Keep Mordenkainen Busy Keeping Track of Your DM’s Guild Content
Did you know over 4,000 new products stock the Dungeon Master’s Guild digital marketplace from 2019 alone? I read this on Twitter so you know it’s legit. Best-selling DM’s Guild author and cowriter of Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus M.T. Black shared the tidbit the other day and it really got me thinking. When I was a young Dungeons & Dragons nerd, I’d haunt the single column of bookshelves at Waldenbooks, perusing the games and modules there. They numbered in the double digits at best. It’s a great time to be a D&D player and creator. The DM’s Guild offers a marketplace to share your creations with the world, and we’ve got many thousands of products to enhance our games to choose from — including many of those old classics I browsed back in the day. Here’s a small sample of some of the DM’s Guild products that crossed my desk this past week.
Real World Adventure Hooks for D&D — How Do You Like Them Apples?
Players of fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons and other roleplaying games seem to always have at least a sliver of brain power devoted to thinking about the games we love. Art can inspire a character we play or the setting for an encounter. Dramatic relationships and interactions can inspire campaign plots and NPC motivations. And the world we see all around us can add clever details and verisimilitude to our settings. A recent tweet from Grand DM caught my eye and this installment of Real World Adventure Hooks for D&D comes directly from the image they shared.
Weigh Anchor for A Complete Guide to Nautical Campaigns
Vehicles and the sorts of exotic adventures featuring them are a big draw for tabletop roleplaying game campaigns. Nerdarchy friend and host of How to be a Great Game Master Guy Sclanders is no stranger to running epic campaigns on the high seas, in the skies or across the blasted landscape of Avernus, and he’s sharing that expertise with A Complete Guide to Nautical Campaigns. The Kickstarter is currently live and by the looks of it by the time I’m done writing this post it will more than likely be funded. Check it out here and navigate your way to the pledge level that works best for you.
NPC Relationships and Reputation in D&D Factions
Salutations, nerds! Today we’re going to be talking about fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons NPC relationships and reputation in D&D, something some player characters are very good at and others…not so much. Some PCs take the attitude that NPCs are basically just Popsicle sticks with faces painted on them who are supposed to vend gold because they were charming enough. Your job as the Dungeon Master is to make those NPCs feel like real people, and sometimes real people aren’t going to pay you more no matter how well you rolled because they just don’t have it.
Ravage — Dungeons of Plunder is an Adventure Board Game for Treasure and Teef!
Are you looking for a new board game? Do you like board games with great options like competitive and cooperative, as well as solo play? Is repeat play value through variable quests important to you? And No. 1: do you want to play with a tribe of orcs? If you answered yes to all of these questions, or even some of them, then I have a game for you! Ravage — Dungeons of Plunder is a dungeon delving board game where you play orcs, with three modes of play.
D&D Ideas — Using Art
Treasures Await! Adventurers: Choose Your Own Reward
Longtime visitors here to Nerdarchy the Website may remember the very first Out of the Box encounter posted right here about three and a half years ago. Mike Gould, the writer, remains an invaluable resource for the Nerdarchy community and we were so excited to launch our very first Kickstarter with Mike’s work in the spotlight. We set out to make a hardcover book of our own, and because of the support and encouragement from the RPG community we do so much more. We met all our stretch goals, including several that evolved because of the Kickstarter’s remarkable fundraising. And now the Out of the Box Pledge Manager is live, so backers can complete their surveys and anyone who missed the Kickstarter can make late pledges. This is a perfect opportunity to get your copy of the Out of the Box book, our entire digital library and more at special pricing — not to mention badges for Nerdarchy the Convention in 2020.
Shelter Divine Domain — Cleric Subclass for 5th Edition
The Mis-Adventurers: An (Almost) Epic Tale is a new adult comedic fantasy adventure novel that hits a lot of the beats of a D&D campaign and the lovely disasters that can ensue. As the author, I very consciously designed the story this way, because some of the best stories I’ve ever experienced have been around the game table.
A large part of what makes D&D work so well as a storytelling avenue is its codified rules. These define things like how magic works, what weapons can do, and even resolving complex maneuvers. As an author trying to capture the proverbial magic of a tabletop roleplaying game story, I knew I’d have to codify many of the book’s events in terms of game mechanics. As such, I devised a unique new D&D subclass for each character.
Wendy’s Feast of Legend RPG brings the beef!
A while back, Old Spice dipped a toe into the tabletop roleplaying game community with their Gentleman class. But today, Wendy’s was like, “hold my Frosty.” The fast food giant dropped an RPG bomb today with Feast of Legends: Rise from the Deep Freeze, a 97-page game rulebook and campaign setting. The brand’s sassy social media strategy upped its hip quotient, tapping into the enormous popularity of RPGs with the game.
Halloween D&D Adventures are a Treat at DM’s Guild — No Trick!
The fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons creative community shares their enthusiasm in lots of ways. One of those ways is the Dungeon Master’s Guild, an online marketplace where people all over the world create new content for D&D. With Halloween just a few weeks away here in the US, the jack-o’-lantern light is shining on spooky holiday themed adventures and material, so this week let’s focus on some of the Halloween D&D adventures at the DM’s Guild.