Re: WOTC tries to claw back the Deck of Many Things

On Mon, 28 Apr 2025 15:58:09 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

I'm sure the Deck was a thinly veiled copy of something in some fantasy
book, like so many other things, like the Apparatus of Kwalish which I
remember finding came from somewhere else originally.  Bag of Holding,
really?  "It's bigger on the inside."  Sphere of Annihilation = micro
black hole.

From
https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/212052/what-is-the-origin-of-the-deck-of-many-things

    "The Deck of Many Things has appeared in every edition of D&D
     so far, and while the exacting particulars have varied, the
     overall feel of the deck has remained consistent: the rules for
     how to draw cards, what the cards do, and when and where those
     effects happen (often immediately and in the presence of the
     card-drawer) are fairly similar across nearly 50 years since
     its first appearance in Greyhawk (1975), but never does the
     Deck of Many Things explain itself as an item - why does the
     deck exist, and why do these cards have these effects?

    "Is the Deck based on a real life equivalent? It calls out
     the usage of a Tarot deck for some later editions, but as
     I understand it, a deck of Tarot or Tarock cards were
     historically performing the same function as a deck of
     playing cards today: they were utilized in an established
     card game, not as a mystical or "magick" tool. Indeed, when
     Tarot cards are utilized for fortune-telling in fiction (or
     if you've ever had a tarot reading) the fortune-telling is
     never as immediate as what the Deck does.

    "Of course, this makes some sense for a fortune-teller: if
     the fortune teller were predicting a massive windfall (or
     a massive personal loss) for the customer that occurred
     starting right now, it would be much easier for the customer
     to identify the fortune-teller as a charlatan, a rogue,
     a scoundrel who is using the fear of future uncertainty to
     make money.

    "Fortune-telling itself usually relies on the vague
     interpretation of prediction, as well as some psychological
     elements of fear, uncertainty, and a lack of control... but
     the Deck, in many ways, does the opposite: it gives the
     creature control over the Deck, it gives the creature
     exacting certainty in its outcomes, and not a single card
     in the original causes fear of any kind. Moreover, the
     original Deck of Many Things has proportionally far more
     positive outcomes than negative outcomes (five negative
     outcomes out of a total of eighteen possible outcomes),
     making the Deck potentially a risky, but very "fun" element
     of the game, but also very different from a Tarot fortun-
     telling, where the cards have a roughly 50/50 chance of
     telling a good or bad fortune upon each draw. [Granted,
     the Deck itself claims to have a 50/50 split of good and
     bad outcomes, but this just doesn't square with the
     effects of the deck and the gameplay of D&D. Certainly,
     as the game evolved, this discrepancy almost certainly
     was noticed but not meaningfully corrected, which means
     that at some internal level, the Deck is operating as
     intended.]

     "So, why does the Deck of Many Things operate as it does?
     Is there a culturally relevant reason or reasons coming
     from fiction or real life that Gary Gygax or Rob Kuntz
     (or Dave Arneson or David Megarry or others that they
     were playing with those proto-D&D rules in 1972-4) may
     have had to create the Deck as such a potent, immediate,
     and yet somewhat controlled type of item? Is it even
     truly connected to Tarot in any meaningful way, or is
     the later cribbing of Tarot cards for use with the Deck
     a kind of appropriation for game purposes?"

And from a comment on that same article:

    "In Dragon Magazine #386 (April 2010), Bart Carroll and
     Steve Winter discussed the origins of the deck of many
     things, but were unable to discern exactly. Their best
     guess is that Gary Gygax, a long-time fan of games of
     all sorts, could easily have looked for a way to add
     playing cards to D&D"




While you can doubtlessly trace the underlying idea of the Deck to
other ideas in literature and myth (an item that randomly bestows
blessings or curse, isn't that unusual; heck, at its broadest
interpretation it describes poker cards ;-) the actual implementation
--a deck of cards, with fixed effects dependent on the card pulled,
and the effects themselves-- seems to be entirely unique to D&D.