Hag’s Apprentice — a 5E D&D Halloween Encounter
Halloween came and went, and with it lots of awesome ideas out there for running Halloween adventures for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. The Nerdarchy crew weighed in on the festivities too, with a spooky, kooky 5E D&D Halloween encounter. While we were planning a different video, the Roper Wrangler encounter, the idea for our Hag’s Apprentice encounter developed. In the Roper Wrangler the concept was a creature who hit creatures with another creature. In that case, a fomorian used a roper as a weapon to capture adventurers and use them for food on its roper farm, where a dastardly trio of duergar siblings built a spectator sports around captives’ desperate attempts to escape. Taking the idea a step further, in the Hag’s Apprentice we’ve got creatures wearing other creatures as adornment. And with Halloween coming up, we revisited the idea to create a dynamic, creepy encounter ready to deploy in your 5E D&D games.
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.
Play Your Next 5E D&D Game in the Deck of Many Things Magic Item Campaign
For disclosure — in my decades as a Dungeon Master and player of Dungeons & Dragons, I have neither used nor encountered the infamous Deck of Many Things. But after sitting in on video planning and discussing it at length with Nerdarchists Dave and Ted, Nate the Nerdarch and Intern Jake, I want to! The powerful Deck of Many Things has been a part of D&D history since the very first supplement — Greyhawk — in 1975. In every edition of the game since, the deck has caused weal and woe for players and DMs alike. Whether it shows up in a randomly generated treasure hoard or enters a campaign due to DM planning, the Deck of Many Things has major impact. So much so that many DMs outright disavow the legendary magic item. Me? I’m excited at the possibility of basing an entire campaign around it. Am I crazy? Perhaps. Let’s get into it and find out.
Waterdeep: Dragon Heist Highlights the Serious Business of Adventure
The newest adventure for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons takes players to a familiar city for some, Waterdeep, and puts them at the center of a dramatic heist involving 500,000 gold pieces. Offering Nerditor Doug a break from running our home group, I offered to run this one as Dungeon Master and share my first impressions of the book. What follows are my thoughts after my initial read through of the Waterdeep: Dragon Heist adventure as well as some ideas from my own game prep notes I’ll be using during our sessions.
D&D Planar Adventures Are For Everyone — Start Your Planar Campaigns Today!
I love planar adventures in Dungeons & Dragons. And I’m not alone, based on the huge number of people out there with affection for the Planescape campaign setting first introduced in second edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Typically, travel and adventure in planes of existence beyond the prime material plane of D&D is the purview of higher-level adventurers. Getting to these planes is often a challenge by itself, and surviving the dangerous environments found there can be very difficult. The laws of physics and magic are often different, and simply being there at all can be a hazard to a character’s life. But you can forget all that, and take adventures across the multiverse of dimensions and create planar campaigns right from the get-go if you want.
The Dungeons and the Dragons of Dungeons & Dragons: Green Dragon Lairs
There are many concepts and values I find important to playing Dungeons & Dragons. This may shock you, but two things high on that list are dungeons and dragons. I like taking the dragons listed in the Monster Manual (and even beyond) and creating their D&D dragon lairs, sprawling dungeons with varying levels of complexity. This segment we’ll head back to the Monster Manual proper and take a look at the green dragon. What makes this dragon so unique and it’s lair deadly in it’s own right? Let’s explore introducing a dragon and green dragon lairs, together.
Monster Combinations in D&D — The Witch of Flame Skull Peak
I was sitting with the Nerdarchists talking about effective monster combinations for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons and we came up with a lot of really cool ideas. Some of those ideas were displayed in the recent Monster BFF video, but my thoughts kept racing, creating all manner of scenes I really need to share with all of you to calm my turbulent mind. So, together we will go through a few more ideas for monster combinations in D&D that were brought up during the discussion and put them together into a scene I hope you’ll use in your campaign, or at least just find some inspiration and enjoyment.
Using Exotic Mounts in D&D – The Knights of the Crimson Spiral
Nerdarchy plays fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons in the our own campaign setting Chimes of Discordia. The world is Ulthe-Ganya, a hodgepodge one of our early campaigns we are currently doing in D&D games. In that world there is our god of war Stromguard, the lord of battle, bloodshed, and warfare. He is a brutal being that lives for strife and conflict. It is only fitting he has champions to match his demeanor. His followers are drawn from warriors, soldiers, and more primitive tribal peoples. Mechanically his followers in our campaign setting will be drawn from the barbarian, fighter, and War Domain cleric character classes. Some outliers would be bard (skalds), ranger, monk (brawlers), and paladin. Paladins in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons have become holy warriors dedicated to a particular oath. The most violent and warlike of these might find that oath sworn before the altar of Stromguard. Two oaths in particular stand out for Stromguard — Oath of Conquest and Oath of Vengeance. These champions are both revered and feared even among the faithful of Stromguard.
The Dungeons and the Dragons of Dungeons & Dragons: White Dragon Lairs
Now that we’ve seen the insidious and torturous nature of the black dragon and the windy torrent of the wind dragon and their D&D dragon lairs, I think we need to cool off. Let’s take this party to the frozen tundra of the north where, shockingly enough, I have no shirtless savages. Instead, there be dragons. Well, just the one really. Let’s talk about introducing a dragon with the vicious, cold, and animalistic white dragon. What do these frost wyrms have to offer, what do white dragon lairs look like, and what servants, if at all do they have? We’re going to jump into my take on this lesser used dragon and try to make a unique adventure.
Top 3 Reasons to Run Published D&D Adventures Like City of Brass
Nerdarchists Dave and Ted share great insights and ideas on the reg on the Nerdarchy YouTube channel. In particular a recent video inspired by the City of Brass Kickstarter from Frog God Games is near and dear to my heart. In the video the pros and cons of a Dungeon Master running adventure paths and published D&D adventures are weighed with some surprising results. In my estimation, it’s all pros. No cons (except ones where thousands of nerds gather in one place for days of gaming celebration. Like Gen Con coming up in Aug. 2-5!)
The Dungeons and the Dragons of Dungeons & Dragons: Wind Dragon Lairs
I can’t be held down friends. You thought I was going to keep it going on the chromatic spectrum for introducing a dragon, but here we go doing a pivot to elemental dragons enclosed in the wonderful Tome of Beasts. While I have a deep love for the chromatic dragons, I do find them a bit restrictive at times. Because they are so iconic and interesting, it feels wrong to step outside their prescribed niches. The additional types of dragons and drakes in the Tome of Beasts allow for not only a wider range in dragon types and D&D dragon lairs but built-in personalities running a much wider gamut. Let’s roll into the bullies of the sky: the wind dragons and wind dragon lairs.
Powerful Potions and Mutated Trolls Await Within Wyestone Horror
Another month comes with it another wonderful Nerdarchy Patreon reward. For July 2018, Critical Hit Publishing brings us a wonderful supplement by the name of The Wyestone Horror. This document is packed with interesting items, new monsters, and a great adventure appropriate for a spooky one-shot. Let’s go into some of the aspects I really enjoyed about this Patreon reward and where it has legs beyond just the one-shot held within.
MCU’s Failure Can Be Your Infinity War D&D Campaign Success
More Marvel Cinematic Universe talk within the honored halls of Nerdarchy. As I scribe away on scrolls and interdimensional glyphs, I ponder on the MCU films in D&D terms and how the limitations they had could easily be fixed at the gaming table. Let’s explore what I believe to be the largest weakness of the collective movies and how you can take advantage of the MCU’s failure to infuse a clever narrative arc and create your own Infinity War D&D campaign. Oh, fair warning, super minor Infinity War spoilers.
The Dungeons and the Dragons of Dungeons & Dragons: Black Dragon Lairs
There are two aspects of Dungeons & Dragons history that I love to include as often as I can in my campaigns. I find dungeons so important to D&D that it’s rare I will run even short arcs without them. The iconic nature or sheer power that comes with introducing a dragon into the narrative and the reaction you get from players when they find out there are rumors of a dragon… To me, these separate are wonderful, but together make for the set piece that brings D&D to firing on all cylinders. Let’s explore the different D&D dragons and the lairs they might make in a world where dungeons are reality. Let’s start out with one of my favorites: the Black Dragon.
