Getting Started with Dungeons & Dragons
Hail and well met! I am your host Dungeon Master Kenneth, and without further ado let’s sink our teeth into this post aimed to help with getting started with Dungeons & Dragons. I’ll be addressing one of the most common questions I’ve personally received since becoming a full-time Dungeon Master.
When is D&D no longer Dungeons & Dragons?
I’ve been playing Dungeons & Dragons for some time now and until D&D 5E, the number of people playing has never been higher. The landscape of the community has also changed quite a bit. With live stream games and actual play series like Critical Role, and online play, the hobby is vastly altered. All these aspects make for a wider and better hobby. But it does bring up questions in my mind. I’m seeing more D&D playstyles than I ever have in the past and often the games I watch at other tables is much different than the game at my table. This leads to the question: when is D&D no longer Dungeons & Dragons?
Secrets of the Secrets of the Vault: Mage Forge
Part of my self-appointed tasks as nerditor-in-chief for Nerdarchy is organizing content. Cleaning up all the categories and tags here on the website, creating and maintaining the publication budget and schedule for posts, and putting together our products like Fantastical Mounts and From Hit Dice to Heroics all share something in common — exposure to the vast library of archived content produced by Nerdarchy over the last few years. When we decided to try our hand at product creation in 2018, I thought about all the comments I’ve read from Nerdarchy fans curious about the homebrew campaign setting of Ulthe-Ganya. That’s how Secrets of the Vault: Mage Forge Vol. 1 developed. I realized a lot of what people ask for is already out there. Let’s open up the Vault, see what’s inside, how it came to be, and ultimately went full circle by becoming an incredible new D&D artifact itself.
Competitive D&D Play: Combat Tactics in Dungeons & Dragons
The role of combat in Dungeons & Dragons varies from campaign to campaign. In certain campaigns, it may hardly be used at all. In others, it takes center stage. My own games run the gamut, with one campaign consisting of sessions that comprise arena-style scenarios, where assortments of characters are pitted against monsters and traps calibrated to be on the deadlier end of the spectrum. With ideas of competitive D&D play being floated around the D&D community of late, with many of us wondering in particular what D&D might look like as an esport in light of a recent interview with the CEO of Hasbro (Wizards of the Coast’s parent company) where he discussed such a possibility, it occurred to me just how much I learned about the rules from diving into a combat-heavy game, where character death was frequent, and where a competitive atmosphere existed, not between players or even between players and DMs, but between the characters and the harsh world of combat in which they had found themselves.
Nerd Travel — D&D in a Castle
I got some nerd travel in this summer for the ultimate D&D vacation. Nerdarchy got invited to Chateau Challain in France as guest player at D&D in a Castle. Four days of gaming at an exotic location. Two sessions of D&D a day.
Dungeons & Dragons Tavern Menus and Fantasy Culinary Culture
Salutations, nerds! Today I want to talk about Dungeons & Dragons taverns and things you can acquire in them. Specifically, let’s talk about the tavern menus. Are you the kind of Dungeon Master who likes to give your players a handout of a menu that’s prefabricated or do you prefer to make it up on the spot? Either way, there are useful things to consider when it comes to your taverns and the food that is available in them.
Is There a Best Edition of D&D? Absolutely
Dungeons & Dragons editions questions and conversations come up quite a bit. Much more often than I would expect, that’s for sure. Whether it’s someone on Twitter asking what everyone’s favorite edition of D&D is, the impromptu discussion I had with Nerdarchist Dave earlier tonight, or the person who tasked Nerdarchy with convincing them to switch editions from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons to fifth edition D&D that inspired the video below, I’m always up for a trip down D&D memory lane. Me? I’ve enjoyed every edition of D&D more than the previous one, and I love them all. Is there a best edition of D&D? Absolutely.
Mind Breaker Paladin — Destroyer of D&D Adventurers
Nerdarchy was challenged to make a multi-class 5E D&D character build using a paladin and bard character class. In the video below we discuss making this character as a player option. But I want to talk about using this character build from the other side of the Dungeon Master’s Screen. While with some mental gymnastics our Oath of Conquest paladin/College of Whispers bard multiclass can be a player character legal for Adventurers League. We can even make this character evil with the lawful evil alignment maintaining our Adventurers League legal status.
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.
D&D Beyond Digital Toolset Before, During and After a Campaign
Yeah, yeah, I know. You already bought the books. I did too, and both Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage are on preorder from Amazon. I enjoy having the physical books to read through and — for running adventures — use at the table. And it’s important to me to support D&D as a consumer. But I’ve been using D&D Beyond since the beta, long before I was a DDB Insider, and I’d unlocked quite a bit from the marketplace before that too. I keep up with the conversation about DDB also. “It’s double dipping, it’s a money grab, it’s unfair to pay twice, X digital toolset is better,” and so on. At the end of the day, it comes down a cost-benefit analysis for each individual. If the advantage DDB provides is not greater than the price to unlock content for you, there’s nothing wrong with that. For many, many others around the world, the analysis is more favorable. For me, it’s really favorable and here’s why. But before getting started, let’s make a deal: I won’t disrespect your view of DDB, and you won’t get angry because I enjoy using, supporting and advocating it.
Out of the Box D&D Encounters, Series 2, #50 – “The Sculptor”
Out of the Box introduction
There’s a song my wife and I hold dear that describes seeing someone differently all of a sudden despite seeing them a thousand times before. This sort of event is all too real. The moment of realization where the one viewing, reading, listening, or interacting with a person, place, song or book in a completely new and surprising way can be a huge flash of creativity. Have you heard a song in a completely new way because the context in which you heard it changed? It’s likely.
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.
WotC Products and New D&D Stuff on the Way in 2018
New products for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons have rolled out relatively slowly. Compared to previous editions of the World’s Greatest Roleplaying Game, it’s been at a flail snail’s pace. (Speed 10 ft. for a large creature? That’s pretty slow.) The pace certainly picked up now in 2018, starting at the Stream of Many Eyes when Wizards of the Coast announced two new story adventures set for release later in the year, followed by Nathan Stewart’s cryptic tease of new campaign settings. And then we got two of those! Of course, there’s always new third party content rolling out, but we’ll get our hands and bookshelves full from all the new stuff on the way from WotC itself. A handy post over on the D&D subreddit compiled the list, so let’s check it out.
