Lesser Deck of Many Things

Technically just called the Deck of Many Things as well

The Lesser Deck of Many Things, an obscure magic item in Dungeons and Dragons, the cards, identical to the regular deck, are laid out on a wooden table below the box and instructions, with the instruction card listing the rules for this one, such as getting a limited wish, a saving throw penalty to only the petrification effect, gaining the service of a second level fighter, and other such results.

So, while in research of where to find the 4e Deck of Many Things, which led me to Madness at Gardmore Abbey, the wiki for that led me to, unexpectedly, Dragon Magasine #148 of all things! Much like the Tarot of Many Things in Dragon, there was an EXTREMELY obscure (arguably the most obscure yet, to go with the Deck of hazards and Aesgareth Deck of Many Things in terms of obscurity) "lesser Deck of Many Things", with rules much the same as the regular deck, but just... lesser. And referenced *literally* nowhere else except this Dragon magasine, and also now this webpage! So let's go make a physical form for it!

I made this deck on the same day as the Deck of Chance, and most of the Aesgareth deck, so it was a very busy day lol. This one was a little bit easier though, since it was just writing the card name on the bottoms of the playing cards rather than sanding them all first. Also making an instruction card for it, since the rules are different from the regular deck of course. A limited wish as opposed to 1d3 wishes, access to a genuine treasure map rather than a random magic item, things like that. The rules can be found here (also in the rules list for drawing a card below).

I decided to do like the same with the aformentioned two decks and make the instruction card a different colour for easy identification, and found a red card from previous decks for this one. The edges of this red card were actually trimmed down since it's a different pattern, and the card was about two millimeters bigger than the blue deck, but small enough that trimming the sides wouldn't cut into the pattern itself, only the border, so we were able to modify it to fit. So, we printed out the instructions, attached them to that card, and it was an item complete! Again, like mentioned at the very top of this page, the box included the word 'lesser' for easier identification in my bag o' decks, and had its depth trimmed down to accomodate the 14 cards (13 plus instruction card). And with that, the lesser Deck of Many Things was quickly finished!

Made November 2, 2024




Did you wanna draw from it? 		The deck begins to be built on a wooden table, the title already written on the face of the card box, and below it the Jester and Rogue cards written out, with the rest of the cards stacked to the side waiting to be written on. The Ruin card king of spades is also finished and set off to the side to dry.The box, now with slightly more sanding between the words of the title to blend them together better, with the blue cards above, and the red card that is used to differentiate the instruction card beside.

The box, instructions, and cards laid out nicely on a wooden table to make for a nice finished photo display. The box and instructions are neatly beside eachother, above the two rows of black cards and red cards, more or less overlapping eachother but with the written title at the bottoms all visible, and the Jester card on a joker at the bottom between the two rows.