Review copy courtesy of Wizards of the Coast.
Pros
Lots more full colour art.
A little bit for everyone with some new monsters, new maps, and a whole lot of fluff and advice about the deck of many things.
The fluff is really quite good, and I enjoyed reading it. There are some books that do a good job of getting the creative juices going, and just make us excited about D&D.
There’s some good stuff here for making characters, with the deck being tied to a past event. We know the mechanics well by now. But I’d argue the most important thing from a background is the story itself, and those special benefits due to how your character is tied to the world. More help and inspiration with that is welcome.
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Could Go Either Way
Ultimately, it is about the deck of many things. It’s a very iconic D&D item. But also, it may not be the one that catches your imagination. If it doesn’t, there’s still some other stuff that you may like, but the focus is on the deck. Sometimes there are good things that simply aren’t to our tastes.
My god the price for the full set is up there. The Book of Many Things is cheaper, but also much shorter.
I can’t speak for the physical build quality for the first time I remember. I only had access to the digital copy for this review.
Cons
Each chapter is named after a page of the book. That’s kind of cool and thematic. However, that’s the only name. Some like the Knight are straight forward. It’s about companions, right? Well, except that’s also where the magic items are in this book. The Skull? Well, it’s about a faction related to the Deck of Many Things and their hideout. But there’s no subtitle to make that clear. It makes navigating the book quite hard.
The size of the books have been getting smaller
No PDF*
* Denotes nitpicking.
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| The cover of The Book of Many Things. The conversion slightly shifted the colours. |
Introduction
There are some extremely iconic items in D&D. I’m sure you have
stories from your own homebrew campaigns of items that became so
closely tied to an object, even when they re-appeared with another
group, that character’s story lived on. But there are also ones
that have been in the published pages for a long time. One such item
is the deck of many things. It has the power to absolutely destroy a
campaign. But from it come many hilarious and amusing stories. It is
a very famous item, after all. Helping Dungeon Masters wield this
item in a way to bring happiness to the table is a noble goal, and
it’s what the book sets out to do based on the title. There's more here, as one might expect. A whole book on the deck is hard to do.
Please note that I only got to review the digital The Book of Many Things. I cannot speak to the cards, or the additional book included there.
The Adventure
New Player Options
If what you want is new races, mechanics, rules, that sort of thing, you’ll be disappointed. However, there is a lot of advice on how to include effects from the deck of many things in your past. I have players who do struggle with the story part of their character sheet (including backgrounds), so I’m happy to see this. Some adventures did provide ways for the players to more closely tie their characters into the main story like this. But I hope to see this continue.
New Monsters
There are a few monsters provided for this adventure, as we've come to expect. They are well fitted to the adventure and there aren't too many. This adventure, even at the level of monsters, tries its best to be creepy just like the module that inspired it. Quite a few of them are specific NPCs and a lot of material is given for playing them.
What You Need to Play
As usually you’ll need the Monster Manual, Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide. I miss the days when the basic rules were enough.
The Book Itself
There’s a lot of different content here. There’s help with running helpers, like what may happen if you draw the Knight card. There’s help with coming up with events in your character’s life influenced by the deck of many things, or just following a similar theme. Ruin doesn’t need to happen when you draw a card, but it’s an interesting element to add.
The writing is interesting, and the amount of things covered is surprising. To be honest, I expected this book to be worse. How much can you write about the deck of many things? Turns out, you can write a lot. Several factions related to the deck are detailed here, as well as possible conflict. The character and story hooks that result are interesting, and when I finished the book I realized I had actually enjoyed the read a lot. Some people read adventures as a form of entertainment, and those sorts of people will probably enjoy this one.
The supernatural gifts are a nice addition too. Having more options to give really makes things easier. It also makes it less boring, as the gifts can be unique or rarely given. As a result, instead of a route response, players need to think. There’s some nice trap rooms too, even with pictures. Puzzles and riddles too! Puzzles are a good part of D&D, so some more help is appreciated. It’s easy to put such a riddle onto the entrance of a tomb, and have your players enjoy the solving of it.
What about the new
Decks of Many Things? There’s many included decks here,
including the Deck of Many More Things. I like
the concept, and I like the addition of new cards. These cards tend
to skew to the positive side, which makes sense. Why would I spend so
much time and effort to make a card to rig the deck against me? But
it also helps address a concern from the original deck: it being easy
to ruin a campaign with a bad effect. There’s some good advice here
to help reduce the severity of the bad cards as well, and turn them
into adventures on their own. However, there is one big problem. One
chapter gives cards their own daily use. It’s fun, I like this
idea. However, the new cards from the Deck of Many More
Things don’t have
such abilities detailed. That’s an annoying oversight. They
did include some help for the players to make their own cards to add
to the deck, which is appreciated. I wish there was a bit more
though. It’s a bit vague, but enough is given along with effects
for having completed such an undertaking. There are also some other decks that allow you to have similar mechanics. I like the idea, it's interesting...I'm not sure if they're balanced. And I haven't made my mind up on it yet, which may mean they're a bit strong.
Lastly, there are a few mechanics presented here that are based on a deck. One example is the “encounter deck,” a way to create and manage encounters for a party in an area using a deck of cards. There’s the “journey spread”, a way to make travelling more interesting. There’s card sparks, a way to help inspire Dungeon Masters. And finally, probably my favourite, the inspiration deck. This deck provides some more interesting and random benefits to players when they gain advantage. Coming up with new mechanics is important. Some campaigns will be based on intrigue, others on military battles, and others again about travel and searching for things. We could use all the mechanics at once, or we could focus on the ones that closest pertain to the campaign and make things simpler overall. It also gives each one a unique flavour. I hope to see more of this sort of thing in the future, and it’s some of the biggest help and most interesting content in the whole book.
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| One of the maps. The art can be really nice here. |
The Adventure Itself
Huh? Why is this
section here? It’s true there’s not a large multi-level spanning
adventure here. What there is though is several maps, with details
layouts, and factions or characters occupying them. A couple are a
location, and a small 1 level adventure put together. I wasn’t
expecting that when I started this book, but I’m happy to see it.
There’s a haunted mansion section that works quite well even if you
remove the connection to the deck. It really is everything you’d
expect from a short adventure. The location is detailed in map form.
Characters with their own motivations are present in the location.
Advice on how to get characters there, and how to kick off the
adventure is present. It’s really pretty well done, and now I want
another anthology book. Anthologies may be the big strength in this edition.
The Art and Book Build Quality
The quality of the art is certainly better than some recent books I remember. The cards themselves look beautiful in the book. The monsters and characters look good, and the maps continue that high quality appearance and colour we’ve seen for years. It’s certainly better than some previous art I remember thinking looked awful. I do wish there were more scenery shots here though. I love being able to show such a picture to my players. When they can see it first person, and top down, it makes them feel closer to the location.
That said, I can’t comment on the quality of the physical set. I was only given access to the digital version. So unfortunately, I can’t comment on any issues in the physical copy.
What I felt was Missing
A Dungeon Master can make their own deck of many things in any number of ways. So I think the other book should have been included. It may make the most sense in the physical set, but it’d be a nice value add, and I should be the one to choose if it has value or not. It doesn’t look like a digital copy is available at all.
Free Stuff
I miss the days when there were free things. Come on, give us a printable Deck of Many Things set I can glue to playing cards. Or a fun quick introduction adventure. Make me excited. Well, if that’s any clue, there’s not much here. Though I must say, even in the past they did a rather poor job of advertising it.
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| One of the cards. Even without the card set, the art still features throughout the book. |
Summary
I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would. After all, a whole book on the Deck of Many Things? However, the content is varied, and before I got bored of riddles or puzzles, the next section started. There’s new locations, mini-adventures, new mechanics using cards for Dungeon Masters, new magic items, new creatures, new factions, a whole lot of new. There’s a lot here to help with campaigns in general, and with the Deck of Many Things specifically. I wish there was more content, I wish the other book from the physical set was available digitally, and I wish the new cards from the Deck of Many More Things also had daily effects for single cards detailed in chapter 2. I wish there was more, and I think the books should get longer over time. Otherwise the value proposition gets worse. This is especially true since the prices climb higher. Give me more sample encounter decks. And why aren’t there pages we can print off to get a deck of our own? I could easily make a deck with some glue and a printer that way. And some free stuff to help get people excited is always welcome. It’s not a flawless book, and I want more, but I did enjoy the read. Please though, please improve the chapters. It's very hard to find stuff.
