Education Adventures: Savor the Moments in D&D
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.
The Case for Half-Dragons as a Playable D&D Race
There can be no denying that dragons are a huge part of D&D. After all, they’re half the name. Most of the time they function as adversaries: a monster to slay in order to save a princess or town. In a few cases, good-aligned dragons can function as mentors or allies to a party of adventurers. However, interest in playing a character of draconic descent must have increased in recent years, because the last three editions of Dungeons & Dragons have had playable races of draconic descent, with the dragonborn even being featured in the fourth edition and fifth edition Player’s Handbooks. Dragonborn have continued to be a popular selection for many players. But their inclusion as a mainstream race has always baffled me, because even before they were introduced, there was another great candidate for a playable D&D race of draconic descent: half-dragons, the children of true dragons and their mortal lovers.
Digital Cartography and RPG Map Maker Software
With the internet slowly being taken over by RPG nerds and geeks we are seeing many more streams of various roleplaying games. Lots of people out there want to join the club, but many don’t know how to make something more digital. When they start with digital cartography to make the maps they go to Photoshop or its less expensive counterpart Gimp. After a few hours of frustration and confusion the idea is given up on and the stream never comes to life. I thought it a good idea to take a look at three sets of RPG map maker software: Campaign Cartographer 3, Dungeon Painter Studio, and Dungeonographer/Cityographer. These programs vary in price, sometimes drastically. These are all programs I personally use. There is no paid endorsement for these products, but I believe in them and strongly recommend them.
RPG Crate Unboxing — June 2018
Hello adventurer. It is that time again when we ask, “Whats in the box?” June’s RPG Crate subscription box just arrived and as I peek inside the theme is Wondrous Power. We are hopefully all familiar with figurines of wondrous power so I wonder (get it? Wonder…wondrous…yeah it is a pun) if it has anything to do with the theme. Unboxing is the only way to find out for sure.
Put Your Gaming Set Proficiency to Work with Games within Games in D&D
The Nerdarchists brought up some interesting set pieces in their games within games in D&D video. I’ve had players really gravitate towards gambling at the tavern in between adventures, but just merely rolling skill checks can get a little dull. There are a many options out there for bringing gambling games into your sessions, but I thought I’d share one method I used to take a simple gaming set proficiency and gambling downtime activity of my local rogue and turned it into a recurring scene with an enjoyable NPC and a great way to give weird magic items to the party.
Feats of Inspiration – D&D character building from a single feat
It may come as a surprise to you, but I’m not a huge fan of feats in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. I think these variant D&D rules work, albeit better with specific D&D character building guidelines, but ultimately I greatly disliked feats in D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder and these aren’t enough of a step up for me to enjoy them. However, in an effort to enjoy every aspect of the game and maybe even give some character inspiration to others, I’m going to go through some of the feats in D&D and develop some characterization around them.
Enjoying Origins Game Fair with My Nerd Adjacent Wife
This year it looked like I’d be attending Origins Game Fair 2018 solo. My fellow Nerdarchist and colleagues in Nerdarchy couldn’t get away from their muggle lives and jobs. It so happens my wife had been recently been laid off from work after being diagnosed with a rare auto-immune disease and wouldn’t have any obligations holding her at the home front. I invited her to come along rather than worry about things we have no control over. I was hoping she’d be able to take her mind off some of our troubles for a bit and treat it like a mini vacation. The only problem is the Origins Game Fair is a bit of a Nerd Mecca for tabletop gamers. It’s a whopping five days of tabletop card, board, and RPG games.
Kickstarter Korner for July 2018, Week 3
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!
D&D Adventure in Real Life with True Dungeon
At Origins Game Fair 2018 I had the pleasure of running through True Dungeon alongside my wife Stephanie and Dan Dillon. My wife is more nerd adjacent than actually being a gamer herself. 
Dan on the other hand has written a ton of published material through Kobold Press as well as being on the latest Wizard of the Coast product D&D Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage.
Board Games in Review: Professor Evil and the Citadel of Time from Fun Forge
Professor Evil and the Citadel of Time is a game published by Fun Forge. They contacted me and asked if I wanted a review copy and since I am a sucker for board games I said why not. This is a cooperative game and that works out really well for our family. The major concept of the game is that Professor Evil has traveled throughout time and stolen major artifacts and it is the players’ job to sneak into his castle, or citadel, and steal them before they are locked in his super secret vault.
