When Fight Club meets Cobra Kai Your RPG Character has to Fight
I take a lot of inspiration from everywhere both as a player and Game Master for my tabletop roleplaying game experiences. Reading novels, watching movies and TV present so many elements that have already been done so well — why not copy some elements to improve your own RPG experiences? I binged all three seasons of Cobra Kai over the weekend and man, what a show. It got me thinking about all the elements about fighting in a typical fantasy RPG. With so many urban adventures to play with it is no wonder fights can break out in the middle of the streets. If you plan to incorporate these kinds of groups, clubs or organizations focused around fighting in your games you could very much take inspiration from Cobra Kai and the movie Fight Club and make up rules and a place where these fights can go down.
Terrorize 5E D&D with the Path of the Beast from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything
Fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons allows players to make their own characters with a variety of mechanics to support their favorite archetypes and custom craft their own unique person to play in a story woven by friends. Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything added a deluge of new options to the 5E D&D mix. Between the recent Unearthed Arcana introducing Gothic Lineages and the new announcement regarding Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft I can’t think of a better time to talk about the Path of the Beast Primal Path for 5E D&D barbarians.
Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything Artificer Brings Arcanapunk to 5E D&D
Several iterations of the artificer have appeared in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. There’s been three Unearthed Arcana versions, Wayfinder’s Guide to Eberron, Eberron: Rising from the Last War and now Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. The artificer was introduced during 3.5 D&D with the Eberron campaign setting. Eberron brought what we at Nerdarchy like to refer to as arcanapunk to the D&D game. If you are a fantasy purist the artificer and arcanapunk might not be for you. Maybe you are like me and have gotten kind of bored with vanilla fantasy and want to spice it up a bit.
Unleash 5E D&D Horror with Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft
Creatures of the night can rejoice (in a dark and brooding way) when Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft releases on May 18. Arguably fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons’ most popular adventure Curse of Strahd pulls adventurers into the Mists of Ravenloft where they contend with supernatural horror in Barovia. The campaign reimagines one of D&D’s most beloved settings and Wizards of the Coast revisits the dark realm along with many others in the newly announced 5E D&D book.
Oath of Glory Paladin from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything Embodies 5E D&D Heroism
Paladins in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons take Sacred Oaths and become ideal champions of those tenets. The Oath of Glory found in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything was originally the Oath of Heroism. The tenets of the oath changed a little bit in the final version and some of the features as well. Since the character I play in a weekly live stream 5E D&D game took the Sacred Oath of Glory during their journey as a justicar it felt only natural to share a closer look at this fantastic subclass.
TTRPG Stock Sessions — The Heist
Salutations, nerds! I’m back with another tabletop roleplaying game stock session to dissect and analyze. Today I’m taking a closer look at one of my personal favorites — the heist. There’s something valuable held behind closed doors in a secure facility. Something TTRPG characters need, want very badly or have been hired to retrieve. This archetype is part of the reason why I love Shadowrun so much as a setting. The game is 80% heist jobs, which by the way are great because they leave plenty of opportunity to tackle the adventure from whatever direction the players approach. A heist can be done via a lot of roleplaying, lying to people to get into position or purely through stealth. Characters can go loud and blast their way in or save this option for a last resort.
D&D Ideas — Time
Welcome once again to the weekly newsletter. This week’s topic is time, which we discussed in our weekly live chat. We hangout every Monday evening at 8 p.m. EST on Nerdarchy Live to talk about D&D, RPGs, gaming, life and whatever nerdy stuff comes up. Speaking of time in All That Remains time may have forgotten the story of a great battle and the heroes who fought and died but with a little curiosity and a lot of elbow grease adventurers can discover the past. A strange fog filled with the ghosts of a battle fought long ago form around an excavated monument along with 54 other dynamic scenarios in Out of the Box. Find out more about it here. You can get the Nerdarchy Newsletter delivered to your inbox each week, along with updates and info on how to game with Nerdarchy plus snag a FREE GIFT by signing up here.
RPG Elements Abound in Disney’s Frozen 2
Nerdarchy talks about always seeking inspiration from everything but I was not expecting so much fuel for my imagination in Disney’s Frozen 2. I have always loved Disney’s animated movies and I might be behind the times on this one but as a father I can enjoy watching these movies with my kids. We just finished watching Frozen 2 and even for a movie about an ice enchantress set in a fantasy world there are loads of things I am ready to incorporate right into my own tabletop roleplaying games and my own personal magical RPG setting.
Running an Undead Campaign for 5E D&D
Undead in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons come in all manner of sizes and shapes and all levels of threat. From a Tiny will-o’-wisp to a Huge dracolich plotting the destruction of all living things undead can be the center of a 5E D&D campaign quite easily.
The Genie from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything Fulfills Your Wildest 5E D&D Wishes
Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything brings a menagerie of new subclasses to the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons table. Most fall somewhere between feeling like they should have already existed in 5E D&D and adding something strikingly new to the base class. One embraces the elemental realms where magic flows freely and the concepts of servitude and patronage meet an opulent and ornate aesthetic. Enter The Genie Otherworldly Patron for 5E D&D warlocks.
Channel Your 5E D&D Druid’s Inner Circe with a Wild Shape Optional Class Feature
Over at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted double, double toil and trouble themselves discussing witches in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. Fire burns and caldrons bubble while they go over what it means to be a witch, different approaches to bringing out a character’s witchy nature and the possibilities for new 5E D&D classes and subclasses. Inspiration for the topic comes from the video’s sponsor Hexbound: A Witchy Supplement for 5E from Hit Point Press. One of the ideas they brought up during the video captured my imagination — using the druid Wild Shape feature in a distinctly witchy way. So let’s get into it.
Soulknife from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything is the Best Heist Rogue in 5E D&D
Heist movies are a staple of cinema. They’re fun, smart and the thrill of danger is ever present. Heist encounters in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons scratch a similar itch and the rogue is an obvious contender for the class players should consider when pulling a high stakes heist. When it comes to heist rogues Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything offers arguably the best Roguish Archetype for the job — the Soulknife. Let’s look closer at this fun new subclass for the 5E D&D rogue and hopefully by the end I’ll convince you to bring one to your next heist themed escapade at the table.
WizKids Warlock Tiles Inspire TTRPG Encounters in the Marketplace
Tabletop roleplaying game adventures in town can emerge from many places. How much fun can you have in the marketplace? Given all the possibilities of events to unfold in an outdoor marketplace it is the perfect set up for fun and imaginative game play. Outdoor stalls make for ideal places for hit and run tactics by assassins or basic street thugs. Many marketplace features distract the eyes and block line of sight. A marketplace also incorporates elements for characters and creatures to interact with. Look at all the remarkable segments of chase scenes in movies and TV shows. It can all happen in a marketplace.
Discover Incredible Magic Items Inside Vault of Magic from Kobold Press
The industrious kobolds of Kobold Press launched a new Kickstarter and not surprisingly they’re knocking it out of the park once again. This time our friends over at Kobold Press crack open the Vault of Magic for 5th Edition to uncover over 800 new magic items created by leading tabletop roleplaying game designers and Kobold Press veterans bringing wild surprises to your games.
5E D&D Monster Spotlight — Chimera
The chimera is such a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster from mythology and has made an appearance in all of the editions of the game. In fifth edition D&D a chimera can be encountered in a few different environments — grasslands, hills, mountains and the Underdark. These are all straight out of the 5E D&D Monster Manual and I’d add the aerial environment as well. This gives us quite a few places we can drop an encounter in with a chimera. They enter gameplay during tier two with challenge rating 6. Chimera are quite formidable with a decent amount of hit points, a fly speed of 60 feet and three attacks per round, one of which can be replaced with its Breath Weapon. Let us not forget villains like to employ chimera as mounts. A single chimera would be a medium challenge for four 5th level characters. These nasty beasts average 53 points of damage on a single round when they use their Breath Weapon or 32 when they can’t. If this D&D monster is played up to its full hunter archetype this is significant damage potential.
