Embrace Your Fate with the Rewarded or Ruined Backgrounds from The Book of Many Things

Tags author-damen-cook Deck of Many Things

Ready to change your destiny with one single card?

The Book of Many Things is full of lore, magic items, spells, and Dungeon Master tools designed to bring the Deck of Many Things to life in your games. This capricious item can bring sorrow or joy with just one quick shuffle.

Below, we’ll review some of the book’s player options and briefly discuss their storytelling implications. Let’s dive in!

Unleash Chaos With The Deck of Many Things Set

Pick a card, any card! The Deck of Many Things set expands on the legendary Deck of Many Things with new player options, monsters, and more! Included in the set is the 192-page The Book of Many Things, an expanded 66-card Deck of Many Things, and a guidebook for using the cards in new and fun ways. Order your copy today!

Rewarded Background

Artist: BRIAN VALEZAAn elf in regal garb looks excitedly at a letter.

Things are looking up! Whether your character won a lottery, was granted wishes by a genie, or drew a powerful boon from the Deck of Many Things, their life has turned around. Embrace this second chance by—what else?—going on an adventure!

When you take the Rewarded background, you will gain features that help tell your story, that hint at where you’ve been and how it’s changed you. You are proficient in Insight and Persuasion. As a player, consider whether these represent skills that your character mastered to survive during hard times or skills they’ve learned due to their breadth of experiences.

You will also gain a feat: Lucky, Magic Initiate, or Skilled (your choice), whichever best reflects the moment that changed your life. If you found the right sword in the right stone, consider yourself Lucky. Bargaining with an Archfey might have left you touched with the Magic Initiate feat. If you credit yourself with your newfound fortune or want to reflect the hardships of gaining it, take the Skilled feat!

Ruined Background

Artist: BRIAN VALEZAA down-on-his-luck dwarf uses his warhammer as a cane to help with an injured foot

They told you to roll this boulder up a hill, but nobody told you about the second part.

Where once you had everything, now you have nothing. Whatever you value—money, love, power, respect, fame—it is a thing for other people, not you. Your trials and tribulations have driven you to adventure. Will you be able to turn your fate back around?

A character with the Ruined background is proficient in Stealth and Survival to reflect a newfound life at the edges of society. You also gain a feat: Alert, Skilled, or Tough. When selecting your feat, consider how your life changed so suddenly and what it has been like since. If you’ve had to keep a constant eye out for danger, you may want to select Alert. If you are actively pursuing a new shot at destiny, take Skilled to reflect the hard work thus far. Perhaps you’re biding your time quietly and resiliently, in which case Tough could represent your internal fortitude.

Playing as Rewarded or Ruined: When Backstory Matters

The Rewarded and Ruined backgrounds encourage you to consider your character’s backstory to reflect on the moments in their story that changed them. By the time your DM asks you to describe them to the table, your character will have experienced a pivotal moment that dramatically altered the course of their life.

Did you change your own destiny by inventing something new or boldly venturing to a new place? Or did this new life hit you like a storm when you looked the wrong god in the eye?

Consider your character’s life before their sudden shift of fate, whether they knew just how good they had it or whether they still had hope that things could get better. Now that they’ve lost or gained everything, have they become more or less generous, cynical, cautious? Do they have friends from their prior life? The Rewarded and Ruined backgrounds want you to think about how your character became who they are today.

Remember to collaborate with your DM to integrate your character’s background into the adventure’s setting and the story’s tone, especially if it touches on a legendary magic item like the Deck of Many Things.

Using the Deck of Many Things in Your Backstory

The Deck of Many Things will probably change your fate and the fate of your table’s adventure. That’s what it does. Pulling a card from the Deck can alter your past, your personality, or your wealth. It can make your wishes and your nightmares come to life.

Perhaps your character has already drawn from the Deck of Many Things, which is how they became Rewarded or Ruined. What card or cards did they draw? And how has it affected their outlook on the Deck itself?

You can, of course, let fate decide. If you are building a Ruined character, you might draw from the Deck of Many Things until you draw something powerfully negative, such as the Rogue or Skull cards. Or you could challenge yourself to write a Ruined backstory based on the first card you draw, even if it seems ostensibly positive: how did a Gem or Knight card come to spell your doom? However, there’s no need to leave things to chance if you’re inspired by one or more specific cards.

Don’t forget to reach out to your DM when developing your backstory. They can help you integrate your ideas into their setting, and they will probably appreciate the advance notice as they plan your first sessions. If you want to incorporate the Donjon card into your backstory but aren’t sure how your character would have been freed from it, your DM might be able to fill in those blanks. Cards like Flames and Knight introduce NPCs into your character’s life; collaborate with your DM so they can plan for these story elements.

Cartomancer Feat

Artist: HINCHEL ORAn oracle pulls a card from the Deck of Many Things.

Prerequisite: 4th Level, Spellcasting Feature

Practice your sleight of hand and freshen up on your favorite magic tricks because it’s time to use that deck of cards as a spellcasting focus. (Throwing them at enemies is optional, but spells like magic missile and scorching ray are right there, ready to be molded by your imagination.) The Cartomancer feat also grants you the prestidigitation cantrip and allows you to disguise the spell’s somatic and verbal components as shuffling the cards and chatting with the audience. With these abilities and the right skill proficiencies, you can teach a masterclass in distraction.

But this feat isn’t limited to smoke and mirrors. It also gives you an ace up your sleeve. When you finish a long rest, you’ll be able to select one spell from your class’s spell list and imbue that spell into one of your cards. Over the next 8 hours, you can use your bonus action to flourish that card—with panache, if you’re doing it right—and cast its spell.

Who Should Take the Cartomancer Feat?

As long as they’re at least 4th level and have the Spellcasting feature, I recommend this feat for tricksters, con artists, stage magicians, and any character that intends to wow a crowd or distract the bad guys.

Learned spellcasters, who memorize a limited number of spells, will get more out of the Cartomancer feat’s Hidden Ace feature than prepared casters, who can change their entire spell list every day. Casters like bards, rangers, and sorcerers must use the same spell list on a heist that they use when fighting a dragon. This feat helps even that playing field, giving those casters a touch of adaptability.

If you often find yourself torn between a niche spell that you really like but would rarely use and a less-exciting-but-more-reliable spell, Cartomancy makes you a caster who can do both. Learn the spells you’ll use most often, and rest easy knowing that you can always imbue a Hidden Ace with a situational spell later. Put another way: suggestion and fireball now; distort value and earthbind later.

Playing with the Deck of Many Things

If you’re ready to make a Rewarded or Ruined character, The Book of Many Things is ready to help. Inside, you’ll find suggested personality traits, trinkets, and helpful tips for how to use the Deck of Many Things to influence the character creation process.

Be sure to also keep an eye out in The Book of Many Things for new magic items and spells that might go well with your new deck of cards!

Royal Flush: 5 Magic Items From The Book of Many Things
by Davyd Barker
Deck of Wonder: The Deck of Many Things for Low-Level Parties
by Kyle Shire
What Happens When You Die to the Deck of Many Things?
by Davyd Barker

Damen Cook (@damen_joseph) is a lifelong fantasy reader, writer, and gamer. If he woke up tomorrow in Faerun, he would bolt through the nearest fey crossing and drink from every stream and eat fruit from every tree in the Feywild until he found that sweet, sweet wild magic.

Comments

  • To post a comment, please or register a new account.
Posts Quoted:
Reply
Clear All Quotes