The One Thing You Want to Know About NPCs in RPGs
Salutations, nerds! Today we’re going to be talking about character motivations, particularly of the NPC variety, in tabletop roleplaying games like fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. We Game Masters know we’re not supposed to get too invested in these characters because they are not spotlight characters. Not really. The game should focus on the player characters. But there’s an art to NPCs, and not being the focus doesn’t mean they don’t have to be complete characters. No, I’m not saying you need a dozen notes for the backstory of Bob the Baker. What I’m saying is, you should know what his goals are, what he wants, and how to leverage him.
D&D Ideas — Words of Power and the Power of Words
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 we delve into the power of words. Before we do we’ve got a freebie to offer up. Over on the Pledge Manager for the Out of the Box: Encounters for 5th Edition we put a free download of a new encounter. Grab it here.
Real World Adventure Hooks for D&D — The Bones Await You
When you hear “Chapel of Bones” you probably think nercomancer. It’s at least in your surface thoughts. But there is a real Chapel of Bones in Portugal where the interior walls and columns are covered and decorated with human skulls and bones. The 16th century Franciscan monks who built the place meant to represent the concept of life being transitory best summed up by the motto memento mori. The bones of the chapel are very literal reminders of death. But I don’t see any animated dead or other signs of necromantic shenanigans.
D&D Adventurers League Witch Doctor Delivers Instant Funk
Of all the Adventurers League Character Build Guides we’ve done, this one might be my favorite. I should preface by letting you know I think this almost every time. What captures my attention more than anything in these guides are the character backgrounds and narratives we come up with for each one. Whether it’s a pure class 1-20 levels or a mashup of several classes, each choice from race to deciding between ability score improvements or feats and go-to spell loadouts make every character unique. The thing I love about the witch doctor is before Nerdarchists Dave and Ted get around to choosing their first class level, the character already has a rich story, fertile grounds for roleplaying and an impressive set of skills and knowledge.
D&D Curses and Cursed Items
We’ve had D&D cursed items on the brain for it seems like a month now at least. Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus motivated us to look at some of the darker and more evil D&D magic items and artifacts. Some of them are really nasty! Part of our discussions led to thinking about curses in general and cursed items in particular. And then on top of all that, the Cursed Collective Kickstarter from Session Zero launched, with Nerdarchists Dave and Ted contributing to the project with cursed items they designed.
5 Ideas for Your Halloween Adventure
Halloween is fast approaching! Finally! The one time of year when grown-up nerds can cosplay without fear of judgment! It’s also a prime opportunity for some festive tabletop roleplaying game Halloween adventures. With loads of nightmare fuel in our favorite books by Wizards of the Coast, Kobold Press and more, we’re just about set. All we need is to build a framework to unleash these delightfully dreadful monsters. In this week’s RPGtube video, I’ve shared 5 session prompts to keep your players on the edges of their seats! While good monsters and a good plot can make a fantastically frightful session, I’ve thought of 5 ways to immerse your players just that little bit more!
Homebrew D&D Monsters Using NaturalCrit’s Homebrewery
When it comes to homebrew D&D monsters, I’m all about that life. Homebrewing is a fantastic way to exercise some creativity and gift your RPG table a truly one-of-a-kind experience! One downside of homebrewing is your work never looks just like the source material, and it always stands out as the oddball in your collection… or rather, it did, until NaturalCrit’s Homebrewery came along.
Unearthed Arcana — Twilight, Wildfire and Onomancy
Unearthed Arcana is flowing like elven wine! New playtest stuff for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons in the free Unearthed Arcana documents get all the D&D nerds excited. We’ve been enjoying the steady stream of cool new toys to wonder about, and the most recent share from Wizards of the Coast presents three new subclasses for D&D — Twilight Divine Domain for clerics, Circle of Wildfire for druids and Arcane Tradition Onomancy for wizards. Imagining how new content adds to a D&D campaign is always a lot of fun so let’s get into it.
Portraying History as Cultural Point of View in Collaborative Storytelling
Salutations, nerds. Today we’re going to be talking about cultural point of view and the way history is recorded. Particularly, we’re going to be talking about how that applies to your gaming setting and the things you present to your players in games like fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons or whatever your favorite game happens to be. One of my absolute things in games is the effect you get where you know “x” happened, but everyone who was around to talk about it after believes it happened differently.
D&D Ideas — Fast and Dirty Monsters
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The Pledge Manager is live. You can select your tiers, add-ons, or even late pledge. If you somehow missed the Out of the Box: Encounters for 5th Edition Kickstarter you can still get in on it. Check out the Pledge Manager here.
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Next up, the release of the Nerdarchy the Convention trailer is out there in the wilds as well. Check it out here.
(Re)Discover Monsters with Meaning Inside Tome of Beasts Pocket Edition
Everything old is new again! Kobold Press is set to release Tome of Beasts Pocket Edition on Oct. 29 according to Amazon (where you can preorder here) and I recently received an advance copy. I’ve long considered Tome of Beasts to be an integral part of my fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons experience. It’s been a minute since flipping through the pages, and getting the pocket edition was a great opportunity to remind myself why I dig the book so much. If I’m honest I’d never read the introduction so starting there was in order.
Art of the Encounter in Tabletop Roleplaying Games
One of the things we enjoy the most about tabletop roleplaying games is the collaboration taking place between Game Masters and players during a game. The emergent stories spun from game sessions, interaction between player characters with campaign settings and the way player agency impacts GM guidance and adventure direction is the juice! The art of the encounter in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons or whatever game you’re playing has as much to do with how players connect with content as it does the content GMs create. A good GM presents engaging scenarios. A great GM works with players, guiding the group through creating the story of their characters. There’s a shared responsibility to making encounters better.
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.
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.
