Dungeons And Dragons Deck Of Many Things Grows In The Book Of Many Things

Within Dungeons & Dragons, there's one magic item that stands out above all others as being an incredibly powerful one. It's an item discussed in hushed tones, one known for causing as much chaos as it can good fortune. This item is the Deck of Many Things, a powerful deck of cards that can write strife into the fortunes of those who hold it, and it's about to grow massively in the next Dungeons & Dragons book. 

Chaotic Deck-Building

Currently, the Deck of Many Things can cause chaos in even the most well-planned campaign. After all, how can you possibly account for a Wish spell being phrased poorly, no matter how well-intentioned it may be? You could wish for a Dragon to be dead, only to be thrown forward thousands of years until the Dragon is indeed dead, but so are all things after an unknown war with a being that cannot be perceived. 

In a similar vein, how do you even begin to factor the Donjon card into say, a game of Curse of Strahd? With a party member imprisoned in an extra-dimensional space, you find a whole new layer of character depth and all the juicy possibilities that appear for a storyteller within those layers. Wizards of the Coast have thought of this and are using the Book Of Many Things to guide how exactly you should use the deck, how it should be treated, and even offering up a few variants. 

The Book of Many Things triples the size of the original Deck of Many Things. It's massive and allows for a lot more creativity when it comes to designing exactly what type of deck you want to use. Each card has a unique ability, too, so you'll never get tired of pulling a card from the deck.

As an example, one of the newly added cards is simply called 'Dragon', and it summons a Dragon directly in front of whoever pulled it. Except this isn't just any dragon, it's a baby hatchling that perceives whoever pulls the card as their father. Suddenly, your Dungeons & Dragons game is now also a family that has to raise a child. This is just one example of sixty-six different cards that could completely alter your world.

A Huge Milestone For Representation In Dungeons & Dragons

The Book of Many Things is also introducing an extremely exciting addition to the Dungeons & Dragons multiverse: the first neurodivergent character in Dungeons & Dragons history.  Her name is Esteria, and was created by Game Designer Makenzie De Armas who stated that she's put a lot of her experience as an Autistic individual into the design and background behind Esteria. 

"It's a story that resonated really deeply with my own experience as an autistic creator. As someone who has had to constantly deal with people's expectations of who I am and who I am supposed to be based on their assumptions of my identity and have to constantly fight and reclaim those aspects of identity and rewrite what I should be.

I am very blessed to not only have helmed story creation but to have also provided her voice in the many, many notes that are scattered throughout the Book of Many Things, letting my lived experience as an autistic individual inform how Esteria's autism presents itself while also making sure Esteria is represented as a full and robust individual who is more than just the way her brain processes information."

Dungeons & Dragons (and Wizards of the Coast as a result) have been accused of not having diverse enough characters and having problematic representations of certain races for a long while now, but with an actual autistic creator working so closely on Esteria we could be in for something extremely special.

Terrifying Potential

One of the major things that stuck out during the presentation was the addition of a brand-new Challenge Rating 25 monster, the Grim Champion of Desolation. For context to those who aren't as versed in the Monster Manual, a Challenge Rating basically dictates what kind of party you need to defeat an enemy. If the monster has a higher Challenge Rating then you'll need a high-level party kitted out with the best items they can find, and a Challenge Rating of 25 will be terrifying to most parties. 

With no new subclasses, it'll be easy to skip this book. But if you do, you'll be missing out on an incredibly fun-looking expansion to one of the most famous items in Dungeons & Dragons, and some amazing new character options that will sow the seeds of potential among your players.

The Book of Many Things Will Release November 14th in Local Game Stores.