Dungeons & Dragons: The Deck Of Many Things Review

The final Dungeons & Dragons release of 2023 is here, with The Deck of Many Things showing up to sow the seeds of chaos in your campaign. It's got a pretty big asking price of £100, though, and a lot of questions have been raised regarding whether there's enough content here to justify that price tag. We dove into everything that comes with the set and came up with the definitive verdict.

A Book Of Two Halves

Part of the extremely high asking price for The Deck of Many Things is the additional inclusion of a second hardcover book that dives into how exactly to read The Deck Of Many Things as a Tarot deck, and the deck itself. The actual deck is sixty-six cards total, with twenty-two cards that were described in the original set of core rulebooks and forty-four brand new cards. We're starting off here in the review since there's not a whole lot to say about the additional hardcover. It's just a tarot reference guide, with the book not even containing what each card does (that's reserved for the primary sourcebook). The cards themselves are very cool looking though, with new artwork for each and a beautiful golden trim. They're really nice to look at and feel great to use in a game, but it's really hard to say whether this justifies the £100 price tag since a standard book is usually around £40. 

Luckily, the book itself is pretty great. We'll go further into depth with the main feature, the Deck itself, in the next section — but the new monsters are really great. The Grim Champion of Desolation is a personal favorite, a spectral horror that has some terrifying new abilities that would challenge even the most battle-hardy of parties. There are also new magic items that play into the incredible level of chaos that Dungeons & Dragons can sow.

A Big Thick Deck (Of Many Things)

The obvious main attraction is the actual book, The Book of Many Things. It's a cool tome, with two covers available that both show off the full breadth of the artwork available. There are twenty-two chapters that dive into different elements of the Deck of Many Things, with chapters devoted to a host of brand-new magic items (some of which are just incredible, such as the Boomerang Shield which is treated as both a Shield and a Ranged Weapon that reappears in your hand the second you've thrown it), a few new spells (such as Spray of Cards, a cone of spectral cards that blind your target), and a selection of new monsters.

The most exciting part of the book (at least to me, a massive nerd who adores the chaos that the Deck of Many Things can offer a game of Dungeons & Dragons) is the brand-new cards that have been added to the game. As previously mentioned there are forty-four brand new cards, all of which do completely different things. Here's just a selection of five of the effects you can expect to see:

• Dragon - A Dragon Egg appears at your feet and immediately hatches into a dragon wyrmling. The type of dragon is chosen by the DM. The Wyrmling views you as its parent.
• Maze - You gain 1d3 levels of exhaustion.
• Path - Your walking speed increases by 10ft.
• Statue - You have the petrified condition as your body is transformed into marble. The petrification lasts until you are freed with the Greater Restoration spell.
• Tower - Draw two additional cards beyond your declared number of draws. The magic of these cards doesn't immediately take effect; instead, choose one of the two additional cards to keep, returning the other to the deck. The magic of the card you keep takes effect immediately thereafter.

As you can see just from that selection, there are some incredibly useful effects here, some very funny ones, and some that will completely upend everything you're doing in the campaign. Part of the thought behind the addition of all of these is that you can customize your deck to your heart's content. Maybe you want the deck to be more upbeat, or maybe you want horrifying things only in your deck. The variety of cards lends itself to this to an incredible degree, and there are only really a few dud cards here, which is great for such a big deck.

Verdict

We've mentioned the price tag enough to sound like a broken record. But the sheer fact is that we cannot in good conscience recommend picking up this book at RRP. Everything in here is great, there's some amazing new content in The Book of Many Things, some great new Magic Items, and Monster Stat Blocks, but the Card Reference Book feels like it's only been included to pump up that price tag. The cards are a nice bonus, but when you can replace them with any deck of cards to emulate what they do they're not that massive a factor. Pick this book up for sure, but wait until it's a little cheaper than it is right now. 

A Review Copy Of The Deck Of Many Things Was Provided By Wizards Of The Coast