D&D Design diary: Blue Magic primal path
[The ongoing live stream RPG review series is on hiatus this week because reasons. In their place enjoy a peek behind how I sussed out my idea for a new primal path for 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons barbarians.]
With my first foray into creating content for Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeon Masters Guild, I offered my own take on a popular concept: the blue mage from Final Fantasy lore.
Top 10 Things I Want to See In 5E D&D
Well, it has been awhile since I did a top ten, and I always loved doing them, so let’s have some fun! I recently started playing in a Fifth Edition D&D game and that has inspired me to think on all the things I want to see in this amazing edition. Maybe we can get a vote on what people like and I will try to bring it to reality. Who knows, the sky is the limit with writers on the loose. These will be pulled from pop culture or roleplaying games, especially earlier editions of Dungeons & Dragons. Without further delay, here is my list in no particular order.
“One Crow, Two Crow, Three Crow, Scarecrow” – Out of the Box D&D Encounters #49
A continuing challenge, especially for starting DMs, is how to take the mundane and make it special. Fortunately, there are a wide array of D&D monsters that fit the bill. Each has their specialty. Mimics can stand in as mundane items. Piercers look like stalagtites, as do Darkmantles. Grey Oozes can resemble wet stone or pools of water. After a time, though, players will come to expect this. Then it’s time to bring out classic themes from horror and surprise player characters when they least expect it. In a dungeon setting, they might well be ready for something. When travelling from “this town or village” to “that town or village” in patrolled or protected lands, the player characters will let their guard down. Farmlands are perfect for this setting, as they are cultivated lands typically already under the auspice of a local sheriff, regent, baron or other leader. They should be safe.
That’s when you can spring the surprise.
D&D AARPG IS your grandparents’ Dungeons & Dragons
For this week’s look into streaming RPG programs, there’s a wonderful series put together by Geek & Sundry called D&D AARPG. In this series, writer and actress Amy Vorpahl guides a group of older players through a D&D adventure. Vorpahl handles Dungeon Master duties, while seniors Annie Coty, Bobby Reed and Art are joined by younger players Hector Navarro and Josh Flaum.
New DM Handbook: Implementing Firearms
Last week, I talked about how you can include firearms in your Dungeons & Dragons game. Truthfully, I don’t think I included everything, but I believe it was a good primer for how to think about including firearms into your game. Perhaps in the future I’ll compile a more detailed modern firearms ruleset, which would include a detailed look at what I talked about last week, what I’m going to talk about right now, and other elements I never addressed, but that is then and this is now.
My main focuses here is about class archetypes. While the Monk will require the Way of Gun Fu archetype in order to use modern firearms, the Barbarian, Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, and Rogue classes will be granted proficiency in the identified modern firearms by class.
“Smells Fishy” – Out of the Box D&D Encounters #48
I once found a free adventure online that delved into a concept that D&D has often covered, but essentially in reverse. We have seen Underdark versions of several surface races. Duergar, Derro, Drow, Svirfneblin, etc., have all been a part of D&D for decades, and the public has accepted them as part of the D&D canon. It’s often the case whereby we will take any number of surface races and apply this non-specific “Underdark template” to these races. However, this online adventure did one thing that, at least to my experience, has never been done before – it turned that concept around in 180 degrees. It had surface, swamp dwelling Kuo-Toa. Perhaps this is due to a particular and very popular MMORPG that shall remain unnamed in this article.
10 Things You Don’t Need to Know About Your RPG Character
There’s a certain kind of player, and I myself am one, who just wants to know everything about their character and has a tendency to overthink it. If you’re one of those, this article is for you. None of these are things you absolutely have to know the answers to, but they can be fun to think about. So if you’re the kind of player who spends way too much away-from-table time thinking about your PC, have fun with this.
1 – What does your character smell like?
Scarlet Sisterhood is a different kind of streaming RPG
Moving closer to home this week, I’m taking a look at a live streaming RPG show that has grown to become one of my favorites to watch. The Scarlet Sisterhood of Steel & Sorcery is streaming live every Wednesday evening at 7 p.m. EST on Nerdarchy’s YouTube channel. Each week, DM Nerdarchist Dave hosts Staff Writers Megan Miller and Samantha Karr with gamer girl and Nerdarchy fan Vex on their D&D 5E adventures in and around Gryphongaffe, Nerdarchy’s homebrew campaign setting.
New DM Handbook: Rethinking Firearms
No, this isn’t a conversation about gun control. This is about introducing and including modern firearms into your Dungeons & Dragons campaign from the Dungeon Master’s Guide (264). With some help from Ty Johnston, who graciously aided me in my implementation for this article with his thoughtful insights and suggestions, I have something I think can be integrated into any campaign that wouldn’t explicitly forbid it by the nature of the world. I’ll go into further detail later when I’m going to be talking about ammunition, but gunpowder doesn’t even need to be introduced into your world to make it work. Artificers could infuse a cantrip-level spell of thunderwave, which we’ll call thunderblast, that can be activated by a mechanic in the firearm itself, which would then propel the ammunition without the need of gunpowder.
“Shadow of Your Former Self” – Out of The Box D&D Encounters #47
Ask any Dungeon Master what the most dangerous thing in a Dungeons & Dragons game is, and I’ll bet the majority will come back to you with “the players.” Players can range in power and abilities more than any monster and will always find the cracks in any system and crawl through. Players will think outside the box more often than not and will work around problems you might think they need to face head on. I can remember playing “Zelda: The Ocarina of Time” forever ago, and the most frustrating encounter was fighting a shadow mirror image of yourself.
Sourcebook Review: Recovery Dice Options
In Fifth Edition Dungeons & Dragons, healing works a little bit differently. Each class, as usual, has a certain type of hit die that you can roll to get more hit points at higher levels. What isn’t quite so usual is the idea that you have a pool of these dice you can use to heal yourself during short rests. The reason for this is to allow parties to keep moving longer without having to camp inside dungeons. Spend some hit dice, recover your health, and keep moving.
Recovery Dice Options ([amazon_link asins=’1545236488′ template=’PriceLink’ store=’nerdarchy-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’d4c37b80-209b-11e7-8ec2-75f53789e3bc’] from Amazon) is about alternative ways to use these dice. Conceptually, the idea of being able to use your recovery dice for things other than recovering hit points is intriguing. After all, you are quite literally using your own life force to fuel some of what you can do with this, and it is taking a resource that is, otherwise, very limited, and giving it more purpose.
RPG Character Creation: Unveiling the Psyche through D&D
The first thing we do when playing Dungeons & Dragons is character creation. Without the characters, there is no story; we know this. In order to create a character we must first decide which character to make, why that character, and then the details. In order to do this we have a great opportunity to take clay and make a mold out of our own ideas and desires. You may have heard that the way a person views life, people and situations is based off his or hers own experiences? Well, this is one of those times where we get to use all the tools life has given us and make something with it. Once we take hold of this art form, the opportunities for character building and world building take off. Each character creation has its own unique flare and destiny that drives the adventure to its perfect and final crescendo.
With tabletop RPGs, sometimes you just want to play the damn game
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="456" class="zemanta-img"] Role-playing gamers at the Burg-Con in Berlin. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)[/caption] Here at Nerdarchy, you could say our bread and butter is talking about tabletop role-playing games, most commonly Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition. We have videos and articles and a forum...
New DM Handbook: In-Game Games
It’s been a long time since I’ve talked about fully theoretical implementations. There are some things that have been based on observations, general concepts, tropes, and other literary tools, but it’s been a long time since I’ve talked about something I’ve absolutely nothing to base my ideas on. That’s what I plan on doing. I’ve set up the groundwork for my players for the future, but I haven’t had a chance to implement it.
Today, I’m going to be talking about in-game games. I can’t be sure how often they get used in most campaigns, but being that the way the game’s solution for contests is to roll ability checks against each other (PHB 174), I can’t imagine that it happens all that much. The biggest problem with this, of course, is that players that have some form of gaming set as a tool proficiency are now being penalized against the other more useful ones, which is where my solution comes in.
Secrets From The Dungeon: Roll Playing The Ego With Dungeons & Dragons
My last week’s article covered a brief character creation ideal, which was to create your Dungeons & Dragons character based entirely off your own ego. I think for most people, most characters are made this way, or at least partly. You might add features or traits that you have, eg. your character suffers from an untamed shaking in one hand that won’t stop due to real life PTSD that you struggle with. Or perhaps your character wears a certain handkerchief in one pocket as a symbol of a past event that changed him, and he wears it to remember. While these small details are mostly forgotten along the character creation path, to really explore those details can add a lot of fun and/or humor to your game play style.
