Education Adventures: Math and More from D&D for Students
Education Adventures is a column written by educator Megan Hardy. Through the Outschool program, Megan teaches a series of Life Skills courses using fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. During the six week campaign, heroes head out to save the land from an evil ruler, facing challenges and battles and making friends along the way while learning logic and critical thinking. The campaign is designed specifically for children ages 9-14 and highlights problem solving, logic puzzles and team work while participating in a grand adventure. In the Education Adventures column, Megan shares insights and lessons she learns through teaching D&D for students and their experiences.
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.
Player Agency and Why Some Curses Are Total Garbage
I promise you I’m not finished talking about Dungeons & Dragons villains, but something came up this week that requires my immediate attention and I will get right back to those as soon as I’m done with this one. Yeah, we’re going to talk about player agency in 5E D&D. I can hear people groaning already. The thing is, player agency has kind of lost its meaning in the midst of all of these discussions about it and I hear it used incorrectly as often as I hear it used right.
Kickstarter Korner for October 2018, Week 2
Each week during the Quests & Adventures live chat, Saturday at 2 p.m. eastern, Nerdarchists Dave and Ted and Nate the Nerdarch hang out live with fans from the Nerdarchy YouTube channel. It’s a chance to share announcements and news, answer questions from the live chat...
The North Seat 5E D&D Campaign Setting from Ethan Hudgens
Often, I find myself wandering around different Discords and Twitch channels wondering what other gamers are up too. Recently I’ve been watching something on the UnMadeGaming channel and found Mike in a game being run by Ethan Hudgens, and I watched in fascination as they tried to kill a bear. As usual Mike had a rough night, but I found myself more and more curious about campaign setting. After the game I was chatting with the folks in the Discord channel and found out Ethan has his work up on DriveThruRPG presented by Encounter Roleplay (another great channel I strongly recommend you check out). After buying The North Seat primer and book one titled Hostadd, Our Home, I am completely intrigued by the story and I think you should be too. Today, we’re going to take a look at the primer and do a review of the books. Hostadd is a 5E D&D alternate campaign setting and style. After reading book one and the primer, I think you’ll really enjoy it so let’s take a jump in and start looking at things.
Pacesetter Games and Simulation with Unexpected Miniatures
I filled in for Nerdarchist Dave on one of our weekday live chats a while back when we were doing them regularly, and I got to sit down and have a great conversation with Ben Barsh from Pacesetter Games and Simulation. They have a range of products for a variety of different roleplaying games, but we talked about their Kickstarter and bringing Pasesetter into fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons adventures. You can check out their successful Rise of the Nefarious: A 5th Edition Campaign and and their other 5E adventures on the Pacesetter website.
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.
5E D&D Magic Item Deep Dive — Stone of Good Luck
The stone of good luck, or luckstone, has been a staple good, yet persistently underrated, Dungeons & Dragons magic item since some of the earliest editions of the game. It retains this status in 5E D&D, as an (un)common item virtually any player would say is good, but which nonetheless gets overlooked compared to other items. In my experience, for the cost of one attunement slot, there are few items out there — even of higher rarity — that greatly surpass the luckstone for a wide variety of characters, though any given class or race has some specific items that beat it out.
Kickstarter Korner for October 2018, Week 1
Each week during the Quests & Adventures live chat, Saturday at 2 p.m. eastern, Nerdarchists Dave and Ted and Nate the Nerdarch hang out live with fans from the Nerdarchy YouTube channel. It’s a chance to share announcements and news, answer questions from the live chat and generally just hang out and talk nerdy with the Nerdarchy community.
In the description of each weekly video, Nerdarchist Ted compiles a list and links to all the videos and website content from the week. But he also shares a selection of cool Kickstarter campaigns. As an avid Kickstarter supporter, he’s happy to share his favorite RPG and gaming-related Kickstarters with you, the Nerdarchy community. Enjoy!
Forest Kingdom Campaign Compendium for 5E D&D
When Nerdarchy went to GenCon 2018 I met some of the people over at Legendary Games and got a copy of their Forest Kingdom Campaign Compendium for 5E D&D to check out. I am a huge fan of fey and forest games out in the wilderness and away from normal civilization. If you want to pick up the book on Amazon you can do so here. You can also head over to the Legendary Games site and check out this or other amazing products they offer.
