Tag Archives: rpg

I Gave the Deck of Many Things Early… Two Years Later

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I run a DND game with some of the best people that I know. One of the things that I did was give the Deck of Many Things to one my players very early. We’re talking around level 6. She has pulled all but three cards. You would think that that would be a mistake but it has been great so far. At least by my estimates.

I want to tell you how some of the cards has played out and my thoughts on it.

Balance(Your mind suffers a wrenching alteration, causing your alignment to change. Lawful becomes chaotic, good becomes evil, and vice versa. If you are true neutral or unaligned, this card has no effect on you.)– The PC is a dark moody person. This turned them into a happy go lucky and joyful cheerleader type. She used her previously pulled wish card to get rid of this because she hated it so much. This only lasted like two sessions but the player made it really fun.

Skull(You summon an avatar of death-a ghostly humanoid skeleton clad in a tattered black robe and carrying a spectral scythe. It appears in a space of the DM’s choice within 10 feet of you and attacks you, warning all others that you must win the battle alone. The avatar fights until you die or it drops to 0 hit points, whereupon it disappears. If anyone tries to help you, the helper summons its own avatar of death. A creature slain by an avatar of death can’t be restored to life.)- She pulled this card in the middle of a town that they just arrived at. Everyone was horrified but then she one-shotted the devil that appeared. The kind of problem with this card is that the devil that’s summoned isn’t that hard.

Knight(You gain the service of a 4th-level fighter who appears in a space you choose within 30 feet of you. The fighter is of the same race as you and serves you loyally until death, believing the fates have drawn him or her to you. You control this character.)- This spawned a fighter to protect her that she named Bart. I decided that Bart was the same age as her Shadar-Kai character so several hundred years old. He had an existential crisis about being that old physically but not having a childhood. It has led to a lot of fun conversations about personhood and consent. He has also become a character of his own, whom I play. I try to balance him well, you don’t want him to do too much where you’re just playing with yourself but he’s good at making suggestions to keep them on track.

Rogue(A nonplayer character of the DM’s choice becomes hostile toward you. The identity of your new enemy isn’t known until the NPC or someone else reveals it. Nothing less than a wish spell or divine intervention can end the NPC’s hostility toward you.)- The player’s husband plays a circle of wildfire druid who has a little pet squirrel. Guess who turned against the player that pulled this card? I waited for him to cast a spell and had the squirrel attack her instead. Now the squirrel has to roll to resist the want to attack her instead of the target. This has led to so much humor though it’s still kind of new.

All in all, I don’t think that these things or any of the subsequent other pulls have broken the game. I think that it’s okay to give it to them early but you have to check the temperature of the room. I trust the people that I sit at the table with. That they want to have as good a time as I do.

Your Writing Can Benefit From a D20

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So for those of you in the less nerdy echelons of the world, you might not know what a D20 is. Below you’ll find a picture of it.

It’s the main dice used for the game, Dungeons and Dragons. Everything comes from this dice. The way it works, is that the dungeon master will tell someone to roll for something. They have various modifiers that add or subtract from the roll. The roll decides on how well they’re going to do.

For example, the DM sets the amount that they have to roll over. So, say you want to have your character jump over a small river. He’ll set a challenge of 10. The players roll and if they get above a ten, they jump over it. If they get under, something happens to prevent them from jumping over it.

There are two conditions though that could spell either doom or success for them. Rolling a natural 1, is known as a critical failure and usually means that something terrible could happen to the person. Like they fall into the river and start drowning because they suddenly forgot how to swim.

Then there is a critical success, which is when they roll a natural 20. This means they do a sick backflip over and land like they just won the gold at the Olympics.

Why am I telling you about this? Well, because I think that these mechanics make writing feel more real and random. In movies, we see the heroes fail usually about three times and then they succeed. We know they’re going to succeed. We know that they’re going to win.

But what if we didn’t? What if something so random happens that it completely changes the path of the story? That is the joy of using a D20 in your writing. You can suddenly throw in a twist that no one, including yourself, was expecting.

Another example, in one of my games, I had my players involved in a brutal death race in massive weaponized cars. In a reference to the fact that Speed Racer’s little brother and pet monkey constantly hid in the trunk of Speed’s car, a great ape(pictured below) was hidden in the trunk of the car in front of them. It was supposed to jump at them, land on the hood, obstruct their view and attack them.

Why didn’t you roll better you damn, dirty apes!

Well, it rolled a natural 1.

I had to follow through with the consequences, so it came up short, landed in front of the players’ car and was immediately run over and killed. Excitement averted, plan thwarted.

We all lost our goddamn minds with how funny it was. We still talk about it in the newer campaigns that we’ve done.

It’s things like this that make me keep rolling for my characters when I’m writing. Yes, you have to keep one hand on the wheel so that your story isn’t horrendously unbelievable but I do think that it adds a certain randomness to your stories that can make them truly unique.

It also helps with my character building. I’ll sometimes give them stat blocks like they are DND characters. There are six stats that make up a DND character: Strength, Intelligence, Charisma, Dexterity, Wisdom and Constitution. Strength, Dexterity and Charisma are pretty self explanatory. Constitution is how well they handle sickness and drinking things like poison. Wisdom and Intelligence might seem similar but they’re thought of more as street smarts and book smarts respectively. Or as the common phrase goes in describing them: “Intelligence is knowing that tomatoes are a fruit. Wisdom is knowing that they don’t go in a fruit salad.”

Even if you don’t want to try this in your own writing, I think that playing DND makes you a better storyteller whether you’re a DM or a player. It forces you to think on your feet and improvise through solutions. It can lead to beautiful moments between players, where they can work things out that have been bothering them. It is a true joy.