Top 5 Ideas for Political Campaigns
First let me get this out of the way: yes, I know the title is terrible and punny. If you’re here for the top 5 ideas for political campaigns to run for your local office or the presidency, you’re in the wrong place. This article is about political campaigns for your roleplaying games like fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons (and no, I’m not taking sides on Sam vs. Liam for president of D&D Beyond). There are a myriad of ways the politics in your RPG world are going to affect your player characters and nonplayer characters alike. Not sure where to begin? Never fear! I’ve got a video on my YouTube channel dealing with just that topic!
D&D Ideas — Sci-Fi in D&D Fantasy
Welcome once again to the weekly Nerdarchy Newsletter. Last week on the live chat we discussed adding sci-fi in D&D in honor of the Monte Cook Games Kickstarter Arcana of the Ancients. Initially it was just about taking the concepts of the Ninth World and Numenera to convert to the 5E system. The Kickstarter is so successful and has unlocked so many stretch goals that will be doing a straight conversion of the Numenera campaign setting for the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons set. There will be a handbook for just running sci-fi and weird science — the original objective for the Kickstarter. Then there is going to be a corresponding monster book, some adventures, and finally the campaign setting. The Arcana of the Ancients Kickstarter has ended by now and was a huge success.
Truer Strike — An Answer to True Strike (AKA the Worst D&D Cantrip)
Okay, folks. We’re tackling the elephant in the room today, the thing so many other channels and blogs have addressed… because I’m feeling especially masochistic. Seriously, though, true strike is arguably the single worst cantrip in all of fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. In order to properly address it, let’s start by analyzing just what makes true strike so underwhelming.
How to Increase Suspension of Disbelief in Your Roleplaying Game
Tabletop roleplaying games are legitimately one of my favorite means of storytelling. There’s something incredibly special about about gathering your friends together for a night of fun and enjoyment. Instead of catching up on your favorite streaming show or spending a small fortune getting drinks, everyone sits around a table to collectively craft their own stories with their own original characters. But let me stop myself before I gush off topic. To set up this discussion, I first have to talk about “suspension of disbelief.” Boiling it down, suspension of disbelief happens when a storyteller (or Game Master) and their audience (or players) both understand that a work of fiction is not real, but all parties agree to suspend their disbelief. There’s a sort of unspoken contract between storytellers and audiences that certain core aspects of a fiction story (i.e. the existence of magic, other races, fictional technologies, etc.) are going to remain unaddressed outside of the fact they’re presumed to be true.
D&D Ideas — Death
D&D Ideas — Blood and Bone
Welcome once again to the weekly Nerdarchy newsletter. This week our topic is Blood and bone. Before we jump into it I want to apologize. For the last couple of weeks haven’t been able to run our Saturday Live Chat sessions. The Nerdarchy streaming laptop went down and failed its death saves. Fear not! We got it to the temple and had a team of clerics work on it. They were able to resurrect it. This past Saturday we were back at and talking about Critical Role’s The Legend of Vox Machina Kickstarter and what it means for our beloved hobby.
Your D&D Campaign — There Will Be Narrative
Way back in the mid-1980’s when I started playing Dungeons & Dragons as a kid, I feel pretty confident saying the word “narrative” never came up as regards our funny-shaped dice rolling adventures. We played a lot of modules as standalone adventures, and our characters didn’t really engage with the plot very much. A country frozen in time by a strange red light, a town under siege by goblins and a lost valley, rescuing a captive baroness from the evil Temple of the Frog deep in the Great Dismal Swamp… yadda yadda yadda. We go in the ruined palace, slay the white dragon and get the giant ruby. The Iron Ring was defeated after exploring much of Eastern Karameikos. The Fetch paid us as promised and we returned to our own time. And it wasn’t until this moment as I’m writing why back then the narrative was largely irrelevant, but my current D&D campaign — intended to celebrate the old school spirit — wound up with a strong narrative all on it’s own. So let’s get into it and see how a narrative emerges in your D&D campaign, whether you want it or not.
Put a Pin In Your D&D Game — The Pinterest Dungeon Master
Fantasy art influences my fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons games to an extraordinary degree. One of the themes running strongly in the great documentary Eye of the Beholder: The Art of Dungeons & Dragons is how playing D&D gives us an opportunity to discover what would our characters do in these fantastic settings. The fantasy art inspiring our D&D games also provides a tool to help us vividly describe the creatures, places and things adventurers see. For players and Dungeon Masters alike, the fantasy art that speaks to us leaves an indelible mark on our gaming. And for my money, there’s no better place for unending discovery of amazing fantasy art than Pinterest. It’ll improve your D&D games as a player and DM, I guarantee. So let’s get into it.
D&D Ideas — Villains
D&D Ideas — Artificer
Roleplaying the Other — Tieflings are Gay
Hello, and welcome to Roleplaying the Other. In this column, I’m going to be largely focused on roleplaying, worldbuilding, and interactions at the table. They will be filtered through my own personal lens of queer experiences in the hobby. Firstly, I should define when I say “queer,” I am referring to LGBT+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) experiences. This is a blanket term encompassing asexuality and other distinct identities, as well. If you are not one of these letters of the acronym you may be asking yourself what you’re doing here. I’m glad you asked. I’m going to be sharing insights I’ve gained that can hopefully help anyone’s table run a better game. I am not a spokesperson for all identities and I’ll be reaching out to people within the community for their perspective from time to time.
D&D Ideas — Renown
Welcome once again to the weekly Nerdarchy Newsletter. This week we are going to dive into renown in Dungeons & Dragons. You can find rules for it in Chapter 1 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide. You can find additional information in Chapter 2 of the Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica. Renown gets discussed right in the introduction of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. These three sources alone will give a ton of information and suggestions on how to use renown specifically, which is great for running D&D and using renown in Forgotten Realms or the world of Ravnica. We will explore other options and ideas below from the Nerdarchy team. Remember — just because those are official D&D campaign settings doesn’t mean you can’t pull them apart and reassemble them for your homebrew D&D campaign.
Shades of Magic in 5E D&D — Necromancers and Necromancy
Ah, necromancy. The gift that keeps on giving, even beyond death. In fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, the Arcane Tradition of Necromancy deals largely with animate dead and bringing other undead under your control. Nerdarchy’s longtime stance on bringing skeletons and zombies into the world remains rooted in the undead creatures’ evil nature, making this sort of magic straight up evil. But that’s Nerdarchists Dave and Ted. I’ve got my own opinions about necromancy, necromancers and their supernatural relationship to life and death. So I’m going to smudge the palette of black, gray and white necromancy for 5E D&D a bit and add a few more shades of magic.
D&D Ideas — Downtime
Kobold Press Embroils D&D 5E Adventurers in Otherworldly Intrigue with Courts of the Shadow Fey
If you’re a fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master, and your campaign goals are a Venn diagram where courtly intrigue and the politics of fey intersect, you’ll find Courts of the Shadow Fey from Kobold Press in the space where those circles overlap. The campaign for 7th-10th level characters begins with an assassination attempt and leads adventurers from the mortal world to the realm of fey. They’ll learn how fickle and capricious the Courts of the Shadow Fey can be, while earning Status and discovering opportunities both alluring and treacherous.
