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Components
Dungeon Deck: Quests is a standard deck of 52 cards packed in a little cardboard box. 49 of the cards make up the actual deck used to create your adventures, with the other 3 taken up by instructions, a quick reference card with licensing boilerplate on the back, and credits and dedications respectively.
I can't say enough about the quality of the cards themselves, both in respect to the basics of design, and to the materials used. The cards are thick and glossy, very resistant to stains, and resilient enough to bend almost in half without leaving a visible crease. The folks at Gamers Rule deserve serious props for that.
The design of the cards is also excellent. The initial deck of 49 is further divided into 7 smaller decks of 7 cards each. It's easy to recognize each card type, meaning breaking the deck down for use takes only seconds. The front of each card in each sub-deck shares a color image suited to card type - a mysterious old man, a skeleton with a sword, a box of treasure, and so on - and a common title and number. The backs of the cards are color coded, as well as marked with obvious symbols in the top left corner. The Lure sub-deck has a fishing lure, for example, while the symbol for dungeon entrance cards is, appropriately enough, a little door. The text on the back of each card is easy to read, and different fonts are used to call out information intended to be read aloud from that intended for the Game Master.
Using Dungeon Deck: Quests
In theory (we'll get back to that in a bit) using the deck is simple. Break the cards down into the sub-decks, draw one card from each, read what's on the back, and start playing.
The sub-decks are:
Lure - a person of situation which draws the characters into the adventure
Entrance - a picture of door, or cave mouth, or other typical dungeon entrance, with a bit of text to read aloud.
Atmosphere - a list of two or three adjectives - pleasant and sanguine reads one card, ancient and venerable another - with, again, a bit of text to read in play.
Setting - a cave, a tomb, or some other dungeon standby, with brief descriptions, intended to be read aloud, for 6 rooms.
Map - a gridded map with up to 6 rooms, with roman numerals to mark each. The maps are tiny, as you might expect, but still easily readable.
Challenge - each has up to 6 potential opponents, chosen by rolling a d6, intended for use with Heroic tier characters of 1st to 5th level.
Reward - one or more treasures to be won at the end of the adventure.
So How Does it Do the Job?
Remember a little bit ago when I mentioned how Dungeon Deck works in theory? Let's get into the actual practice.
Dungeon Deck: Quests does its job simply alright, but the problem is the job it does is a simple one, and it does it in a half ass way. Think of Dungeon Deck as the friend who volunteers to help you move a refrigerator, but doesn't do anything but hold the cord up while he tells you to watch out for the step, and to mind your fingers on the door frame. Sure, it's better than nothing, but not by a lot.
Coming up with a dungeon, and a handful of bad guys to hang out in it is as simple as it gets. Just like anyone can come up with the bare bones idea of a story, anyone can throw together the basic framework of an adventure, particularly if they're familiar with any fantasy films, novels, or games, as the target audience of the Dungeon Deck almost assuredly has. There's a reason people say ideas are a dime a dozen: they are. The Devil is in the details, and smell all you like, you won't catch more than a whiff of brimstone here.
To get more specific: I don't need cards to tell me a cave might have bats and snakes in it. Nor Lure cards which offer such clever adventure kickers as "As you are traveling, the ground beneath your feet gives way.", or "As you are traveling, you happen upon what appears to be the entrance to a dungeon." Really? You only needed to come up with 7 cards worth of ideas, and you used 2 of them for these gems? My mom has never played an rpg, and her fantasy novels have shirtless cowboys on the covers, and I guarantee you she could give me more compelling adventure sparks.
Almost all the cards in the Dungeon Deck are like this. The ideas aren't even fantasy 101. They're remedial fantasy 090, at best. Orcs, maybe riding boars, maybe with an ooze to eat their garbage. They might live in an abandoned mine, or in a "dungeon". Kobolds with a trapped room in their lair... which might be a cave, or possibly even a generic "lair". Skeletons and zombies might be found in a tomb, and maybe they're guarding a large gem. Is there a single potential Game Master who couldn't come up with any of those ideas - and better - after 5 minutes perusing the Monster Manual?
On to a related problem. No stats, and nothing to compensate for them. The listing for kobolds is just that. One word. What kind are they? How about a name or two, or a suggestion to make them unique? Do they ritually scar themselves with the ancient crown they guard? Do they use the trap which automatically, per the card, appears in the dungeon with them as a test of manhood? There would certainly be room on the card for a few ideas like this if they reduced the font down to match what they use for room descriptions. Instead we get a big font, without equally big ideas.
Speaking of room descriptions. They're short. Not a big deal, and reminiscent of quite a few of TSR's old modules. The problem is that there are never more than 6 descriptions on a card, but two of the included dungeons have 7 rooms. It's easy enough to make up a description that matches the atmosphere, but given what the Dungeon Deck is designed to do, I shouldn't have to.
The last problem, and it's a big one, is the wildly divergent scale of the monster and treasure cards, and how random drawing might couple significant treasures with practically non-existent challenges, or shitty treasures with significant challenges. Two examples:
The Tomb - My monster card, and a couple of d6 rolls, provides me with bats and stirges as a challenge. Fair enough, and thematically workable. My random treasure card? A treasure horde, with 1d6 x 10 gold, 1d6 x 20 silver, 1d6 x 100 copper coins. It also contains gems and jewelry, 1d6 of each worth 5 gp, and 1d6 of each worth d10 or d20 gp respectively. Oh, and there's a 50% chance it also includes a magic item of the GM's choice - maybe the sending stone from another card, which is worth 9,000 gp and is an 11th level item.
The Abandoned Dwarf Stronghold - Monster card tells me there's a young green dragon here, and he's spruced up the place with a few kobolds. Maybe they serve him, maybe they actively work against him. Card doesn't suggest anything either way. What's the reward? A treasure map on a gold plate worth 1d6 x 50 gp. The map leads to a treasure horde as listed above. Maybe it's guarded by bats and stirges.
Do you see what I'm getting at here?
So as not to end on a bad note, I do want to give James and Deborah some props for the map cards. Some of them are pretty nicely put together, even the most basic of them is very usable, and one of them is in the rough shape of a skull. That particular one reminds me of a dungeon that might have been found in an old Legend of Zelda game, and that's keen. Dodongo dislikes smoke, but he likes fun dungeon cartography.
Final Thoughts
I've been hard on Dungeon Deck: Quests, because it's obvious it didn't receive the attention it deserves. With just a bit more effort, and with the developers giving their imaginations free reign, it might have ended up a worthwhile purchase. As it stands, though, the killer combo of high price and lack of useful, as opposed to simply usable, content leaves me cold.
My advice would be to pick up WotC's Dungeon Delve instead: for a few dollars more, you'll get a far more useful product.
