YANI - Deck of Many Things

[Snibor Eoj]

I was reminiscing with a friend about the old days of dungeoneering in
D&D, and we were talking about magic items, and of course I had to bring
up my personal favorite item, the Deck of Many Things. It occured to me
at that point that this would probably make a pretty fun item in
Nethack... It wouldn't be too difficult to code, and would just make me
oh-so-very-happy to see.

For those not familiar with it, the Deck of Many Things was a deck of
cards, each of which had a special magical effect. When used, a character
had to declare how many cards he was going to draw, and then would draw
that number of cards, one at a time. The drawing would be simulated by
drawing from a deck of cards in Real Life. The hearts and diamonds had
beneficial effects; the clubs and spades had harmful effects. The higher
the number on the card, the stronger the effect. Cards were not replaced
after drawing, IIRC, so you couldn't get the same card twice.

In nethack, it would be pretty straightforward... 'a'pply the deck of
cards, and you're prompted for the number of cards you want to draw. You
then do a simple random roll for each card, and present the results.

Here's a list of some possible good and bad effects... Any more ideas on
things to allow?

Good Bad
------------- --------------
Gain some gold Lose some gold
Gain max HP Lose max HP
Gain level Lose level
Gain ability Lose ability
Blessed Remove Curse Curse Items
Random Magic Item Random Item in pack disintegrates
possibly do something about the level of these two:
Create Familiar Create Monster

There should be a Death card in there somewhere, since it's traditional
(OK, in D&D it was The Void, but that's hard to simulate in Nethack...),
which could, perhaps, be counterbalanced by an AoLS. Also, while these
ones all do, for example's sake, the effects don't have to be precisely
balanced...

I figure that we could come up with a full 52 effects for all the cards
(or 54 if we do Jokers, like there were in the D&D version), or if we
wanted fewer, we could do 34 (36 with Jokers) effect by making the 2-9 of
each color the same for either suit of that color.

Thoughts? Comments? Ideas for more cards? If we manage to come up with
a full list of effects, maybe I'll try actually coding this thing, just to
see if I understand the code as well as I think I do. :-)

-Snibor Eoj

[J. Ali Harlow]

jmro...@inch.com (Snibor Eoj) writes:

>[snip re. Deck of many things]

Have a look at Kevin Hugo's gypsies, included in Slash'EM.

Cheers,
--
J. Ali Harlow Email: J.A.H...@city.ac.uk
"When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and
the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful
of him, the son of man that you care for him?" Psalm 8 v 3-4, NIV.