D&D 5E Why is no one talking about THE BOOK OF MANY THINGS?

[THEMNGMNT]

On a lark I recently bought myself the Book of Many Things. It's weird, wonderful, and utterly unlike any other book in 5E. Does anyone else here have it? What do you think of it?

 

[sevenbastard]

I skipped it. Maybe I should check it out. What about it do you like best?

 

[Dire Bare]

Did you get the book and deck combo? Or just the book second-hand?

I love both the expanded Deck of Many Things, and the Book of Many Things . . . I agree, it doesn't seem to get a lot of attention. I wonder how well it did for WotC. I'd love to see a follow up with an expanded Tarokka deck.

 

[Distracted DM]

Why is no one talking about it? Well, it came out over a year ago
It had some chatter about it around its release time- there was a lot of talk about the unfortunate production problems of the cards being ruined by ambient moisture, which iirc was later resolved but might've delayed its deployment? There was some chatter about one of the feats that was worded very poorly or just flat-out OP.

It seemed like a book full of interesting ideas that would require a good amount of effort from the GM to enact- but I remember skimming it and thinking it was a worthwhile product. It was a book full of ideas and concepts for GMs to make use of... honestly it wasn't a book I was used to seeing from nowadays WotC.

I think it just came out at an unfortunate time- I want to say that WotC doesn't promo like it used to, but it's more likely that I'm just not plugged into WotC's social media anymore like I used to be, watching Dragon Talk etc (miss you, Greg Tito!)

edit: Re: that feat, it seemed like yet another WotC product lacking a good overall designer/editor to curb the bad wording and/or imbalanced stuff.

 

[kayakingpoodle]

I bought the digital copy simply because I wanted a part of the book (cardomancer) and piecemeal was not an option though many on DDB claimed it was do to the nature of the book and not a systemic change to the site which it actually became, it was not worth it to me. Nor has any offering since Monsters of the Multiverse has been anything but a stripped down rehash of prior content, thanks to my digital collection and content sharing on the site has allowed me to pass such a harsh judgment on a dwindling site.

 

[el-remmen]

On a lark I recently bought myself the Book of Many Things. It's weird, wonderful, and utterly unlike any other book in 5E. Does anyone else here have it? What do you think of it?

I just recently used it in prepping an adventure and decided I was disappointed in it. Not because it is necessarily bad (though I had to get replacement cards from WotC and the new cards eventually warped too) but because it was not what I wanted it to be and seemed to be missing some basic stuff (like it literally does not reprint the original rules for the item, making a user have to reference the DMG while using it). I can go more into what I hoped it would be. But that is not really point.

Edit to add: I am not too upset about it since it was a gift and not the kind of thing I would have bought for myself (I already have 2 sets of the Deck of Many Things cards printed in Dungeon and Dragon back in the 90s.

 

[Burnside]

Book of Many Things and Keys from the Golden Vault were imo the two best official books of 2023, a year that had what I would consider several serious missteps (Phandelver & Below, Planescape, Vecna).

I think the rollout for Book of Many Things got snakebitten by production delays caused by the deck itself experiencing printing errors and the 2023 release schedule itself having a sub-optimal release pileup late in the year (nothing released from March through July, then 5 books jammed into August-December).

 

[pukunui]

I love it! Very creative and full of fun ideas. I’ve made use of several bits and pieces from it already, and I’m always looking for ways to incorporate more of it.

One of these days I’ll give the card-based adventure generation a try!

 

[Parmandur]

One of the better and more daring products made for 5E, honestly: a real smorgasbord of tools and ideas to use in game prep.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I understand why they organized it the way they did, but in practice, it makes it harder to use as a DM's sourcebook, since you're going to have to remember where everything has been scattered throughout the book.

But as a book of inspirational material, it's very strong, although some of the player-facing stuff needed at least one more balance pass than it got. (There's a reason your character optimization players keep asking about the cartomancer feat.)

It's a good worldbuilding book and the next time I play 5E in person, I can definitely see using the cards. I might even set up a level appropriate deck, as explained in the book, to use with Heroes of the Borderlands with my family.