So one of the big marquee artifacts in Dungeons and Dragons is the Deck of Many Things. Anyone who’s played the game knows what I’m talking about. It’s a diabolical artifact of chance and randomness, a deck of cards you activate by drawing, and whatever card you draw can have reality-warping effects. Some are good; you can gain wishes, become more powerful, or acquire other amazing advantages. Some of them are bad; you can be imprisoned or utterly destroyed. Usually, its appearance in a campaign means all hell is about to break loose.
A while ago, though, I was running a campaign that was based around magic going wrong, and so I created a bunch of broken magical items for the characters to encounter. And one that I foisted on my players almost immediately out of the gate was a Deck of Many Things. But, as I said, it was hideously broken.
With this version, no matter what card you drew, there would be a puff of smoke and brimstone, and a demon would appear and deliver you a God-almighty kick in the nuts before vanishing. That is, unless you drew the Moon card, which typically gave you one to three wishes. In that case, the demon would appear, ask you what your wish was, and then deliver you a God-almighty kick in the nuts before vanishing.
That’s it. Dumb one-off joke, right?
I underestimated my players.
The rogue fucking weaponized the thing.
He insisted on keeping it, and he began using it to get out of scrapes. Caught by the city watch? “Hey, look, if you’ll let us slide, I’ll give you a draw.” The deck came out more and more frequently, and so the demon bound to it started to make small talk with the party while the victims writhed on the ground. He’d light up a smoke and take a break before heading back, chatting amiably and offering his opinions on their current quest. It became a running gag.
Much later in the campaign, the party was dealing with the aftermath of a gnome tinkerer’s reality bomb, which when set off fused bits of the realm with other D&D worlds, melding together big chunks of Krynn, Oerth, Toril, et cetera. This led to an extended adventure through the planes enlisting the help of extradimensional beings (including an avatar of wrath whose right hand was always covered in blood but never left marks on anything he touched, a profoundly sad woman with feathers for hair, a mute and terrifying Pierrot clown, and a large and friendly Corgi) and at one point they were fleeing through the Abyss, hunted by hordes of pursuers. Nearly cornered, they ducked into a nearby dwelling.
“Oh, hey, guys,” a familiar voice said. “If you’d told me you were coming by, I would’ve baked something. Come meet the missus.”