Crazy Mixed Up Kingdom: Deck of Many Things

[Angelalex242]

A royal family is cursed to have to draw 3 cards from the deck of many things on their birthday. All of them. Kings, Queens, princess, prince, by blood, married into the family, doesn't matter.

The Lineage only continues to exist because nobody ever manages to draw the instant kill cards before procreating. Other than this 'lineage doesn't die out' rule, the card selection is as random as intended. (Treat the deck as if the Skull/DonJon/Void cards are not in play till the character has an heir, which means the deck is slightly favorable, but not by much, till then.)

How much of a mess is this Kingdom likely to be in?

(and would you want to play through such a plot hook as a character?)

[Trask]

A royal family in which the chance of becoming king as a second or third son arent too bad...

I think if this was practiced for many generations in an unbroken line, you'd have a pretty wacky history, and depending on their luck/competence, this family would be possibly insanely powerful due to the wish result.

Would I play a character of this lineage? A seventh son wandering the lands as an adventurer, sure the throne and the deck will never pass to me? Absolutely.

[Avonar]

Oh they'd be completely screwed. Not by the Donjon, or Death cards, no the worst one for them would be Ruin.


All forms of wealth that you carry or own, other than magic items, are lost to you. Portable property vanishes. Businesses, buildings, and land you own are lost in a way that alters reality the least. Any documentation that proves you should own something lost to this card also disappears.

Whoops, now the king no longer owns the kingdom and the entire treasury is now gone. That's a problem.

[GeoffWatson]

Is that every birthday, for every member of the royal family, no matter how distant?

That's a lot of draws.

[Angelalex242]

Is that every birthday, for every member of the royal family, no matter how distant?

That's a lot of draws.

Yep. We're talking about a royal family that draws Ruin at least once every other year on average. Sometimes multiple times a year.

(And if you play a distant son, you're drawing from the Deck...for good or ill. If the King and Queen have 6 kids, all 6 are drawing from this deck, 3 times a year.)

[Amnestic]

I mean, if you draw every birthday without fail then you've drawn 54 cards by the the time you turn 18, which equates to two-and-a-bit full draws of the deck on your own.

The likelihood any of the children reach maturity, therefore, seems extremely low. At least 5 cards out of 24 result in death or near enough - donjon (suspended tomb), flames (devil enemy), rogue (hostile NPC), skull (death) and void (soultrap). Arguably drawing Ruin early on is the best thing for a child - by losing their title they no longer need to keep obsessively drawing every year and risking death on a constant basis. Sure they're no longer a prince(ss) but it's better than being dead or permanently suspended.

[Angelalex242]

I mean, if you draw every birthday without fail then you've drawn 54 cards by the the time you turn 18, which equates to two-and-a-bit full draws of the deck on your own.

The likelihood any of the children reach maturity, therefore, seems extremely low. At least 5 cards out of 24 result in death or near enough - donjon (suspended tomb), flames (devil enemy), rogue (hostile NPC), skull (death) and void (soultrap). Arguably drawing Ruin early on is the best thing for a child - by losing their title they no longer need to keep obsessively drawing every year and risking death on a constant basis. Sure they're no longer a prince(ss) but it's better than being dead or permanently suspended.

It's a cursed deck. It doesn't let the poor family under its sway off the hook. Also, I fixed the rules such that you can only draw donjon, skull, and void after you have an heir.

I didn't block flames or rogue because I can fix it such that these guys never kill the target, just make life horrifyingly miserable. Hell on Earth, where Devils are concerned.

There's also prince Cletus, who drew the idiot card so many times he died of Int 0.

[Amnestic]

It's a cursed deck. It doesn't let the poor family under its sway off the hook. Also, I fixed the rules such that you can only draw donjon, skull, and void after you have an heir.


Wouldn't they just not procreate then? Seems like the best thing for themselves and their kingdom would be to simply let their bloodline die off from natural causes.

Also the ruin card is even more likely to show up before maturity if you're scratching 3 cards off the list. I'd be surprised if their monarchy made it past a single generation before ending.

[Keravath]

As for the Ruin card - it can be addressed by the royal family actually owning nothing. Everything is owned by the crown which is not any individual but the country as a whole so although one member may lose anything they personally own, the wealth of the kingdom is preserved. The first generation of the curse would have set this up as soon as the first ruin card was drawn.

Is it a loophole? Yes but decks like this are often read very legalistically and the Ruin card specifically refers to items YOU own.

"All forms of wealth that you carry or own, other than magic items, are lost to you. Portable property vanishes. Businesses, buildings, and land you own are lost in a way that alters reality the least. Any documentation that proves you should own something lost to this card also disappears."

If you own nothing then the only penalty is wealth that you are carrying - which means drawing cards with no clothes on and nothing in your possession.

-----------

If this continued over a long period of time, the royal family would come up with every possible loophole to minimize negative effects of the curse.

If you can't draw the death cards unless you have sired an heir - then you only have children out of wedlock that could not inherit the throne so you don't have an heir at least until you are old enough not to care.

Transition the ruling of the country to a constitutional monarchy or a democracy so that no one can inherit the "throne" so that there are no more "heirs". Anyone who tries to overthrow the democracy and create a new kingdom gets saddled with the curse.

Transfer wealth from the kingdom to non-heir children born out of wedlock to preserve the funds from the positive cards and put the wealth out of the reach of the negative cards since these people are not heirs and thus not subject to the curse. The extended family then becomes the richest in the land with only the rulers in the line of succession subject to the curse.

Anyway, the description of the curse as written has lots of loopholes. :)

[Angelalex242]

Fascinating with the loopholes.

However, this poor family is frequently hit by the idiot card.

Perhaps it's the PC's job to come up with the loopholes for the royal family so they can not be quite so messed up.

[Mellack]

Fascinating with the loopholes.

However, this poor family is frequently hit by the idiot card.

Perhaps it's the PC's job to come up with the loopholes for the royal family so they can not be quite so messed up.

If they are frequently stupid, why are they still ruling? Either they are useful leaders or they should be overthrown. I don't see how this could keep going for very long as described.

[Angelalex242]

Well, the Throne card has an equal chance of being drawn to the idiot card.

So this kingdom has 283 castles, each previously owned by these guys and subsequently not every time they drew Ruin.

It also helps that Fates and Vizier are around.

Also helps these guys have a massive amount of 4th level fighters guarding them. That ain't bad.

[da newt]

It is impossible that this could have been going on for a long period of time - the kingdom would have failed, the entire royal family wiped out, another kingdom would have invaded taking advantage of the chaos/weakness of the cursed kingdom.



As a plot hook, I'd introduce it as a fairly recent curse - ever since the King betrayed a powerful HAG 11 yrs ago, every royal has to draw a card (just one) on their 16th birthday and every subsequent birthday ... I'd also define how many generations from the King this curse applies (uncles, cousins, grand kids, ?).

[da newt]

Someone please check my math.

If there are 22 total cards in the deck and 3 of them result in 'death' and you pull 3 cards every year, doesn't that mean you have a ~35.6% chance to die every year (once you have a kid)?

19/22 chance per draw to not die, cubed for 3 draws = 64.4% chance to survive one birthday, and ~11% chance to survive to your kid's 5th birthday. So this kingdom will usually have a child king or a King with no kids.

Then there is the fool which forces one additional draw, and Jester = 2 additional draws only increasing the odds of 'death'

[Randel]

Balance - Inverts the person's alignment. Either this royal family is mostly true neutral or they're going to have problems with family members inverting their personalities.

Comet - Defeat the next encounter alone and level up. I imagine the royal family would have the person draw their card in a specially designed arena, have them armed, and then release a wild bore or other easy for to defeat.

Donjon - Get trapped in an extra dimensional sphere that only a wish can locate. They could have a list of donjon'd royals and the next time they get a wish, they find their location and send adventures to retrieve them.

Eurytale - Get a -2 penalty on saving throws that only the gods or fate card can do. Have loyal followers protect you.

Fates - Rewrite realty so one event never happened. Either prevent this curse from being put on your family, undo one of the instant death cards from a family, or alter history in some other way. Expect at least one God to approach the family if they draw this so they can undo some past disaster and the God undoes some Eurytale curses.

Flames - A powerful devil is your enemy. The family might have some gods on their side or they use a Fate card to erase the devil's birth.

Fool - Lose a bunch of XP but not enough to go down a level. Spend the next year adventuring or something.

Gem - Get a bunch of gems.

Idiot - Permanently reduce your intelligence. This is bad.

Jester - Get 10,000 xp.

Key - Get a rare or rarer magic weapon they are proficient in. Weirdly, Prince Iwantaluckblade is only proficient in luck blades.

Knight - you get a loyal level 4 fighter. Imagine a player choosing to play as one of the many level 4 fighters working for this family.

Moon - Get 1d3 wishes. Use some of those to free your donjon'd family members.

Rogue - An unnamed NPC hates us.

Ruin - Lose all your property, fortunately you don't own anything major, that belongs to the family or the crown. You might have to live as a peasant, servant, adventurer, etc for a while or untill your next birthday.

Skull - An avatar of death appears with half your hitpoints and attacks with a scythe. Train to fight this thing, draw your card in a prepared arena, and carry spells or grenades to take it out quickly.

Star - Increase an ability score by 2. Put it in intelligence unless you have better use for it.

Sun - 50,000 xp and a wonderus item. Nice.

Talons - All the stuff you're carrying disintegrates. That stuff you were carrying to fight the avatar of death needs to be replaced.

Throne - get proficiency in persuasion and legal ownership of a keep full of monsters.

Vizier - ask any question and get a truthful answer. Use this to bargain with gods or locate family members claimed by the donjon or void cards.

The Void - Your soul is trapped in an object somewhere and only a wish can locate it. The family uses a wish to locate the item and sends adventures.

[Sigreid]

Could have become a king in name only type setup where Jafar does the actual decision making. If the deck goes to the royal family even if the actual family changes, this would make sense. The royal family is maintained in a state that is kingly, and when competent are used as diplomats, but have no real power.