A version of the Deck of Many Things built around the list of 20th century events mentioned Billy Joel’s 1989 song „We Didn’t Start the Fire”
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itch.io Community » General » Release Announcements · Created a new topic A magic item for D&D 5E inspired by a popular 80s song
Hi all, here's a small project I've realized a couple years ago, but only now have published online: a version of the Deck of Many Things built around the list of 20th century events mentioned Billy Joel’s 1989 song „We Didn’t Start the Fire”. Let me give you a bit of insight into how I made it!
I first had to take a list of all 118 historical references in the song (from the Wikipedia page) and turn them, in a localized Jojo's Bizarre Adventure's fashion, into an (ideally) setting-agnostic version of what Billy Joel was saying or alluding to.
Then I had to figure out an effect for each of them, either directly or indirectly connected with the original concept.
Ultimately, I've cut 18 (15%) items to neatly fit them in a d100 roll; most of them had to do with politics, war and the like, since that was the most numerous category; I landed on ones that weren't too widely known, too similar to other items present, or just those that were to hard to convert into D&D mechanics.
I also had to make sure the entirety of the items' effect was balanced (like the original Deck of Many Things) and tracked the main categories that each effect fell into, to ensure enough variety.
Finally I used the Homebrewery to create and polish the final product, and there you have it!
