizards of the Coast-sponsored The Broken Pact. Riley also played as Braga in the official tabletop adaptation of the Rat Queens comic for HyperRPG, and currently plays as The Doctor on the Doctor Who RPG podcast The Game of Rassilon. She currently lives in Los Angeles.