D&D Ideas — Scaling Encounters
D&D Ideas — Random Dungeon Building
D&D Ideas — Three Pillars of 5E D&D
D&D Ideas — Using Monsters
Kit Bashing a Nightmarish Miniature for Dungeons & Dragons
There are many awesome crafters out there on YouTube. You can watch tutorials on how they make great stuff. I was inspired by a miniature I saw someone else make on the internet so I figured I would share with all of you the process I took to make this awesome mini.
D&D Ideas — Encounters
Interpreting Dungeons and Dragons Dice Rolls
When it comes to Dungeons and Dragons dice here at Nerdarchy I have to say I’m the collector on the team. When it comes to rolling and interpreting them there are a lot of random possibilities that can come out. I will admit, in the early days of being a Dungeon Master, I rolled behind a screen and cared much more about the lives of my NPCs and monsters. I fudged rolls and gave extra hit points to make the monsters more challenging.
I have grown as a Dungeon Master over the years, and since starting Nerdarchy I have learned an awful lot over the last 5 years. I learned that sometimes in the heat of combat as a DM you want to preserve the level of the challenge. You want the players to feel threatened. I understand this. It is something I struggle with every time I run a combat. Now, when I roll I almost always roll out where the players can see and if I don’t I still leave the dice as they lie.
I am not here to convince you that Dungeon and Dragons dice rolls need to held on a pedestal but to show how even the bad rolls can be something great.
D&D Ideas — Tips for a New Dungeon Master
Welcome once again to the weekly Nerdarchy Newsletter. We were running late again! Between being away in the UK for D&D in a Castle and all the work for our Out of the Box: Encounters for 5th Edition Kickstarter launch things have been crazy around here. If that isn’t enough we also had a couple of products in the Beast of a Bundle — 5E D&D related Humble Bundle which sold over 15,000 bundles to help RAINN. 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.
Worldbuilding Society and Class Prejudice in D&D
Firstly, I should clarify that when we discuss “class” in this post, we’re talking about the character class mechanic in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, not social class as it exists in our world. The character class system is an integral aspect of roleplaying games whether tabletop, video games, or whatever. That being said, have you ever stopped to think about what a class would look like in a story?
Running Aberrations and Their Followers in Dungeons & Dragons
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.” The Call of Cthulhu
When considering aberrations in your fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons games it is important to remember the nature of these horrors. Minds and bodies made of stuff from beyond your campaign world, aberrations are truly alien things without connection to the physical laws and regular psychology of even the most foreign minds. Mastering the presentation of aberrations can be tricky, and to keep them from presenting as nothing more than just another monster require subtlety and often restraint.
Should You Include Queer Characters in Your RPG?
It’s Pride Month, and I love it! For those who maybe aren’t as familiar, Pride Month is a time when Queer people (or people part of the ever-growing LGBT+ community) the world around celebrate love, life, and happiness. It’s a time of rainbows and good vibes and all that other stuff.
A couple of notes before delving into this article:
- I’m coming at this topic from my own perspective as a Queer person who loves tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs, for short).
- I’ll be using the term “Queer” (with the capital “Q”) to reference the LGBT+ community in its many contexts.
With the increasing visibility of Queer people in our society, the question for many Game Masters inevitably comes up, “Should I include Queer characters in my worldbuilding?” Rather than tell you you’re a jerk if you don’t or try to convince you why you should, let’s have a frank discussion about the reasons you might or might not want to take Queer people into consideration when it comes to your RPG worldbuilding.
Bad RPG Stories are Only the Beginning!
Writers and Game Masters have a ton of things in common. A writer’s main goal is to tell a good story to entertain their target audience and sell a profitable amount of their work. A GM’s goal is to facilitate fun through a good story and entertain their own target audience — the players. Because of these similarities, GMs can learn a lot from studying good storytelling tactics. In this week’s RPGtube video, I discuss my top five tips for GMs, as coming from the perspective of a writer.
D&D Ideas — Artifacts
Welcome once again to the weekly Nerdarchy Newsletter. This week we are talking about artifacts — uber-powerful magic items that can reshape your D&D campaign world. But before we dive into that, an update on the Facebook page. I’ve regained access, but I wouldn’t say control. The forces of evil are still listed as the owners of the page. I’ve got it unpublished but not deleted. These people won’t have to be subjected to the nonsense that has been going over there. I’m convinced I won’t be booted off the page by these evildoers again. We are fighting to get it back before we initiate the self destruct mechanism. We are leaving that for the last resort.
How Character Introductions Can Make Your D&D Game Epic
As Game Masters it’s our job to facilitate fun! Players have fun when they get to impact the story in a meaningful way. Often, when a player makes a new character, they think about who this character is and how great they are and so on. In my experience, every player usually has some sort of idea about how they would introduce their character such as particular circumstances or roleplaying. Character introductions really set the tone for each character, especially when it comes to more roleplay-heavy parties, like those I’m used to. An introduction or first impression can really make or break a player’s initial passion for their character.
