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Dungeons & Dragons

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5E D&D archmage spells

Keep Mordenkainen Busy Keeping Track of Your DM’s Guild Content

Did you know over 4,000 new products stock the Dungeon Master’s Guild digital marketplace from 2019 alone? I read this on Twitter so you know it’s legit. Best-selling DM’s Guild author and cowriter of Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus M.T. Black shared the tidbit the other day and it really got me thinking. When I was a young Dungeons & Dragons nerd, I’d haunt the single column of bookshelves at Waldenbooks, perusing the games and modules there. They numbered in the double digits at best. It’s a great time to be a D&D player and creator. The DM’s Guild offers a marketplace to share your creations with the world, and we’ve got many thousands of products to enhance our games to choose from — including many of those old classics I browsed back in the day. Here’s a small sample of some of the DM’s Guild products that crossed my desk this past week.

Real World Adventure Hooks for D&D — How Do You Like Them Apples?

Players of fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons and other roleplaying games seem to always have at least a sliver of brain power devoted to thinking about the games we love. Art can inspire a character we play or the setting for an encounter. Dramatic relationships and interactions can inspire campaign plots and NPC motivations. And the world we see all around us can add clever details and verisimilitude to our settings. A recent tweet from Grand DM caught my eye and this installment of Real World Adventure Hooks for D&D comes directly from the image they shared.

Weigh Anchor for A Complete Guide to Nautical Campaigns

Vehicles and the sorts of exotic adventures featuring them are a big draw for tabletop roleplaying game campaigns. Nerdarchy friend and host of How to be a Great Game Master Guy Sclanders is no stranger to running epic campaigns on the high seas, in the skies or across the blasted landscape of Avernus, and he’s sharing that expertise with A Complete Guide to Nautical Campaigns. The Kickstarter is currently live and by the looks of it by the time I’m done writing this post it will more than likely be funded. Check it out here and navigate your way to the pledge level that works best for you.

wizards of the coast

NPC Relationships and Reputation in D&D Factions

Salutations, nerds! Today we’re going to be talking about fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons NPC relationships and reputation in D&D, something some player characters are very good at and others…not so much. Some PCs take the attitude that NPCs are basically just Popsicle sticks with faces painted on them who are supposed to vend gold because they were charming enough. Your job as the Dungeon Master is to make those NPCs feel like real people, and sometimes real people aren’t going to pay you more no matter how well you rolled because they just don’t have it.

D&D Ideas — Using Art

Welcome once again to the weekly Nerdarchy Newsletter. You can get the Nerdarchy Newsletter delivered to your inbox each week, along with updates and info on how to game with Nerdarchy, by signing up here. This week it’s all about using art in D&D to help you run a better game. Whether it’s your game or just at the gaming table.

Shelter Divine Domain — Cleric Subclass for 5th Edition

The Mis-Adventurers: An (Almost) Epic Tale is a new adult comedic fantasy adventure novel that hits a lot of the beats of a D&D campaign and the lovely disasters that can ensue. As the author, I very consciously designed the story this way, because some of the best stories I’ve ever experienced have been around the game table.
A large part of what makes D&D work so well as a storytelling avenue is its codified rules. These define things like how magic works, what weapons can do, and even resolving complex maneuvers. As an author trying to capture the proverbial magic of a tabletop roleplaying game story, I knew I’d have to codify many of the book’s events in terms of game mechanics. As such, I devised a unique new D&D subclass for each character.

Halloween D&D Adventures are a Treat at DM’s Guild — No Trick!

The fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons creative community shares their enthusiasm in lots of ways. One of those ways is the Dungeon Master’s Guild, an online marketplace where people all over the world create new content for D&D. With Halloween just a few weeks away here in the US, the jack-o’-lantern light is shining on spooky holiday themed adventures and material, so this week let’s focus on some of the Halloween D&D adventures at the DM’s Guild.

Kobold Press Deep Magic alkemancy

Alkemancy Arcane Tradition for Wizards and a New School of Magic? Review of Deep Magic: Alkemancy by Kobold Press

If you’ve been keeping up with my review series on the Deep Magic: Alkemancy supplement for 5th Edition from Kobold Press, you know that last time was rough, but we’re not done yet! This supplement also contained a whole new school of magic: Alkemancy. Of course, this was accompanied by an Arcane Tradition subclass for wizards. As a note before we dive in, I was provided a free copy to review. This in no way skews my opinions. With that out of the way, let’s dive in!

D&D cursed magic items cursed collective kickstarter

Cursed Magic Items Get Top Billing in Cursed Collective Kickstarter

There’s only so many cursed magic items to tempt and torment characters with in our fantasy roleplaying games. Game Masters can have a lot of fun seeding our campaign settings with powerful magic for the heroes that come with a price. For those GMs who enjoy presenting players with a little risk vs. reward treasure — or just straight up risky magic items — Cursed Collective is a Kickstarter campaign promising over 50 new unique and creative cursed items suitable for all your tabletop roleplaying game campaigns.

Credible D&D Threats and Challenges — Raising the Stakes Without Being a Killer DM

Salutations, nerds! I’m talking to the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Masters, today in particular, so strap in. We’re going on an adventure that has to do with creating credible D&D threats and challenges without being labeled a “killer DM.” We want our players to feel like the game has stakes. We want them to feel like death is a possibility without feeling like that is specifically what we have in mind for them. After all, what fun is it if it’s too easy, right? But it’s also no fun to feel like the DM is actually trying to kill you on purpose. And as DMs it’s our job to strike that balance.

D&D Ideas — Tools

Welcome once again to the weekly Nerdarchy Newsletter. This week in the live chat we talked about using tools in D&D and ways a Dungeon Master might allow players to use them in a game. Moreso we delved into whose responsibility it is to make tool more relevant during gameplay. You can get the Nerdarchy Newsletter delivered to your inbox each week, along with updates and info on how to game with Nerdarchy, by signing up here.

Real World Adventure Hooks for D&D — Something Happened on the Beach

Last week I spotted an image on Twitter shared by Dungeons & Dragons Game Designer Dan Dillon. A collection of detritus had been arranged very conspicuously on the beach. Dan, a terrific designer and creative mind for the RPG hobby, took note. “Odd beach sights,” is the caption. “Something happened here. Make an Intelligence (Investigation) or Intelligence (Arcana) check, your choice.” Okay, I’m game. What adventure hooks for D&D can we takeaway through this real world sighting?

Immortalize your D&D Adventure Stories with Campaign Medals from Ancient Lair

Fifth edition characters do some pretty heroic stuff. Or at least extraordinary, for good or ill. In the course of a campaign, a party of adventurers is likely to do at least one thing worthy of being awarded a medal. Unless you’re Chewbacca. What’s a wookie gotta do to get a medal if helping blow up the Death Star and save the Rebellion doesn’t cut it? Ancient Lair has a Kickstarter going on right now with an awesome way to commemorate the deeds of 5E heroes. Campaign Medals: Collectable medals for your RPG adventures is creating metal and resin displayable medals for your RPG group inspired by D&D 5E adventure modules. But even if you’re not into the cool rewards you and your group can share as mementos of your mighty triumphs, you can get yourself a medal with a display box and a neat PDF with new stuff to add to your game inspired by the medals themselves.

Games Within Games — Skill Challenges and Minigames in D&D

We’ve been talking a lot about tools in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons around the Nerdarchy HQ lately. The topic was the focus for a recent weekly live chat and newsletter, and came up again during a later live chat too. One set of D&D tools in particular — the gaming set — inspired our upcoming monthly Patreon rewards too. Rolling Bones is all about games within the games of our D&D campaign settings and adventure worlds. Our talk and writing about tools and gaming sets got me thinking about minigames in D&D in different ways. So let’s get into it.