How I Updated Phandalin History Using the Deck of Many Things

Posted on March 28, 2023 by DM Stories

Like a lot of dungeon masters who came to the game through fifth edition, the first Dungeons and Dragons product I bought was the original starter set. At first, I thought I would create a world 100% out of my own imagination, but after reading through the adventure in the starter set – Lost Mine of Phandelver – I figured I would include some of it in the campaign I was starting with my friends.

I quickly figured out that using ideas from a published adventure was so, so, so much easier for me than creating my own. Sure, there were parts I left out or heavily modified, but a huge chunk of my first stretch as a DM was running Lost Mine of Phandelver as it was written.

Around the same time, I was making my way (♪ “making my way” ♪) through Critical Role’s first campaign, and I became fascinated by Grog finding the Deck of Many Things. And then in February of 2020 (thanks YouTube viewing history!) I stumbled across what I believe was my first video from Matthew Colville’s Running the Game series: The Deck of Many Things.

Beyond the potential chaos that the Deck of Many Things would introduce into a campaign, I had a few other takeaways from that video from Matt Colville. They’re obvious to me now that I have a few years of DM experience, but they weren’t for me back then. These takeaways were:

  1. Don’t wait to let cool things happen in your game. Moments like finding the Deck of Many Things – like Grog did in Critical Role – are why D&D can be so much fun, and players deserve to experience those moments. There’s no way to know if your campaign is going to last five levels or 15, so let them have those moments earlier rather than later.
  2. Change stuff – published adventures, monster stat blocks, magic items – when it makes sense. Published content isn’t a script for a DM to follow; it’s inspiration. Use what you like, change whatever suits you, and throw out the rest.

After those two realizations, I decided to stray from the main plot of Lost Mine of Phandelver in a big way. I added the Deck of Many Things as treasure for my party to find in Wave Echo Cave (the big, end-of-adventure dungeon in LMOP). And that begged a whole other set of questions, which I then attempted to answer. And it was really, really fun.

The Deck of Many Things in Phandalin

After deciding that the Deck of Many Things would be found in Wave Echo Cave – more specifically, the Forge of Spells – I needed a reason for it to be there. The full details are further down in the article, but here’s the TL;DR version:

  • The Tresendar family came into power in Phandalin due to the Deck of Many Things.
  • Their wealth came from pulling the Gem card, and their magic sword “Talon” – which can be found by the PCs in Lost Mine of Phandelver – was created by pulling the Key card.
  • Then, much later, an adventuring party had some really bad luck with the deck, and it was left in the Forge of Spells.

In the rest of the article, we’ll cover:

  1. How the Deck of Many Things Was Created
  2. Modified Rules for the Deck of Many Things
  3. How the Deck of Many Things Shaped Phandalin’s History
  4. What Happened When the PCs Drew Cards From the Deck

I hope this can be a fun example of how a unique item like the Deck of Many Things can help add fun to your campaign. For me, creating this alternate history of Phandalin helped me become more invested in the story. I felt more excited about finally revealing to my players that they had stumbled upon a legendary magic item, and that it was linked to the plot of the adventure.

And then, when they decided to draw cards from the deck, well … we’ll get to that soon.

1. How the Deck of Many Things Was Created

Hundreds of years ago, an eccentric sorcerer1 in Faerûn was fascinated by gambling and playing cards. The sorcerer worshiped Tymora, the Faerûnian goddess of good luck, and they proposed an idea in a prayer to Tymora. The sorcerer asked for her help in crafting an item they wanted to call the “Deck of Many Things,” something they considered to be the “ultimate gamble.”

Tymora was intrigued by the idea. She appreciated those who take risks, so she didn’t want to put something like this into the world of mortals without including the potential for actual negative consequences. She appeared to the sorcerer in a dream, telling them that if they could arrange a pact with an evil being2 who would enchant half the cards with negative consequences, she would enchant the other half.

The sorcerer traveled to the Nine Hells and found a devil to enchant the “evil” half of the deck. The devil agreed to do so if they would be summoned to Toril when someone drew the Flames card, and they would then have a claim on that person’s soul.

The sorcerer, with the support of Tymora and the devil, finished creating and enchanting the deck. The sorcerer unexpectedly died shortly after that, and the deck was left in their cabin in the wilderness outside Phandalin.

1In our game, the sorcerer was a blue dragonborn who was also an ancestor of one of our player characters.

2Tymora could have called upon her sister Beshaba, the goddess of misfortune, to enchant the evil half of the deck, but Beshaba is her eternal enemy. She wants nothing to do with her. That’s what I decided after the fact, anyway… after I learned that Beshaba was a thing.

2. Modified Rules for the Deck of Many Things

Before we get into what happened to the Deck of Many Things after it was created, let’s consider some game mechanics. To quote the magic item description:

“Before you draw a card, you must declare how many cards you intend to draw and then draw them randomly (you can use an altered deck of playing cards to simulate the deck). Any cards drawn in excess of this number have no effect. Otherwise, as soon as you draw a card from the deck, its magic takes effect. You must draw each card no more than 1 hour after the previous draw. If you fail to draw the chosen number, the remaining number of cards fly from the deck on their own and take effect all at once.

“Once a card is drawn, it fades from existence. Unless the card is the Fool or the Jester, the card reappears in the deck, making it possible to draw the same card twice.”

As Matt Colville outlined in his video about the Deck of Many Things, I decided to change these game mechanics to fit my needs. So, here’s what I changed. The wording probably could have been improved, but in my version, on the outside of the deck, the following rules were printed in Common:

“To play a card from the Deck of Many Things, simply open the deck and remove one card. Once a card is used, it will disappear forever. Each individual may remove one card and one card only.”

I didn’t want all of the cards to be available to the player characters. I was OK with some of the negative consequences in the deck, but not all of them. To do so, I changed the rules for the deck so that once a card was drawn and used, it could no longer be drawn again. That allowed me to eliminate two of the cards I didn’t want to be available for my player characters. The two cards were:

  • Donjon: “You disappear and become entombed in a state of suspended animation in an extradimensional sphere. Everything you were wearing and carrying stays behind in the space you occupied when you disappeared. You remain imprisoned until you are found and removed from the sphere. You can’t be located by any divination magic, but a wish spell can reveal the location of your prison. You draw no more cards.”
  • The Void: “This black card spells disaster. Your soul is drawn from your body and contained in an object in a place of the GM’s choice. One or more powerful beings guard the place. While your soul is trapped in this way, your body is incapacitated. A wish spell can’t restore your soul, but the spell reveals the location of the object that holds it. You draw no more cards.”

Those two cards are basically campaign enders for any character who draws them. In our campaign, the player characters were Level 5, and I didn’t want one or multiple of their stories to end. Not in that way, at least.

3. How the Deck of Many Things Shaped Phandalin’s History

The modified rules I created for the Deck of Many Things meant that I had to figure out which exact cards would be available when the PCs found the deck. So that sent me down yet another, even longer rabbit hole.

Here’s the history I created for what happened to the Deck of Many Things after it was crafted, and how it ended up in Wave Echo Cave:

  • 867 DR: An adventurer discovered the sorcerer’s abandoned cabin outside Phandalin and found the Deck of Many Things. He drew the Comet card, slayed the monster that was summoned, and gained a special ability. The adventurer then gave the deck to his friend, Henry Tresendar. Henry drew the Idiot card, then hid it in a box and did nothing with it after that.
  • 899 DR: The Rockseeker clan of dwarves and the Garrick family of gnomes3 made an agreement known as the Phandelver’s Pact to start mining Wave Echo Cave. After they created the Forge of Spells, the door to the forge could only be opened when combining drops of blood from both the Rockseeker and Garrick family lines.
  • 901 DR: Henry Tresendar died. His son Hank Tresendar4 found the deck in his father’s possessions and drew the Gem card, resulting in incredible wealth for the Tresendar family. The family used their new wealth to build Tresendar Manor and buy their way into influence and power in Phandalin, including a partnership with the dwarves and gnomes controlling Wave Echo Cave.
  • 925 DR: Hank let his son Aldith Tresendar draw a card from the deck. Aldith drew the Key card, which produced the magic longsword named “Talon.” Aldith trained to become a skilled swordsman and he became a legendary defender of Phandalin and Wave Echo Cave. Aldith also let his best friend draw from the deck, but his friend drew the Balance card. The friend betrayed Aldith, stealing the deck and selling it to a traveling merchant before leaving Phandalin forever.
  • 951 DR: After orcs attacked Phandalin and Wave Echo Cave, the dwarven god Dumathoin – the one whose statue is in the room that Nezznar takes over centuries later – decided to remove the magical properties from the Forge of Spells because he was disappointed that the Rockseeker dwarves couldn’t successfully protect it from outsiders.
  • 992 DR: Descendants from both the Garrick and Rockseeker family lines returned to Wave Echo Cave as a part of an adventuring party. The Rockseeker dwarf had previously met the merchant who owned the deck, and he bought it from the merchant before they went into the cave. The party was overwhelmed by undead creatures, and they retreated into the Forge of Spells since only they could enter it due to their blood. While trapped, the party started pulling cards from the deck. The gnome drew the Jester card, meaning they could draw two more cards. The first was the Euryale card, which resulted in a curse on the group. The next was the Rogue card, resulting in the Rockseeker dwarf finding a way to escape and lock the others inside the forge.5 The other two members of the party drew the Donjon and Void cards, resulting in one of them vanishing and the other having their soul drawn from their body. The gnome was then stuck in the Forge of Spells by themselves, and they wrote about their experiences in a journal before starving to death.

3One of our player-characters was a gnome, and a family of NPCs in the adventure are dwarves (Gundren Rockseeker and his brothers). I decided to make those two families the ones that originally formed the Phandelver’s Pact. That also added some intrigue when our gnome PC and one of the Rockseeker brothers had to draw blood to enter the Forge of Spells.

4This name reminds me of one of my favorite moments of world building by my players. When their characters entered the crypt under Tresendar Manor with the skeletons who attacked them, they asked what the skeletons’ names were. I said they could read a label on one of the coffins that read “Hank Tresendar.” One of my players then suggested the other two should be named “Honk” and “Hunk.” It then occured to me that these three skeletons actually used to be people, and thinking about their pasts was part of what sent me down this path. Who were Hank, Honk and Hunk? And why would someone name them that? The answer: their father pulled the Idiot card.

5The Rockseeker dwarf later wrote about this in a journal that Gundren Rockseeker would discover 500 years later, which was how he learned about the location of Wave Echo Cave.

4. What Happened When the PCs Drew From the Deck of Many Things

So, when the adventurers in our campaign finally arrived at Wave Echo Cave and found a way inside the Forge of Spells (thanks to Nundro Rockseeker being there), they learned the history of the Deck of Many Things after reading the journal written by the gnome who starved to death. Next to the gnome, they found the deck with some cards – but not all of them – left inside.

Here’s what they did:

  1. Our dragonborn barbarian – a descendant of the sorcerer who created the deck6 – drew the Knight card. A dragonborn fighter appeared, loyal to the barbarian. This magically-created servant became a constant source of comedy for our group, especially when they learned their new ally was somehow proficient in history even though they were just “born.”
  2. Our gnome wizard – the descendant of the gnome family who were part of the Phandelver’s Pact – drew the Sun card. He gained two points of strength.
  3. Our human fighter drew the Skull card. He barely defeated the avatar of death that was summoned.
  4. Our elf monk-rogue drew the Fool card. He lost two points of wisdom (ouch).
  5. The group then decided that the dragonborn fighter who was just created by the Knight card should also draw from the deck. They drew the Star card, increasing their strength.
  6. Finally, the bugbear NPC they convinced to be on their side a few days earlier drew the Flames card. All they knew at that point was that a powerful devil was now the bugbear’s enemy. The bugbear died in combat shortly after that while helping the party fight Nezznar, but the story didn’t end there.

Here’s what happened with the rest of the cards.

  1. A few days later, in the middle of an attack on Phandalin, the party asked their cleric ally Sister Garaele to draw a card. She drew the Vizier card; she later used the card to learn more about the location of Bowgentle’s spellbook.
  2. In a later encounter, two imps appeared in front of the party. They asked the adventurers if they had the Deck of Many Things because their boss was looking for whoever had it. The party denied having it, but not long after that they randomly encountered the horned devil who was a part of originally crafting the deck. The devil had been summoned by the bugbear drawing the Flames card, but because the bugbear had already died before he got a chance to claim their soul, the devil was now trapped in Toril on the Material Plane. The devil intimidated the party into giving them the deck.
  3. The devil then drew the Throne card, making them the new ruler of the hometown of the gnome wizard.
  4. The two imps then stole the deck and quickly drew the last two cards, the Moon and the Fates cards. The imps debated about what to do, and they both decided to undo their deaths as mortals and go back to whatever they were before. It was then revealed that one imp was the former evil ruler of our human fighter’s hometown, and the other imp was their bodyguard.

6The dragonborn barbarian didn’t know at the time that his ancestor created something called the Deck of Many Things. He learned about that later.

Conclusion

So yeah, all that was overly complicated and totally unnecessary when it comes to actually running Lost Mine of Phandelver. I could have run the adventure as written, and we would have had fun, but creating this updated history of Phandalin using the Deck of Many Things turned out to be incredibly rewarding. I wanted to introduce something cool and chaotic into our campaign, but it wound up making me that much more invested in the story.

I’m obviously very curious about the upcoming 2023 releases from Wizards of the Coast, especially since they have so many potential links to the current campaign I’m running (Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk and The Book of Many Things). There will undoubtedly be multiple story points in those books that will conflict with what I’ve introduced in our game, and that’s OK. That just means I’ll need to change stuff. Sounds fun to me.

Thanks for reading!

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