Kobold Press Dares You to Quest Through 12 Peculiar Towers for 5E D&D
As a follow up to getting Midgard Sagas, another package arrived recently and inside was another terrific book from Kobold Press — 12 Peculiar Towers. This collection of adventures contains quests for characters of 1st through 13th level with each featuring a tower of some sort. But I suppose you probably guessed that from the title of the book. Adding new adventures to my collection is always welcome, and it should be no surprise to anyone that Kobold Press produces a lot of my favorite content for my fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons games. So naturally, these peculiar tower adventures will find their ways into my 5E D&D campaigns. (One of them already has!) Let’s get into it and traverse these towers bottom to top.
Become a Legend in a 5E D&D Spell Duelist Campaign
One of the most recent videos on the Nerdarchy YouTube channel is the Ultimate Spell Duelist 5E D&D character build. From the initial planning discussion all the way through the comments on the video, my imagination was firing on all cylinders. And based on the video comments, a lot of other people were too. Like all the recent 5E D&D character builds, we set out to create a character legal for Adventurers League play. This of course limits our character options, but that makes it a fun extra little challenge, plus it’s really rewarding to consider not just mechanical benefits but roleplaying opportunities for these characters as well. Outside of Adventurers League play is where this character really got our creative juices flowing, from chances for personal character moments and growth to campaign implications. So let’s get into it.
Plant Creatures Are Cooler Than Zombies in 5E D&D
Nerdarchists Dave and Ted were back at it in the video below, coming up with ideas for replacing some commonly used 5E D&D monsters with alternatives. This series is one of my favorites. There’s so many awesome creatures in the D&D multiverse, from earliest sorts of threats like goblins and bandits all the way up to the eponymous dragons. All of them are fun for a Dungeon Master to deploy. But you can create some really memorable and unique experiences with the same sorts of encounters by simply swapping out the usual suspects. In the videos on the YouTube channel, they get into the ecologies and methods various creatures tend to employ before sharing their thoughts on other creatures that can fit the bill. In this case, they take a look at one of the all-time classic monsters — zombies — and give some ideas on achieving a similar feeling with a few different types of creatures.
Kobold Press on the Spot with Midgard Sagas 5E Adventures
Getting the mail is always a great delight when there’s a delivery of a new book from Kobold Press. This publisher consistently puts out awesome content I use in my 5E D&D games, whether it’s their Deep Magic series, my beloved Book of Lairs, the twin titans Tome of Beasts and Creature Codex, or the monthly Warlock Patreon booklet. So I fully expected Midgard Sagas to surpass my expectations, and I am most certainly not disappointed. This book of six 5th Edition adventures were originally designed for convention play. This means the aim if fast-paced action. But each of the 5E adventures is fully fleshed for a complete, satisfying experience. Let’s get into it.
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power as a 5E D&D Campaign Setting
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power dropped on Netflix today and although I’m only a few episodes into season one’s 13 episode run I am hooked. Big time. It’s got awesome characters, a terrific fantasy setting, great villains and a wonderful story of heroism. So naturally, my first thoughts are how to turn this into a 5E D&D campaign setting and adventures. Let’s get into it and see what comes about on the fly.
Finding Adventure or Letting Adventure Find You in D&D
One of the greatest things about being a D&D player these days is the opportunities to game with lots of different people. Whether it’s through Adventurers League, online games or the huge number of people out there excited or curious to try fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons to invite to the table at home, I’ve been fortunate to play way more D&D than ever before in my 30 years of gaming. It’s provided so many chances to improve as a Dungeon Master and as a player. And I’ve learned that running D&D benefits your time as a player and vice versa. You can learn a lot about what you enjoy as a player through being a DM, and carry what you learn as a DM to the other side of the screen, too.
Hag’s Apprentice — a 5E D&D Halloween Encounter
Halloween came and went, and with it lots of awesome ideas out there for running Halloween adventures for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. The Nerdarchy crew weighed in on the festivities too, with a spooky, kooky 5E D&D Halloween encounter. While we were planning a different video, the Roper Wrangler encounter, the idea for our Hag’s Apprentice encounter developed. In the Roper Wrangler the concept was a creature who hit creatures with another creature. In that case, a fomorian used a roper as a weapon to capture adventurers and use them for food on its roper farm, where a dastardly trio of duergar siblings built a spectator sports around captives’ desperate attempts to escape. Taking the idea a step further, in the Hag’s Apprentice we’ve got creatures wearing other creatures as adornment. And with Halloween coming up, we revisited the idea to create a dynamic, creepy encounter ready to deploy in your 5E D&D games.
D&D-izing He-Man’s Power Sword for 5E D&D
At Nerdarchy, we get requests to D&D-ize characters from movies, TV, comics and literature fairly regularly. There’s a whole playlist on the Nerdarchy YouTube channel for D&D-ized fictional characters, which I’ve included for your convenience below. And my very first assignment as a contributing writer here on the site was to D&D-ize the Sword of Omens from the Thundercats mythos. (I’d written a few columns before but that was an assignment from Nerdarchist Dave.) I spent quite a few hours researching, referencing the Dungeon Master’s Guide for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, writing and refining that particular artifact. More recently, we had a request via the Nerdarchy Facebook page to D&D-ize another legendary cartoon weapon — the Power Sword from the Masters of the Universe mythology. This will be my fourth go around with D&D-izing something. I also have our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man under my belt, as well as collaborating with Professor Bill from Comic Book University on my two favorite comic book characters, Mister Miracle and Big Barda. So let’s get to it and create He-Man’s legendary weapon that makes him the most powerful man in the universe, for 5E D&D.
5E D&D Monsters Become BFFs and Adventurers Pay the Price
One of my favorite things about Dungeons & Dragons is the monsters. There’s so many incredible creatures throughout the history of D&D! My go-to method for creating adventures in my own games is starting with a monster and developing ideas from there. It’s no surprise the Monster BFF series from Nerdarchy the YouTube channel ranks high on my list of likes. In this series the crew takes two or three 5E D&D monsters, puts them together and discovers what sort of encounter emerges. I’ve had the privilege of sitting in on two planning sessions for these videos and contributing ideas. The first one got me hooked enough to work on an adventure based around the monster pairing. And the second one, in the video below, I helped turn into Nerdarchy’s first Monster BFF product over on the Dungeon Master’s Guild. The Roper Wrangler’s got ropers (duh), it’s got fomorians, it’s got faerzress, it’s got an Underdark location — basically it’s got deadly peril for adventurers who stumble across this encounter. Because sometimes a creature’s gotta hit a creature with another creature.
Big Monsters Have More to Love for Exciting D&D Encounters
Part Dungeon Master creativity, part player buy-in, exciting D&D encounters with big monsters in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons have a lot of moving parts to consider. Whether a low level party needs to deal with an awakened tree situation, or a group of characters at the pinnacle of their adventuring careers take on the tarrasque — or Tiamat herself — there’s more to consider than hit points and armor class. Adventuring ain’t easy, and anything from a pack of goblin bandits all the way up to Acererak itself are dangerous foes. But when huge and gangantuan sized D&D creatures squares off against the party, the threat escalates by orders of magnitude. A clever DM looks beyond the stat block, and collaborates with the players to create an immersive and memorable experience.
Getting New People to Play Roleplaying Games
It is the best time to be a nerd. Personally, I've been channeling my inner Heisenberg for as long as I can remember anytime I'd get the nerd label thrown my way -- own it! Fortunately (or maybe a little unfortunately when we get a...
Secrets of Picking your Dungeon Master for a D&D Game
Like Nerdarchists Dave and Ted mention in the video below, back in the day when I was a young gamer, there was no such thing as picking your Dungeon Master for a Dungeons & Dragons game. If you were interested in playing D&D, and you were lucky, you could muster a group and offer to be the DM yourself, and maybe at some point get one of the other players to take a turn behind the screen running a game. My only other experience finding a new group to play with was through a flyer pinned at the comic book store from a couple of friends looking for more players. And it was a successful run that kept us all rolling funny-shaped dice through most of high school. Back then, there was also an organized play program called RPGA. They ran ads in Dragon Magazine and had their own publication, Polyhedron. But in 2018 the circumstances for hopeful D&D players is vastly improved. How? Let’s get into it and find out.
Play Your Next 5E D&D Game in the Deck of Many Things Magic Item Campaign
For disclosure — in my decades as a Dungeon Master and player of Dungeons & Dragons, I have neither used nor encountered the infamous Deck of Many Things. But after sitting in on video planning and discussing it at length with Nerdarchists Dave and Ted, Nate the Nerdarch and Intern Jake, I want to! The powerful Deck of Many Things has been a part of D&D history since the very first supplement — Greyhawk — in 1975. In every edition of the game since, the deck has caused weal and woe for players and DMs alike. Whether it shows up in a randomly generated treasure hoard or enters a campaign due to DM planning, the Deck of Many Things has major impact. So much so that many DMs outright disavow the legendary magic item. Me? I’m excited at the possibility of basing an entire campaign around it. Am I crazy? Perhaps. Let’s get into it and find out.
Methods of Choosing Your 5E D&D Character Race
Based on the placement in the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook, choosing your character’s race is a top priority in character creation, second only to generating ability scores. The chapter begins by illustrating the diversity within the D&D multiverse, describing exotic places from the Waterdeep in the Forgotten Realms to Sigil in the Planescape campaign setting and the myriad races living in those places. Only after painting the picture in your mind of fantasy races like dragonborn, tieflings, gnomes and dark elves — “people of varying size, shape, and color, dressed in a dazzling spectrum of styles and hues” — does the PHB mention humans. That’s pretty significant. So if choosing your character’s race in D&D is so important, how do you make such an impactful decision?
Legendary Dragons Kickstarter from Jetpack 7 Takes Flight
Coming on the heels of their most recent Kickstarter Masters and Minions, the Jetpack 7 team is right back at it with a brand new project. Legendary Dragons: A 5th Edition Supplement puts all the focus squarely on the most iconic creature in all of fantasy — dragons! All the majesty, terror and epic peril of a dragon confrontation will claim its rightful place as the most extraordinary encounter a D&D adventurer can face. Legendary Dragons: A 5th Edition Supplement for the world’s greatest roleplaying game is live right now, so go check it out and help dragons become the feared, world-shaking menaces they are meant to be.
