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.
Kickstarter Korner for September 2018, Week 2
Each week during the Quests & Adventures live chat, Saturday at 2 p.m. eastern, Nerdarchists Dave and Ted and Nate the Nerdarch hang out live with fans from the Nerdarchy YouTube channel. It’s a chance to share announcements and news, answer questions from the live chat and generally just hang out and talk nerdy with the Nerdarchy community.
In the description of each weekly video, Nerdarchist Ted compiles a list and links to all the videos and website content from the week. But he also shares a selection of cool Kickstarter campaigns. As an avid Kickstarter supporter, he’s happy to share his favorite RPG and gaming-related Kickstarters with you, the Nerdarchy community. Enjoy!
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.
Kickstarter Korner for September 2018, Week 1
Each week during the Quests & Adventures live chat, Saturday at 2 p.m. eastern, Nerdarchists Dave and Ted and Nate the Nerdarch hang out live with fans from the Nerdarchy YouTube channel. It’s a chance to share announcements and news, answer questions from the live chat and generally just hang out and talk nerdy with the Nerdarchy community.
In the description of each weekly video, Nerdarchist Ted compiles a list and links to all the videos and website content from the week. But he also shares a selection of cool Kickstarter campaigns. As an avid Kickstarter supporter, he’s happy to share his favorite RPG and gaming-related Kickstarters with you, the Nerdarchy community. Enjoy!
Running a D&D Game with a Go-To Adventure
As Dungeon Masters in any Dungeons & Dragons campaign it is our responsibility to guide the story and assist in the entertainment and fun of everyone at the table when running a D&D game. If you ask around, a lot of people say they are daunted by the amount of work that can go into being a DM or Game Master. And for some that may be true. Today I wanted to talk about having a go-to adventure that can twist and change with a few or more variables, which you can pull out of your pocket when you are unexpectedly called to run a game. It could be you are hanging out with friends on a non-RPG night or you might be at a convention hangout and you decide to get your game on.
Getting Started with Dungeons & Dragons
Hail and well met! I am your host Dungeon Master Kenneth, and without further ado let’s sink our teeth into this post aimed to help with getting started with Dungeons & Dragons. I’ll be addressing one of the most common questions I’ve personally received since becoming a full-time Dungeon Master.
Secrets of the Secrets of the Vault: Mage Forge
Part of my self-appointed tasks as nerditor-in-chief for Nerdarchy is organizing content. Cleaning up all the categories and tags here on the website, creating and maintaining the publication budget and schedule for posts, and putting together our products like Fantastical Mounts and From Hit Dice to Heroics all share something in common — exposure to the vast library of archived content produced by Nerdarchy over the last few years. When we decided to try our hand at product creation in 2018, I thought about all the comments I’ve read from Nerdarchy fans curious about the homebrew campaign setting of Ulthe-Ganya. That’s how Secrets of the Vault: Mage Forge Vol. 1 developed. I realized a lot of what people ask for is already out there. Let’s open up the Vault, see what’s inside, how it came to be, and ultimately went full circle by becoming an incredible new D&D artifact itself.
Kickstarter Korner for August 2018, Week 4
Each week during the Quests & Adventures live chat, Saturday at 2 p.m. eastern, Nerdarchists Dave and Ted and Nate the Nerdarch hang out live with fans from the Nerdarchy YouTube channel. It’s a chance to share announcements and news, answer questions from the live chat and generally just hang out and talk nerdy with the Nerdarchy community.
In the description of each weekly video, Nerdarchist Ted compiles a list and links to all the videos and website content from the week. But he also shares a selection of cool Kickstarter campaigns. As an avid Kickstarter supporter, he’s happy to share his favorite RPG and gaming-related Kickstarters with you, the Nerdarchy community. Enjoy!
Nerd Travel — D&D in a Castle
I got some nerd travel in this summer for the ultimate D&D vacation. Nerdarchy got invited to Chateau Challain in France as guest player at D&D in a Castle. Four days of gaming at an exotic location. Two sessions of D&D a day.
Is There a Best Edition of D&D? Absolutely
Dungeons & Dragons editions questions and conversations come up quite a bit. Much more often than I would expect, that’s for sure. Whether it’s someone on Twitter asking what everyone’s favorite edition of D&D is, the impromptu discussion I had with Nerdarchist Dave earlier tonight, or the person who tasked Nerdarchy with convincing them to switch editions from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons to fifth edition D&D that inspired the video below, I’m always up for a trip down D&D memory lane. Me? I’ve enjoyed every edition of D&D more than the previous one, and I love them all. Is there a best edition of D&D? Absolutely.
Mind Breaker Paladin — Destroyer of D&D Adventurers
Nerdarchy was challenged to make a multi-class 5E D&D character build using a paladin and bard character class. In the video below we discuss making this character as a player option. But I want to talk about using this character build from the other side of the Dungeon Master’s Screen. While with some mental gymnastics our Oath of Conquest paladin/College of Whispers bard multiclass can be a player character legal for Adventurers League. We can even make this character evil with the lawful evil alignment maintaining our Adventurers League legal status.
Kickstarter Korner for August 2018, Week 3
Each week during the Quests & Adventures live chat, Saturday at 2 p.m. eastern, Nerdarchists Dave and Ted and Nate the Nerdarch hang out live with fans from the Nerdarchy YouTube channel. It’s a chance to share announcements and news, answer questions from the live chat and generally just hang out and talk nerdy with the Nerdarchy community.
In the description of each weekly video, Nerdarchist Ted compiles a list and links to all the videos and website content from the week. But he also shares a selection of cool Kickstarter campaigns. As an avid Kickstarter supporter, he’s happy to share his favorite RPG and gaming-related Kickstarters with you, the Nerdarchy community. Enjoy!
D&D Beyond Digital Toolset Before, During and After a Campaign
Yeah, yeah, I know. You already bought the books. I did too, and both Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage are on preorder from Amazon. I enjoy having the physical books to read through and — for running adventures — use at the table. And it’s important to me to support D&D as a consumer. But I’ve been using D&D Beyond since the beta, long before I was a DDB Insider, and I’d unlocked quite a bit from the marketplace before that too. I keep up with the conversation about DDB also. “It’s double dipping, it’s a money grab, it’s unfair to pay twice, X digital toolset is better,” and so on. At the end of the day, it comes down a cost-benefit analysis for each individual. If the advantage DDB provides is not greater than the price to unlock content for you, there’s nothing wrong with that. For many, many others around the world, the analysis is more favorable. For me, it’s really favorable and here’s why. But before getting started, let’s make a deal: I won’t disrespect your view of DDB, and you won’t get angry because I enjoy using, supporting and advocating it.
Monster Combinations in D&D — The Witch of Flame Skull Peak
I was sitting with the Nerdarchists talking about effective monster combinations for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons and we came up with a lot of really cool ideas. Some of those ideas were displayed in the recent Monster BFF video, but my thoughts kept racing, creating all manner of scenes I really need to share with all of you to calm my turbulent mind. So, together we will go through a few more ideas for monster combinations in D&D that were brought up during the discussion and put them together into a scene I hope you’ll use in your campaign, or at least just find some inspiration and enjoyment.
