The Hallow Deck of Many Things

If you play Dungeons and Dragons, you may have heard of the Deck of Many Things before. This coveted magic item is a deck of 22 cards, half of which have amazingly useful effects, and the other half of which have disastrously bad effects. This deck and its cousin, the Harrow Deck, are so infamous for the trouble they've caused that they come with warnings in their compendium listings. These warnings caution GMs to be careful about using these decks, as they can radically change your players' characters and completely derail an ongoing campaign.

I love these decks. I love them for how broken and problematic they are. I love them for the absolute chaos they wrought.

But I'm also dissatisfied with them. On the one hand, these decks are too much -- numerous cards can instakill your players, which just isn't fun. On the other hand, these decks are not enough -- only 22 cards? C'mon, we can do better than that!

To solve my complaints, I have drafted The Hallow Deck of Many Things. The Hallow Deck is a 78-card Tarot-style deck with a wide variety of exciting effects, only some of which can kill your players.

The majority of effects in the Hallow Deck function somewhat like roleplay prompts, introducing new characters, objects, and circumstances into your game world. Some cards might get the gods involved, including The Hooded Figure, the mysterious creator of the Hallow Deck. (Psst: The Hooded Figure is just the GM.) Other cards are more meta, providing both the GM and players with different ways of altering the game world. Others simply imbue the character with valuable upgrades. Others produce downgrades, including curses and transformations. Luckily, most of the effects in the Hallow Deck are reversible with normal magic. Most of them.

The Hallow Deck of Many Things

How to use the Hallow Deck

In my game world, Musea, the Hallow Deck has become an object of tradition that is pulled out at least once in every campaign. We prefer to use it during Halloween (called The Hallow Festival in Musea) as it's the most thematically appropriate. There are other ways to introduce it, though.

I recommend not giving the deck directly to your players; they're likely to get overzealous and draw too many cards, producing an overwhelming amount of results. I usually put the deck in the hands of a fortune-telling NPC who can set rules for how many cards each player can draw and what it costs. You could also have a God bestow effects from the deck as a gift (or curse). However you introduce the Hallow Deck, you should caution your players ahead of time that it is not to be trifled with!

Alternatively, you can use the deck as a mundane fortune-telling device. You can interpret the effects and name of each Hallow card as part of a reading with real Tarot cards. I've had a lot of fun doing this with my players!

I mentioned earlier that Paizo and WotC give warnings for the original Decks. In some ways, I think these warnings are misleading; they might make you think that the Deck of Many Things is uncontrollable in some way. Let me take the moment to remind you that, as GM, everything at your table is under your control. If you don't want to use something in any of these Decks, you don't have to! Even if you drew a card you weren't expecting during session, you can always change it in the moment. Never feel like you have to do what the Deck says.

Please share your Hallow Deck stories with me on Twitter. I love to hear them!