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.
WALIAC No. 2 — Five Easy Dungeon Room Pieces
Hello! In We All Live in a Castle No. 1 Goblin Chief, Lackey, Troll, Rascal and the Maker arrived at their new home. But before this abandoned castle can truly be a monster lair, these dungeon denizens will have to pick their rooms. It ought to be a simple, fair and equitable process right? These are fictional fantasy comics telling the story of five allies on a quest to live in a castle and have their lives illustrated. Use the navigation bar under the title to check out the WALIAC No. 1 and enjoy WALIAC No. 2 — Five Easy Dungeon Room Pieces below.
We All Live In A Castle — WALIAC No. 1 A Sign of Things to Come
Hello! Welcome to a new series from Nerdarchy — fantasy comics! We All Live In A Castle follows the lives of five fantasy characters inspired by our passion for Dungeons & Dragons. WALIAC won’t be the first comics we’ve created. Nerdarchist Ryan created How to Speeks Goblin back in April 2014 and it ran for over a year. Now in 2019, we fell in love with the work of artist William Elder and wanted to create something together with him. One of William’s pieces was done as promotional art for our adventure as guest Dungeon Masters at D&D In A Castle. Nerdarchy has our own castle in Staffordshire, UK in June 2019. Caverswall Castle is the only moated castle in the UK you can stay in, and we’ll be there with our own guest DMs Lysa Chen and Vee Mus’e to guide players from across the globe through an unforgettable three day D&D campaign!
Comics and D&D Q&A with Artist Kate Sheridan
Hello! Today I’m happy to share a Q&A with Dungeons & Dragons nerd, illustrator and comic creator Kate Sheridan. Kate appeared on the Nerdarchy live chat with Nerdarchist Dave, which you can find below, and had a great conversation about art, comics and D&D. After watching the chat, I checked out Kate’s work and picked up her comic Fallow Time, a terrific story that really captured my imagination. She has a wonderful art and storytelling style and I highly recommend checking out her work. I’m looking forward to adding a print of one of her pieces to my office. Kate was kind enough to share her time answering some more questions, so let’s get into it.
Art & Arcana Celebrates Visual History of Dungeons & Dragons
Featuring one of the most iconic images in Dungeons & Dragons history on the cover, Art & Arcana is set to hit bookshelves on Oct. 23, 2018 to take fans on a visual history tour of the world’s greatest roleplaying game. Written by Michael Witwer, Kyle Newman, Jon Peterson and Sam Witwer, with a foreword by Joe Manganiello, Art & Arcana is a massive 448-page tome available in hardcover and digital format from publishers Ten Speed Press.
Gee Whiz, Critical Role Animation Sure is Fun
Tabletop RPGs aren’t the first thing that probably comes to mind when you think about animation. There’s a lot of stuff going on at any given time and humorous or action-filled moments are often dispersed among hours of the player characters shopping or doing other tasks that don’t translate well to being encapsulated in a short spurt of animation. But over at Gee Whiz Productions, those drawbacks to a tabletop RPG session haven’t really been drawbacks at all. They’re doing amazing work in taking scenes from longer sessions like Critical Role and transferring them into animated gold.
The Psychology of a Likable RPG Character Part 3: Respect
Standard disclaimer: I got these points from a YouTube video centered around actual self help and the real life application of these points. I didn’t come up with this myself, I’m just repurposing it for fiction writing and roleplaying. I would love to be able to link that video here, so if you have it, drop a link in the comments please! (Edit: If you’ve been following, you know Nerditor Doug found it and it’s over here. Also Charisma on Command, very good material, makes a lot of Game of Thrones references, if you’re not already watching him you should be.)
The Psychology of a Likable RPG Character Part 2: Trust
Quick disclaimer really fast; these four points aren’t something I came up with. I learned this from a YouTube video and at the time of me putting my butt in a chair and writing these articles I have no idea where that channel is or where the video is because I look at as much porn as you do and had to clear my browser history. So, if you happen to have an idea of the video I’m talking about, I would super appreciate it if you’d drop me a link so I can credit the original dude for these ideas. (Edit: Our wonderful Nerditor Doug found it for me! He’s over here, the guy is Charisma on Command, he makes a lot of Game of Thrones references and is absolutely worth checking out if you haven’t already.)
The Psychology of a Likable RPG Character Part 1: Fun
Somewhere on YouTube there is a self-help series where this guy goes through and talks about the four emotions you have to hit to make strangers like you. Unfortunately, I watched it at some point last year and have cleared my cookies and browser history many, many times since then and am unable to find the video in question, so let me open this with a bit of a disclaimer; these ideas are not mine. I would love to link that video here. If you happen to know what it was or who it was, please leave a comment so I can go back and properly credit him. (And then our wonderful Nerditor Doug found it for me, so if you want to check this guy out he’s over here and makes a lot of Game of Thrones references.)
D&D Beyond Publishes Inaugural Post by Lead Writer James Haeck
Coming on the heels of their recent announcement of hiring James Haeck as lead writer under content manager Todd Kenreck, D&D Beyond published their first post of this new endeavor on Monday, March 5, 2018. Along with staff writers James Introcaso and Mike Shea, DDB will begin producing written content on the site to compliment the wonderful video content produced by Kenreck. The first post to usher in the new featured content takes a look at one of fifth edition’s most often discussed and debated class features – the Beast Master ranger archetype.
Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes Reveals Conflicts of D&D Multiverse
We can thank Wizards of the Coast senior director Nathan Stewart and franchise creative director Mike Mearls for revealing the next fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons book during the Fireside Chat on the D&D Twitch channel Friday, Feb. 2, 2018. And today we got the official announcement from WotC about Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes!
DriveThruRPG Sponsors Nerdarchy and Saves You Money on RPG Stuff
Nerdarchy is proud to announce a terrific sponsorship from DriveThruRPG – the largest RPG download store! Since 2001, DriveThruRPG has been a premiere online marketplace for digital and print-on-demand roleplaying games. Even more, the expanded family of sites makes comic books, card games, fiction and more available with ease. With DriveThruRPG as a sponsor, we can now pass along great deals to the Nerdarchy community.
Quick and Dirty Writing Tricks for NaNoWriMo
Salutations nerds! It’s November, and that means National Novel Writing Month is in full swing. I’m willing to bet if you clicked on this article you already know what that is, but permit me a brief recap on the off chance you aren’t already in the know.
Basically, NaNoWriMo is a word marathon where a bunch of crazy people decide to attempt to write at least 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. The rules are simple. You aren’t allowed to actually start writing your story until November starts (but really you’re only cheating yourself if you do), and it has to be 50,000 on the same tale. Typically, you’re looking at writing about 1,667 words a day to be able to finish on time, but there are some even crazier people out there who shoot higher.
Worldbuilding: Fantasy Currency
Hey nerds! I’ve been thinking a lot lately about coinage and currency and how they relate to worldbuilding. In Dungeons & Dragons, we pretty much accept that ten copper pieces are a silver piece, ten silvers are a gold, ten golds in a platinum and we leave it at that. It doesn’t matter, most of the time, where you are, the same coins still apply. [EDITOR’S NOTE: But what about poor, forgotten electrum, the US half dollar coin of D&D? Read on…]
Anyone who’s ever traveled abroad in real life, though, and had to go through the awkward song and dance of having their money exchanged for local tender knows that isn’t true at all. Of course, we don’t bother tinkering with that in D&D most of the time because it’s not really the focus of what we’re doing and for most campaigns – it’s going to be way too distracting to be worth it. But for things like fantasy fiction and the rare campaign that gets down to a lot of roleplay and the brass tacks of the world you’re in, this can be a really nice touch.
Making a Pact with Warlock Patreon from Kobold Press
Since 2012, the Kobold Press imprint has produced some of the best-received third-party content for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. Their biggest release – both in terms of sheer size and tabletop roleplaying game culture penetration – is the Tome of Beasts. The 433-page book of monsters is a staple on the shelf of countless D&D players, as iconic and indispensable as the Monster Manual for many Dungeon Masters (myself included).
The material produced by Kobold Press runs the gamut and truly includes something for everyone who plays D&D. Everything from a complete campaign setting to new schools of magic, Game Master guides, the 2017 Ennie Award-winning Kobold Guide to Plots and Campaigns and the recently released Prepared 2: A Dozen One-shot Adventures for 5th Edition offer valuable resources for D&D DMs and players.
But if even all of that isn’t enough, esteemed game designer Wolfgang Baur and the team at Kobold Press launched a new project designed to give even more cool material on a regular, ongoing basis. The Warlock is a Patreon-fueled project in the form of a booklet containing new maps, monsters, character options and more. You can find out all about it and pledge your support here.
