RPG Crate Unboxing — August 2018 This Begins Season 3
Hello fellow adventurer. It is time for another unboxing and we are diving into RPG Crate subscription box. August 2018 marks the third year of RPG Crate and all the exciting things that means. This is box No. 25 and I have most of them. My gaming shelf and T-shirt collection are all the more powerful for it.
Making a Memorable NPC for Dungeons & Dragons
We’ve all watched Critical Role, it’s a great show. Matt Mercer does an exceptional job of creating memorable characters far too numerous to recount. I talked a bit in another article about how to place spells on an nonplayer chracter wizard depending on their roles but let’s talk about NPCs in general. NPCs are a staple of every roleplaying game. From Dungeons & Dragons to GURPS, to Star Wars. Not every NPC should be a boss. If you build every NPC as a boss, the players will try and kill it every time. There is the old D&D adage if you don’t stat it they can’t kill it. This is a true statement, but they’ll still try, then they just sulk building new characters. Personally, I prefer to stat out NPCs, so I can get a better idea of what they’re capable of. If you want to make a dwarven forge master, great. How did he learn his trade, where did he come from? Is he gifted? There are all kinds of things to consider. We’re going to look at some options today about how to make NPCs a little more memorable and how to fit them into you story.
Critical Successes and Critical Failures from 1 to 20 in D&D
The critical hit is a staple of fifth edition Dungeon & Dragons and is integrated into the game’s mechanics. Critical hits and critical misses have a long history in D&D, and in roleplaying games in general. Many games have had critical miss or critical failure mechanics baked into the rules, but 5E D&D does not. Nonetheless, many gamers who are used to the concept of critical failures like to insert this concept into the game. The results are mixed, and many considerations should be made by a group before making any decisions about tweaking these rules.
Villains: The Hierarchy of Heinousness
Salutations, nerds! I’ve been on a bad guy kick recently and because of that I want to talk about D&D villains and how to use them. This is going to be broad strokes — a top down look at how bad guys can interlock to make a Dungeons & Dragons campaign feel more connected. I’ll get back to this topic again soon and get into some more specifics.
Waterdeep: Dragon Heist Highlights the Serious Business of Adventure
The newest adventure for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons takes players to a familiar city for some, Waterdeep, and puts them at the center of a dramatic heist involving 500,000 gold pieces. Offering Nerditor Doug a break from running our home group, I offered to run this one as Dungeon Master and share my first impressions of the book. What follows are my thoughts after my initial read through of the Waterdeep: Dragon Heist adventure as well as some ideas from my own game prep notes I’ll be using during our sessions.
D&D Dungeon Design: How big is too big?
It’s right in the name of the game Dungeons & Dragons. For decades we’ve all sat there with our graph paper or loose leaf and sketched out maps for terrifying dungeons. Some dungeons now even have a place in the game history like Tomb of Horrors. Over time dungeons have even evolved to a thing called the megadungeon, much like Rappan Athuk from Frog God Games or Undermountain as featured in the upcoming Dungeon of the Mad Mage. These super dungeons are huge and go on for days, with shortcuts through out just to get back to the surface occasionally. These aren’t designed for your typical “Go in, kill the goblins, loot and run out” adventures. The big question for dungeon design now is, how big is too big? You don’t want the party to say they’re done part way through, and you don’t want to be designing it and toss the map aside in exhaustion. Let’s look at some things that should help you mentally with dungeon design and how it relates to your story.
Cover-to-Cover Awesome Inside Creature Codex from Kobold Press
Kobold Press, you did it again. By now, backers for the Creature Codex have the publishers’ follow-up to the much-loved Tome of Beasts in their hands, and what a follow-up it is! Over 400 5E-compatible new monsters lurk within, ready to burst from the pages and inspire your own fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons adventures and campaigns. Designed by an impressive host of designers including Kobold-in-chief Wolfgang Baur along with personal favorite Dan Dillon joined by a warren of others — plus creatures commissioned by monster patrons — Creature Codex has a lot to love. And with art direction and design by KP mainstay Marc Radle guiding a team of incredible artists like frequent collaborators Bryan Syme and Marcel Mercado along with a whole bunch of others, discovering each page of this massive tome is a visual joy. So let’s get to it.
Handling D&D Treasure Troubles: Tips for Counting Coppers
Salutations, nerds! Today we’re going to talk about party funds and how to manage your gold flow in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. Hilarious that I’m the one talking about this one, right? If you have a Dungeon Master who doesn’t like to dole out a ton of treasure, or if you’re playing the early levels, here are some tips and tricks for making your gold pieces go farther and streamlining treasure distribution at the table.
Magic of Dungeons & Dragons: Getting the Most from Your Spells
As Nerdarchists Dave and Ted discussed in their recent video about the magic of Dungeons & Dragons, a big chunk of getting the most from your spells as either a cleric or wizard comes from diversifying your spell selection. As they talked about, that involves selecting spells for different purposes (utility, healing, defense, damage, buffs) and that do different types of damage and that are opposed by different saving throws. It does little good to show up to a fight against a red dragon with all fire spells, and it is far from optimal to try and get past an evading quickling with nothing but spells requiring Dexterity saving throws. They also mention action economy, and how it’s wise to make certain you’re in a position to take advantage of actions, bonus actions, and reactions as a spellcaster.
Casting D&D Spells with Extra Flair
Maybe you aren’t familiar with Deck of Many and their fine products. Here is a primer. The Deck of Many is a series of 5E reference cards. It is a tool used to assist Game Masters in their roleplaying campaigns, freeing them from traditional reference books and allowing them to only bring the references they need. Each card features original artwork and easy to reference information. Guest artists include: Peter Mohrbacher, Jason Engle, Steve Argyle, Thomas Baxa, Tom Babbey, Aaron Miller, Jeff Miracola, and Leesha Hanigan
D&D Planar Adventures Are For Everyone — Start Your Planar Campaigns Today!
I love planar adventures in Dungeons & Dragons. And I’m not alone, based on the huge number of people out there with affection for the Planescape campaign setting first introduced in second edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Typically, travel and adventure in planes of existence beyond the prime material plane of D&D is the purview of higher-level adventurers. Getting to these planes is often a challenge by itself, and surviving the dangerous environments found there can be very difficult. The laws of physics and magic are often different, and simply being there at all can be a hazard to a character’s life. But you can forget all that, and take adventures across the multiverse of dimensions and create planar campaigns right from the get-go if you want.
Giving Players Chores at the Table to Keep D&D Running More Smoothly
Salutations, nerds! I want to talk about the division of labor at the table during a Dungeons & Dragons game! Now, I know you may be saying, “The Dungeon Master is doing most of the work, the players are just playing their characters, right?” But that’s not always the case. As the DM, giving players chores at the table is sometimes the prudent choice. A lot of the upkeep can be done by the players to keep the DM’s brain power free to keep the game rolling. So today I’m going to go down a list of chores you can give to your players to keep D&D running more smoothly.
Creating a D&D Menu Generator with New Chartopia Editor
Chartopia’s new editor has undergone a refresh and includes new features that make it even easier to create and modify your random tables. Auto-saving, multiple chart editing on the same page, and testing how the rolled result will look are now possible. The improved layout also helps you to focus on your charts without all the unnecessary clutter.
Let’s explore the new user interface by creating a medieval menu generator suitable for your Dungeons & Dragons campaign, because everyone loves food and medieval cuisine is somewhat similar to a fantasy food feast. After reading this tutorial, head over to Chartopia and create your own amazing menu generator of fantasy food.
The Dungeons and the Dragons of Dungeons & Dragons: Green Dragon Lairs
There are many concepts and values I find important to playing Dungeons & Dragons. This may shock you, but two things high on that list are dungeons and dragons. I like taking the dragons listed in the Monster Manual (and even beyond) and creating their D&D dragon lairs, sprawling dungeons with varying levels of complexity. This segment we’ll head back to the Monster Manual proper and take a look at the green dragon. What makes this dragon so unique and it’s lair deadly in it’s own right? Let’s explore introducing a dragon and green dragon lairs, together.
D&D Character Optimization Really Miscasts My Cantrips
Within the Dungeons & Dragons circles the conversation about optimizing, min-maxing, and power gaming is always in a perpetual spiral. I’m here to lay out the case that a focus on mechanical advantages does not benefit play or the party. A focus on D&D character optimization can reduce focus on an interesting character, most certainly leads to grabbing more than your fair share of spotlight, and piles work onto your Dungeon Master’s lap. This argument is not intended to stop you from playing your way. If this is fun for you, I’m not coming to your table and knocking your minis off the battlemat.
