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CASTLE OLDSKULL - The Oldskull Deck of Strangest Things $2.99
Average Rating:4.3 / 5
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CASTLE OLDSKULL - The Oldskull Deck of Strangest Things
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CASTLE OLDSKULL - The Oldskull Deck of Strangest Things
Publisher: Kent David Kelly
by Ijustwant T. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/03/2017 19:34:58

The varying effects and challenges provided by the deck are pretty neat and honestly do make me want to throw it at my current group - although they are aware of the Deck of Many Things and might be too wary to actually draw anything, but hey, it's still worth a try.

That said, I am a little disappointed that inverted results are always negative, while upright results positive (or at least the best thing possible to get from the card). A real Tarot deck can divine good things even from inverted cards and bad from the upright one - the Devil being a good example of such.

Also, you should open up the Dragon Magazine issue 77, which features a Tarot Deck of Many Things. This deck pretty much defeats the #1 purpose of your supplement, on account of having also the Minor Arcana in it. At the moment I have to say that I still prefer this Deck, although if you do indeed make new supplements for Minor Arcana, I will buy those and might well come to change my mind once I have them all.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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Creator Reply:
Hi there, thank you for the review. :) There's actually a metagame reason for why the inverted cards have negative effects universally ... in my campaign the players were blaming me whenever a negative card was drawn, and I got accused of poor shuffling, favoritism, etc. whenever another player drew good cards and someone got jealous. (Yes, players can get petty sometimes.) The fix in my campaign was to make it so that every card was good, and every card was bad, with the draw being performed by the player from a blind draw in a pouch. After the draw (with symmetrical card backs) they decided which way to position the card in a tray before it was flipped over. The inverted part came in because originally I was rolling (or a player was rolling) after the card was drawn to see if it was the good effect or the bad one, and then there was yelling again. Players didn't want me to punish them "arbitrarily" with a die roll after they drew a card. So I've made it be that the card drawing player draws a card and determines its position whenever possible, so that they only have themselves to blame, so to speak. I originally had a more Gygaxian version of the deck that was 50% good cards and 50% bad cards, but it always caused the arguments and the current design is a compromise, keeping in mind player reactions to what they regard as unfair or arbitrary treatment. That may seem a little convoluted but since this is a high stakes item, it has lots of built in restrictions and meta-effects based on what has caused trouble in the past. I do have a lot of notes on the Minor Arcana too but it will take some time to refine those into a clean format with additional play balancing. Enjoy! ~Kent
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