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Top 5 Ideas for Better 5E D&D Campaigns Inspired by Netflix’s Arcane

If you haven’t yet seen Arcane on Netflix then what are you even doing with your life? I’m bingeing Arcane again for the fourth time now and the show has some amazing inspiration for your tabletop roleplaying game settings and stories. Netflix’s Arcane is honestly a master class in storytelling all on its own and I want to break down five avenues for better RPG experiences using ideas from the show.

Nerdarchy on D&D Monsters: The Jersey Devil for your D&D Campaign

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwGVxMR8P50&ab_channel=Nerdarchy[/embed]   In this 18-minute video on Nerdarchy the YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted stat out and create the Jersey Devil as a fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons monster. What cryptid should we turn into 5E D&D monster next? The origin and folklore surrounding this classic cryptid...

Great Magic Items Inspire Amazing Stories for Players and Characters Alike

We love magic items! The source of power for adventurers may have slowly migrated from external to internal over the years but this hasn’t taken away from the joy of discovery when characters glean such treasures from the hoards of conquered monsters or unearth them in long-lost vaults. In our own fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons games magic items play pivotal roles whether this means providing the power to best terrible adversaries, grant capabilities otherwise impossible for a character or complement existing features.

Game Masters Aren’t Always the Smartest Person at the Table

One of the benefits of working in the tabletop roleplaying game industry is exposure to lots of different perspectives when it comes to gaming. Whether my takeaway from these is good, bad or indifferent there’s always at least a nugget of insight and ideas upon which to chew. A conversation I frequently encounter deals with the concept of consequences and very often focuses on the notion of dumb decisions from players leading to their characters’ death or otherwise adverse results. Adopting the same parlance I’m coming at this from the perspective the whole debate is dumb. Let’s get into it.

Heroquest Action!

What’s the saying about the best laid plans? Heya folks. It’s been a while. I was all ready to write a lot over the summer then life became even more complicated. People I know became sick, including family. I lost several friends, some to natural causes like cancer and few to untimely endings. This happens as you get older. Friends become fewer due to attrition and there’s no saving throw. In any case, today I’m setting the Delorean back to the early 1990s. Back then Milton Bradley decided to work with a small game company in the UK called Games Workshop on a series of games based upon their intellectual property. One, Space Crusade, was based on Warhammer 40,000 and released only in Europe. The other was sword and sorcery and released here as well — Heroquest. Eventually they also released Battle Masters in the US as well.

D&D Ideas — Reflections

Welcome once again to the weekly newsletter. This week’s topic is the reflections, which we discussed in our weekly live chat. We hangout every Monday evening at 8 p.m. EST on Nerdarchy Live to talk about D&D, RPGs, gaming, life and whatever nerdy stuff comes up. Speaking of reflections we’re encouraging your serious thought or consideration for our latest big project. Mage Forge is ideal for GMs who run short on time for game prep by providing magic items with the potential to define your adventures and the characters who uncover them. You can get the Nerdarchy Newsletter delivered to your inbox each week, along with updates and info on how to game with Nerdarchy plus snag a FREE GIFT by signing up here. You can get the Nerdarchy Newsletter delivered to your inbox each week, along with updates and info on how to game with Nerdarchy plus snag a FREE GIFT by signing up here.

mtg adventures in the forgotten realms deck of many things 5E D&D

Top 10 5E D&D Homebrew Magic Items by a Factor of Three — Wondrous Items

The homebrew content for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons found at D&D Beyond is astounding. You’ll find hundreds of thousands of spells, races, subclasses, monsters, magic items and more over there and I’ve looked at quite a lot! All the schools of magic, subclasses for each class individually, feats, monsters, races and a variety of other categorizations of 5E D&D content all fell under my gaze here on the website. Most recently I’ve been going through magic items one category at a time, which includes homebrew armorpotionsringsrodsscrollsstaffs, wands and weapons. Now I’ve come to the end when it comes to magic items and it’s time to check out the over 100,436 homebrew wondrous items at DDB. Let’s get into it.

Work for the Collective as a 5E D&D Warlock with a Cyberpunk Otherworldly Patron

The power of friendship is a staple in fantasy, science fiction and beyond. Fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons campaigns often revolve around this concept but why do we see villains and sinister folk employ this theme so little? I was contemplating the nature of millennial plights and the work force in general and my thoughts drifted to the cyberpunk genre and whether 5E D&D could be set in a cyberpunk campaign. (Watching Batman Beyond certainly didn’t have anything to do with my musings either.) I wondered what a cyberpunk setting for 5E D&D might look like and what kinds of unique subclasses might inhabit this space.

Dissecting the 5E D&D Giant Creature Type

Salutations, nerds! The fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons creature type I’m covering today is a pretty big deal if I do say so myself. No? Well, I can’t see myself out so I’ll just have to write this one while I’m sitting in pun jail. Grab your magic beans and say Fee Fi Fo Fum with me because I smell something and I don’t think it’s the blood of an Englishman. That’s right, I’m looking at 5E D&D giants! From the big stompy boys who appear in your standard fairy tale fair to the jotun from Norse mythology, giants figure in a lot of fantasy’s source material so it’s no small wonder they also figure prominently in D&D.