World systems
Deck of Many Things
Twenty-two cards of the Major Arcana are loose in Beleghost. They are not a shop item and they are not a minigame — they turn up in the world the way any other find does, and every one of them does something different when you play it. All twenty-two are now live: there are no longer any blanks in the deck.
Cards in the deck
22
The full Major Arcana, The Fool through The World
Cards that do something
22 of 22
Every card is wired and live
Uses per card
One
A played card is spent and gone
Where they come from
Found
Drops, not merchants
Finding a card
Cards surface through the same loot pipeline that produces everything else you pick up — chests, corpses, the odd forgotten container. They are uncommon, they do not stack, and no shopkeeper in the module stocks them. A card you are holding is a card somebody left behind.
Nothing marks a card as safe or unsafe. They all look the same in your pack, they are all worth playing to somebody, and there is no way to sort the good ones out in advance.
Playing one
A card is used from your inventory like any other activated item. Most resolve the moment you play them; a couple ask you to choose a target first, and a couple put something in front of you that expects an answer. Whatever happens next, the card is consumed — there is no taking it back and no drawing again off the same piece of card stock.
There is no house edge
This is the genuine article, not a dressed-up reward chest. A draw can hand you something you will carry for the rest of the character's life, and a draw can end the afternoon. Both outcomes are in the deck on purpose. Think before you play one, and think harder before you play one in a bad spot.
The kinds of things that happen
No card's contents are published here, and they are not going to be. What follows is the shape of the deck, not a key to it — the range a draw can land in, so you can judge the gamble without being handed the answers.
- Wealth and gear — several cards pay out through the module's own loot system, at your character's band, exactly the way a serious kill does.
- Permanent change — a small number of cards alter the character sheet itself, for good, and one of those is offered once per character ever.
- Travel — some cards move you. One of them is careful about where. One of them is not.
- Company — cards that put someone beside you: a helper, a companion who stays, or something that very much is not on your side.
- A conversation — a few cards summon somebody who makes you an offer. Offers have prices, and at least one of those prices does not come off again.
- Plain hazard — the deck contains outcomes with no upside at all. That is the point of it.
Cards can also interact with other systems already documented here — the hardcore pledge, property deeds, and the loot bands all show up somewhere in the twenty-two.
The roster
The names are no secret — it is a standard Major Arcana, in the standard order. What each one does when you play it is the part you find out the hard way.
Collecting the set
Nothing rewards a complete deck, and there is no album to slot them into. Holding all twenty-two at once simply means you are carrying twenty-two unplayed gambles, which is its own kind of decision.
If you want the feel of the thing without the risk: the cards keep their traditional readings in their descriptions, and those readings are honest about the card. They are just not a manual.