The Deck of Many Things is one of Dungeons & Dragons‘ better known magical items; it’s a deck of cards that, with a simple draw of a card, can elevate or ruin any D&D campaign. Part monkey’s paw and part wishing well, the D&D community is filled with tales of people messing around with this magical deck of cards.
Wizards of the Coast’s latest product is The Deck of Many Things. It’s two differently sized hardbacked books and an oversized box of cards. It turns this one magic item into the basis of a full campaign. A traditional deck of many things contains a maximum of twenty-two cards; this set introduces a new magic item, the deck of many more things, expanding the cards to sixty-six. (And we get that many cards in this set.)
The main book is called The Book of Many Things, and it’s a DM’s toolkit similar to Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, but themed around the infamous deck of cards. It’s packed with character options, magic items, monsters and advice on integrating the infamously chaotic cards into your game. It’s quite good and has plenty of resources for a DM looking for a card-inspired campaign. Novice DMs should be aware that a lot of the options and items here are very powerful; the resources here are for short, fast, and deadly campaigns.
The second book is The Deck of Many Things Card Reference Guide. It’s a guide on how to use the cards in this set to create random stories. Using Oracle/Tarot cards to help design adventures is a well-established DM’s trick, but these cards are designed specifically with D&D in mind. The book is comprehensive and filled with lots of nice story hooks. It’s a little bit over-designed for what it is, but it’s a thoughtful addition.
Finally, we come to the cards themselves. The designs are clear and accessible, but it really feels like Wizards of the Coast is a little scared of tarot card design. A previous attempt at ‘oracle’ style cards, the D&D Tarot Deck, suffered from style over substance and was hard to draw inspiration from. The Deck of Many Things cards do a little better; they’re clear as to what they are and convey their meaning well, but they lack the little hints and tricks you find in the images of modern oracle cards. Despite what the reference book suggests, these are very much a prop for a game rather than a tool to help you make up stories. The art is nice, though.
The book and cards are presented oddly. For a start, only the card box gets a slipcase, and the reference guide fits into the card box. This is odd, as all the other slipcase products in this range are large enough to accommodate all the elements of that product. Despite being tarot-card format sized, we also get quite a large box to put cards in; it’d be easier to have them in a standard format card box. It looks nice, and we can see how it could lure the players into drawing a card, but it’s mostly going to sit on a shelf, taking up space. If it was in a decent deck box, you could stick it in a bag and have it more readily available.
The version we received for review had subpar quality cards, which bent easily, with the gold effect trim easily coming off. We understand that the release has been delayed to fix this issue.
Overall, the highlight of this set is The Book of Many Things; it’s a fun addition to the various D&D rulebooks. The cards and their guidebook are fun props but could be much better.
