D&D Villains: Sympathy for the Devil
Salutations, nerds! Today, I’m going to talk about villains again, and this time we’ll be discussing sympathetic villains in your fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons games. I’m talking about the wizard whose been vivisecting people trying to come up with a cure for his wife’s ailment and save her life. I’m talking about the planar being who has cut a swathe of chaos across the land trying to get home. I’m talking about the blackguard who was betrayed by his people and had his heart stained in darkness. These are the D&D villains you almost want to fix. The ones who tug your heartstrings and make you hesitate to kick their butt. These are the Mr. Freezes, the Princess Lunas, and the Magnetos of your D&D campaign.
D&D Villains: The Enemy With the Inhuman Face
Salutations, nerds! I want to talk a little bit more about designing and running the bad guys in your fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons game. Specifically, I want to talk about the kinds of bad guys that cannot be reasoned with. Dark creatures that could never be mistaken for “human.” I’m talking dark gods. I’m talking the tarrasque. I’m talking the massive thing on the horizon that just swallowed the cathedral and made the party feel so small in Session One in a single bite, yes. I’m also talking about smaller demons. I’m talking about the insectoid creature that keeps hollowing out people’s bodies and using their meat puppets to its own ends. These are the inhuman monsters so alien there is no connecting with them and the only chance you have is running them through before they do more damage. If you even can. If you’re even sure where to hit it.
Legendary Dragons Kickstarter from Jetpack 7 Takes Flight
Coming on the heels of their most recent Kickstarter Masters and Minions, the Jetpack 7 team is right back at it with a brand new project. Legendary Dragons: A 5th Edition Supplement puts all the focus squarely on the most iconic creature in all of fantasy — dragons! All the majesty, terror and epic peril of a dragon confrontation will claim its rightful place as the most extraordinary encounter a D&D adventurer can face. Legendary Dragons: A 5th Edition Supplement for the world’s greatest roleplaying game is live right now, so go check it out and help dragons become the feared, world-shaking menaces they are meant to be.
Cover-to-Cover Awesome Inside Creature Codex from Kobold Press
Kobold Press, you did it again. By now, backers for the Creature Codex have the publishers’ follow-up to the much-loved Tome of Beasts in their hands, and what a follow-up it is! Over 400 5E-compatible new monsters lurk within, ready to burst from the pages and inspire your own fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons adventures and campaigns. Designed by an impressive host of designers including Kobold-in-chief Wolfgang Baur along with personal favorite Dan Dillon joined by a warren of others — plus creatures commissioned by monster patrons — Creature Codex has a lot to love. And with art direction and design by KP mainstay Marc Radle guiding a team of incredible artists like frequent collaborators Bryan Syme and Marcel Mercado along with a whole bunch of others, discovering each page of this massive tome is a visual joy. So let’s get to it.
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.
Make Combat More Interesting with Monster Abilities for D&D Creatures and NPCs
Hey nerds! I’ve been playing Diablo 3 recently and that has inspired me to create about a dozen new special monster abilities to add your D&D creatures and NPCs in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. These abilities are designed to make combat more interesting and probably harder. I have not done any playtesting of these, so feel free to send me a message on Twitter with your thoughts.
Quick and Easy D&D Adventures Redux
Hello! The following post originally appeared on my own site The Long Shot. At the time, I’d gotten back into tabletop gaming a few months earlier after a long time away, first through D&D Adventurers League when I lived in Austin, Texas. That’s when I first discovered Nerdarchy, which inspired me to start running fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons games when I got back home to Cleveland, Ohio. These days I’m all in here as nerditor-in-chief, but I got an alert that traffic was booming over on The Long Shot because of this post on creating quick and easy D&D adventures. I thought it would be fun to revisit the topic, with commentary on how my perspective might have changed on creating great adventures, and share it here with y’all. And there’s a TL;DR at the bottom to help make quick and easy D&D adventures even quicker and easier.
WizKids Miniatures Review – D&D Icons of the Realms – Monster Menagerie 3
I know everyone who collects or uses miniatures on their gaming table buys them in different ways. If you are a casual user or player you might buy a few things here or there. I have done a couple of articles so far where I bought the booster brick, which comes with 8 boxes, of minis. I feel this is a good method to really see what the set is all about and gauge what the split is going to be much easier than if you buy a single box every so often. But that is my strategy. Please feel free to do as you like. Today I wanted to talk to you about D&D Icons of the Realms: Monster Menagerie 3, a series of WizKids miniatures for use with Dungeons & Dragons or any tabletop roleplaying game. This set was released in March 2018 and I have bought some previously but recently I got a booster brick to really get into the heart of it. You can take a look at the full gallery of miniatures in the set over here.
WizKids Miniatures Review — Pathfinder Battles — Jungle of Despair
Hello again. I sometimes feel most of the articles I write seem to be reviewing products but I am certain I do more than that. Today however, as I am certain you can see from the title, it is another review. This time I am diving into the Pathfinder Battles series of WizKids miniatures and looking at Jungle of Despair. It is a great set and you can see the full set listed here.
The Art and Science of D&D Encounter Building
The question recently came up at Nerdarchy whether the fifth edition D&D encounter building system is art or science with regard to the experience point guidelines set out in the Creating Encounters section of the Dungeon Master’s Guide. I am in the camp that says it is both art and science.
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.
Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes Stone Cursed Finds a Rock Solid Friend
Nerdarchists Dave and Ted are at it again, and they’ve jumped back into Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes. This time we’re looking at a curious fifth edition D&D monster entry, the stone cursed. The Nerdarchists threw out some great ideas that got me thinking how I would use this entry. I’m a sucker for using under appreciated monster entries and I intend on throwing a creature of two that you might not have seen or used yet. Let’s get into the Stone Cursed and their presence in this encounter line.
Mind Flayer Meets the Nerdarchy Homebrew Campaign Setting
I started talking about using the mind flayer and beholder in our homebrew campaign setting in a previous article. Mainly I covered the beholder re-imagined as dread spheres. In the previous article I talked about the idea of a Chaos Realm and powerful beings known as Travelers. One of these creatures took control of an elven city named Karsha Luceen.
The Iconic Dungeons & Dragons Monster – A Love Letter to Them
The beholder was introduced with the first Dungeons & Dragons supplement, Greyhawk in 1975. The mind flayer first appeared in the official newsletter of TSR Games, The Strategic Review No. 1 in spring 1975. These are two of the most iconic Dungeons & Dragons monsters in the game. I’d love to know how many players have met their end to one of these two baddies. Of course D&D is rife with monsters what makes the beholder and mind flayer so special. I think it’s because they are so alien and bizarre that they really capture the imagination of players and Dungeon Masters alike in a way that very few other Dungeons and Dragons Monsters do.
Wizard Willy’s Wily Weasels – Beyond Bandits in D&D
Nerdarchists Dave and Ted are talking about bandits in D&D and giving out lots of great ideas and examples. However, the segment is intended to be monster replacements and it got me thinking about how I would replace bandits without simply going right back to something commonly used like goblins and kobolds. I got to flipping through the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual, looking for creatures I’d never used to replicate the feeling and challenge of bandits. I came to a rather odd inspiration: giant weasels. How do we use weasels in place of bandits? Let’s explore some ideas together!
