Out of the Box D&D Encounters, Series 2, #24 – “Perchance to Dream”
Out of the Box introduction
Kobold Press Grants Wishes with Genies Great And Small
Creating a Person in Star Trek Adventures vs. a Character in D&D
I’ve been playing Star Trek Adventures with GM Drew Murray, Doug Vehovec, and Asa Kinney. One week Doug couldn’t make it, so Drew, Asa, and I decided to have a frank discussion about the good and the bad things about Star Trek Adventures.
One of the things we talked about was how Star Trek Adventures helps you create a person, and not just a character. Dungeons & Dragons is great for creating cool characters and concepts, but it’s limited in its ability to define a person. There are still races in Star Trek Adventures, and your position on the ship acts ostensibly like a class, so it’s not like there’s no comparison between the two games. The difference really is the approach, and that all starts with the character creation system.
Flavour Shots: Light Fey Portals
A Flavour Shot is a short description of game artefacts and phenomena for use by Dungeon Masters, Game Masters and Storytellers in their games. Feel free to drag and drop these into your own games, and modify to suit. Let us know if you end up using them. Some will be portals to other realms, some will be magic items, others will be monster encounters. This time, it’s…
Kobold Press Deep Magic: Elemental Magic Review
What’s up, nerds? We’ve got something awesome to talk about today, and I’m particularly excited to be presenting it to you because Deep Magic: Elemental Magic from Kobold Press is all about elemental spells and other supplemental material of that ilk for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons.
DriveThruRPG Sponsors Nerdarchy and Saves You Money on RPG Stuff
Nerdarchy is proud to announce a terrific sponsorship from DriveThruRPG – the largest RPG download store! Since 2001, DriveThruRPG has been a premiere online marketplace for digital and print-on-demand roleplaying games. Even more, the expanded family of sites makes comic books, card games, fiction and more available with ease. With DriveThruRPG as a sponsor, we can now pass along great deals to the Nerdarchy community.
Creating Winged, Wild and Fierce Elves for 5E D&D
Between the time this article was written (Sunday 11.12.2017 afternoon), sent to editor (Sunday 11.12.2017 evening), and scheduled to appear in front of you (scheduled for release 11.14.2017) Wizards of the Coast released Unearthed Arcana update (11.13.2017) that is of near identical nature, offering new subrace options for elves. It is not my place to claim mine is better, and I do highly encourage checking out the WotC version and using both versions as you, and your table, see fit. Thus you would achieve a more thorough play-test when time for the survey comes around.
The Wizards of the Coast Unearthed Arcana: Elf Subraces can be found here
In my gaming group I got into a big discussion about things we wished would be brought from older editions of Dungeons & Dragons to fifth edition. This lead to the two older gamers in our group discussing the most varied classic player race we could think of, elves.
We began to describe the wild elves, and the most elusive of elves, the Lythari. Let me bring you these subraces, and my quick versions of them. As always these are in no way official or the limits of these subraces but are merely meant to get you started bringing these elves into your world.
D&D Flavour Shot: Dark Fey Portals
A Flavour Shot is a short description of game artefacts and phenomena for use by Dungeon Masters, Game Masters and Storytellers in their roleplaying games. Feel free to drag and drop these into your own games, and modify to suit. Let us know if you end up using them. Some will be portals to other realms, some will be magic items, others will be monster encounters. This time, it’s…
Out of the Box D&D Encounters, Series 2, #23, “The Librarian”
Out of the Box introduction
Gazing Into Eye of the Beholder: The Art of Dungeons & Dragons
Whether you started playing Dungeons & Dragons out of the original woodgrain-colored box and the three little brown booklets inside or you’re new to the hobby and go completely digital with D&D Beyond, before you make a single die roll, you’re drawn in by art. From Greg Bell’s Doctor Strange “inspired” mounted warrior on the original 1974 box cover to Tyler Jacobson’s depiction of an adventurer battling King Snurre on the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook, fantasy art’s history and influence on D&D is woven into the fabric of the game.
The stories behind the art, helping to create the worlds we play in, are the focus of the new documentary Eye of the Beholder: The Art of Dungeons & Dragons from the team of X-Ray Films and Cavegirl Productions. The film profiles artists who contributed to the rich world of fantasy D&D art and features insiders, designers, writers and fans sharing the impact of art on their games and lives.
Hyperlanes Classes: Sci-Fi for D&D
Following up a live chat and offline interview with Hyperlanes creator Ryan Chaddock and a look at species from the cinematic sci-fi ruleset fueled by the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons engine, we’re continuing on through the Hyperlanes corebook with Chapter 3: Class.
One of the best things about D&D 5E is the modular design philosophy. Stripping away all the class features, slots and so forth, D&D character classes are great framework to hang homebrew elements onto. I’ve had a lot of fun creating and playing with things like the barbarian Path of the Azure Primal Path and warlock Void Pact. There are six core classes in Hyperlanes, each with their own archetypes just like D&D. In fact, the class options in Hyperlanes are each built using one of the core D&D classes as a chassis. I’ve read through them all several times, ran a couple of sessions for players using them and certainly imagined more than one character I’d like to play.
Curious as to which ones?
D&D Flavour Shot: Druid Portals
Any Dungeon Master will be able to tell you how hectic running a fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons session can get, especially when your players go in a totally unexpected direction and you start having to make stuff up on the fly to accommodate them. To make life a little easier, I’m putting together the Flavour Shot series. They are descriptions you can drag and drop into your D&D campaigns to quickly introduce mechanics for players to make use of.
Out of the Box D&D Encounters, Series 2, #22 – “A Cry for Help”
Out of the Box introduction
D&D Creature to Character Conversion: Darklings
A few times in the past, I've written articles about elements of the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons homebrew world I'm building (which I'm temporarily calling Gladius). One of my earlier D&D creations was the aatier, a half-tiefling half-aasimar race. Not to long ago, I...
D&D Beyond Campaign Creation Walkthrough
As an unabashed D&D Beyond advocate I discover new and useful aspects of the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons digital tools service everyday. Developer responsiveness to issues is top notch and the monthly live developer updates with product lead Adam Bradford show dedication to continual improvement and innovation.
One particularly useful area of DDB is the campaign tools. As both a player and Dungeon Master I’m involved in two games using these tools and they’re invaluable for both. While not as robust as I imagined the tools would be, they’ve already updated capabilities several times and I’m confident they’ll continue evolving.
