Not technically HERO Related...

[Jkeown]

I made this to hold a prop for next week's Fantasy HERO game. The game kicks off the first FH outing for us in years, and to commemorate, I made this little box for the game's macguffin, a Deck of Many Things. I've converted the card descriptions to HERO effects, but a lot of them are just 10D6 Transforms, not terribly elegant or original. A stowaway will have the box on her person, running from the demon lord she angered by drawing one of the cards.

 

Deck of Many Things

A deck of many things (both beneficial and baneful) is usually found in a box or leather pouch. Each deck contains a number of cards or plaques made of ivory or vellum. Each is engraved with glyphs, characters, and sigils. As soon as one of these cards is drawn from the pack, its magic is bestowed upon the person who drew it, for better or worse.

 

The character with a deck of many things who wishes to draw a card must announce how many cards she will draw before she begins. Cards must be drawn within 1 hour of each other, and a character can never again draw from this deck any more cards than she has announced. If the character does not willingly draw her allotted number (or if she is somehow prevented from doing so), the cards flip out of the deck on their own.

 

Exception: If the jester is drawn, the possessor of the deck may elect to draw two additional cards.

 

Each time a card is taken from the deck, it is replaced (making it possible to draw the same card twice) unless the draw is the jester or the fool, in which case the card is discarded from the pack. A deck of many things contains 22 cards. To simulate the magic cards, you may want to use tarot cards, as indicated in the second column of the accompanying table. If no tarot deck is available, substitute ordinary playing cards instead, as indicated in the third column. The effects of each card, summarized on the table, are fully described here.

 

Anyhow, I've plucked many a fruit from the tree of the HERO Games Forums while preparing this run of Fantasy HERO, and I'd like to thank the bunch of you.

[Curufea]

Re: Not technically HERO Related...

 

Nice! I'm a big fan of props in gaming

[AlHazred]

Re: Not technically HERO Related...

 

The concept of the Deck of Many Things item from D&D is one with loads of potential (both good and bad) for any High Fantasy game. I've seen it influence a lot of other designers, too. As I mentioned in another forum, there's some great examples of other designers taking the idea and running with it. Specifically, in an issue of The Rifter (I think issue #9.5), they published the Deck of Fate, a very similar item with some great originality to it. I remember starting to stat it out in FREd terms a while ago, but I wasn't running a game then and ended up not finishing it. In the old Judge's Guild module Tegel Manor, they made the Deck of Fickle Fortune, which wasn't as original or creative, but had a couple of excellent line drawings illustrating a couple of evocative cards.