D&D Ideas — Piety
Welcome once again to the weekly newsletter. This week’s topic is piety, which we discussed in our live chat. We hangout every Monday evening at 8 p.m. EST and talk about D&D, RPGs, gaming, life and whatever nerdy stuff comes up. Speaking of piety, in Deep Breaths adventurers encounter a procession of lizardfolk making a pilgrimage to honor the Drowned One and the party make convenient offerings to their elemental deity. This and 54 other dynamic encounters ready to drop right into your game come straight Out of the Box here. You can get the Nerdarchy Newsletter delivered to your inbox each week, along with updates and info on how to game with Nerdarchy, by signing up here. Our second channel continues to grow and evolve! Nerdarchy Live joins the flagship Nerdarchy the YouTube channel as the new home for our long form video content like Live Chat Revivified and live game plays. Learn more about Nerdarchy Live and how to make sure you don’t miss a thing right here.
Happy Father’s Day from the Tribe of Polywugs for 5E D&D
Inspired by the Father’s Day holiday celebrating dads across the world as well as my friend Brian Colin from Creature Curation and the World of Revilo I wanted to make something fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons related with my kids. The other day I was taking a walk with my eight year old daughter and I issued a challenge to her: come up with an idea of a race of creatures or a monster to be used in 5E D&D. She has been playing roleplaying games since she was four. Just a few months before her fifth birthday we played No Thank You Evil! by Monte Cook Games and quickly transitioned into 5E D&D. Now with several years of irregular gaming and quite the imagination I wanted to see what she would come up with on her own.
Monster Morale with Meaning for 5E D&D
Salutations, nerds! Today we’re going to talk about monsters and their tendency to fight to the death every single time in tabletop roleplaying games like fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. Now, I’m not saying they should break and run every single time but morale is a real thing. Dungeon Masters have a tendency to get into the middle of a game and hit a point where we’re thinking about the things on the battlefield just as things on the battlefield for the adventurers to hit then vend treasure and experience points from. But it matters why the monsters are on the field and what they’re trying to accomplish. A group of goblins who got bullied into joining this fight by a much larger hobgoblin probably aren’t going to stick around, for example, after their hobgoblin bully gets decapitated. Consider what monsters are trying to take and what they’re trying to protect. What are the stakes for your 5E D&D antagonists and creatures and what happens if they lose? Is it going to be worse than dying?
How’s your Shoe Game? | Tool Time with Cobbler’s Tools in 5E D&D
A staple of fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, tool proficiencies seemingly conflict with the prevalence of skills, so where do they fit into the game? That’s exactly what we’re here to discuss in this new series of articles! Please note: tool proficiencies and how to use them are less defined in the 5E D&D rules than skills. As such the options and explanations presented here might differ from how your own Dungeon Master treats tools and tool proficiency. On top of that, any DM can adjust rules to fit their own table at their discretion, so check with your DM if you have specific questions about how they deal with tools in their own games. And with all the necessary caveats out of the way, let’s horn in on cobbler’s tools!
Monstrous Mutations and New Froggy Feats for 5E D&D
Looking for a creepy abomination or an ultimate big bad sure to strike horror into your fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons players? Then the swampy Muckwuggle is just what you need. While reading up on Muckwuggle, the Frog God from Nerdarchy the Store I got more eldritch horror vibes than my dark fantasy loving soul knew what to do with. While this content has everything to get you started on your dark fantasy trek into the swampy planar wastes, I’ve devised some feats I think compliment this beautifully. The best part of these 5E D&D feats is each also contains an optional detriment, called a bane, or perk called a boon. This allows them the versatility of being used as blessings for evil followers and servants to the frog god or wretched curses for its enemies.
Wizards of the Coast Announces Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden for 5E D&D
DND Live 2020: Roll w/ Advantage is live and in the tradition of Wizards of the Coast’s annual announcement celebrations, the next campaign storyline was announced during this year’s event, which live streams from remote locations while participants continue to stay safe by staying home during the COVID-19 outbreak. For this year’s community celebration D&D teamed up with big personalities in the entertainment world to create a star studded event for the most worthy of quests. DND Live 2020’s live play games, announcements and panels taking place throughout the event raise money for Red Nose Day to help children affected by the global pandemic.
Miniatures: The Mini-Mes of Tabletop Roleplaying Games
Miniatures have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since before it began. In fact, D&D started as a miniatures game! It’s true! Originally it was a fantasy miniature wargame written by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson called Chainmail. Eventually spells and heroes were added and a way for those heroes to improve and it became the basic D&D of the mid 1970s, which has evolved into the game we all know today. Miniature war gaming goes back to at least 1913 when H.G. Wells published a book called Little Wars. They were his rules for playing miniature wargames. This post is going to be about miniatures, but not a history per se and not a how to or anything. This column is about what it was like for a preteen to discover miniatures via D&D and how the tabletop roleplaying game, miniatures and kid grew up together. There will be a bit of history in this piece so my primary sources are DnD Lead (a great resource for the early stuff) and Lost Minis Wiki, which has a lot more pictures and not as much history. Those sources are listed at the end. Yes, grad school has made me paranoid about citations.
Meet the Storm Herald Fire Genasi with a Destiny in Those Bastards 5E D&D Live Play
Nerdarchy has a new streamed game for you to watch! Those Bastards is a fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons campaign streaming live on Tuesdays 8-10 p.m. eastern on our second channel, Nerdarchy Live. A gaggle of half siblings, all with the same constellation birthmark, search for answers regarding their father, themselves and the mystery of disappearing constellations in the sky. As they venture into deep dungeons and face deadly monsters their destinies converge on more questions than answers. Even if they live to find the answers they seek, will they wish they never had?
5E D&D Worldbuilding Insights from New Mythic Odysseys of Theros Subclasses
Over at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted share their thoughts on the two new fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons subclasses inside Mythic Odysseys of Theros. College of Eloquence bards and Oath of Glory paladins bring new options for players tied to the themes and concepts of the new 5E D&D campaign setting. If I’m honest it was surprising there aren’t more new subclasses included with MOoT. Circle of Stars felt like a surefire piece of the Theros puzzle! On the other hand if it shows up in a future product more closely tied to the stars (like Spelljammer?!) or a Feywild campaign adventure you won’t find me grousing about it. In the meantime, since I enjoyed thinking about how curating the playable races for characters can become a resource for campaign creation and worldbuilding why not apply the same principles to subclass options?
Balancing RPG Verisimilitude Against We’re Still Playing a Game, Right?
Helping to run a small business dedicated to tabletop roleplaying games puts me in a position to think about RPGs. A lot. While I consider myself far from an expert game designer or theorist I’ve got to assume writing, editing, planning and considering these games leaves me with at least a little insight and today I want to share a profound moment from my RPG experiences. A while back I wrote about how the best RPGs let you know clearly up front what the game is about. The post found traction and stimulated good conversations. The idea for that post came after reading an early backer version of Vaesen — Nordic Horror Roleplaying and you can check it out here. I bring it up because this post also comes from ideas inspired from the same rule book. One small sidebar in one of the mysteries included with the game changed my whole perspective on verisimilitude and reminded me the importance of remembering we’re still playing a game. So let’s get into it.
