Beyond the Fantasy Setting: Converting for 5E D&D Steampunk
Cogs. Steam. Cogs and steam. Have the itch to get some steampunk in your fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons life? You’re not alone. Steampunk, and other niche genres derived from it, is a great addition to any fantasy setting. You can start your D&D steampunk experience by simply reskinning equipment and environments with all manner of odd baubles and whirring mechanisms or as deep as to tinker and toil brand new home brew to bring your steamy thoughts into life.
Only Human: Reskin D&D Playable Races for All Human Campaign
Many campaign settings strive for a more human-focused style but this often turns away many players as they see the lack of fantastic races as limiting character options. This is mechanically true if you get rid of all these races and do nothing to compensate for their absence. Often this is done through having cultural archetypes become replacements for distinct D&D playable races. Another way to accomplish this is to simply reskin character races as human cultures from your all human campaign setting. In this way, the standard assortment of D&D playable races are still available but appear and play like variations of humans.
Delving into the West Marches RPG Campaign Style: First Adventuring Sessions
We continue this archiving of my experience running a West Marches style adventuring campaign and if you haven’t read the first article, you really should for context. In an effort to not only gather my thoughts, but help you decide if this is an RPG campaign style you want to toy with, we are going to dive deeper into this experiment. That’s really what the whole thing has been and what I’ve stressed to my players: this is an experiment. I started running this with strict adherence to what I saw as the core tenets of the RPG campaign style. That’s what we’ll be covering here, my and my players’ reactions to what I saw as core of the prescribed West Marches adventuring philosophy and the beginnings of us altering that vision to our needs.
Delving into the West Marches RPG Campaign Style
About a year ago there was a notable resurgence of an old RPG campaign style dubbed West Marches within the tabletop roleplaying game community, especially in the Dungeons & Dragons circles. This happened to be the first time I had heard about this method of play and decided to take a stab at it. In this article, and others to come, I will be opening up about my experience of building a play area within a sprawling campaign, my reactions to the dozens of sessions, and what I did to make this campaign style something more in-line with my taste as a Game Master.
D&D Gets Post Apocalyptic with Hellscapes
There’s a huge variety of tabletop roleplaying games out there on the market, providing infinite variety in settings, themes and mechanics. Everything from primitive worlds to vast universes, quickstart guides to 500-page rulebooks, and low-brow humor to high-brow drama. But if you’re like me, and can simply never get enough Dungeons & Dragons, testing the limits of fifth edition D&D keeps you plenty satisfied with your RPG obsession. In the weekly live stream game I run on the Nerdarchy YouTube channel, we cobbled together our own gonzo Spelljammer setting using material from Hyperlanes. And now with Hellscapes, the follow-up project from the same creators, a new avenue is open to explore – post apocalyptic adventures using the 5E engine!
Spoiler Alert! D&D Beyond Ingest Quest Campaign Management Tips
Following on the heels of Ingest Quest episode 1, the live stream fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons Spelljammer game, I shared some tips on managing and running a campaign using the D&D Beyond tools for keeping all your adventure information in one convenient place along with tooltip creation for easy reference to monsters, magic items, conditions and more. As the campaign continues, the public and private notes grow right alongside the characters and story. This presents a challenge for quickly finding what I need during play. Fortunately, there’s an easy solution.
Worldbuilding: Where to Begin with a Homebrew Campaign Setting
You’ve been playing roleplaying games for a bit now. It might be Pathfinder, Dungeons & Dragons, Savage Worlds, or untold countless possibilities. The problem is you don’t like the setting. It almost fits the image in your mind but not quite. You’ve looked around, found some old campaign setting material at secondhand stores or eBay but no luck. So, what do you do? How do you make the world you want too? Don’t worry — Nerdarchy is here to help. Over the past month or so you’ll have seen some changes in the Nerdarchy landscape. We have Nate the Nerdarch and Kienata running the Nerdarchy After Dark late-night build sessions. We’ve posted some articles for items like World Anvil and Realm Works to help you organize things. However, none of these really give a starting point. Why not fix that now? Let’s look at how to start.
5E Midgard Heroes Handbook from Kobold Press Awaits the Bold
The kobolds at Kobold Press have done it again! The Midgard Heroes Handbook for 5th Edition is already available from the Kobold Press store, with physical copies starting to arrive in the hands of gamers this week. This 216-page hardcover book contains everything a player needs to create a character for the Midgard campaign setting and features the same top quality content we’ve come to know and trust from Kobold Press.
D&D Creature to Character Conversion: Darklings
A few times in the past, I've written articles about elements of the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons homebrew world I'm building (which I'm temporarily calling Gladius). One of my earlier D&D creations was the aatier, a half-tiefling half-aasimar race. Not to long ago, I...
Worldbuilding: My D&D Campaign Setting Approach
My usual week is taken up with many mundane tasks. Between getting my son up and ready for school, generally keeping the house and preparing materials for games, videos and articles, I keep pretty busy. One thing I try to do is keep my articles about things I think others will find interesting to read about.
A rule of thumb I go by is if someone can read my article and use something in it either in their games or elsewhere in their life (the interdisciplinary applications of the Reroll Rule Problem for example) then I have succeeded in my task.
Dark Sun Ever Mindful of D&D Psionics
Like Nerdarchists Dave and Ted and Nate the Nerdarch mention in the video above, psionics has been a part of Dungeons & Dragons since 1st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. In the interest of utmost accuracy, the supernatural power of psionics were first introduced to D&D in Eldritch Wizardry, a 1976 supplemental rulebook for the original edition. Also of note are the other now-iconic facets of D&D included in that 60-page digest: the druid class, demons and demon lords like Orcus and Demogorgon, mind flayers, and artifacts like the Rod of Seven Parts and Axe of the Dwarvish Lords.
With those bits of long forgotten secrets behind us now, let’s turn our clairsentience to the future. Based on hints and bits of information shared through social media and in interviews, a fifth edition D&D iteration of Dark Sun is almost certain.
We’ve already got the mystic class available through the Dungeon Master’s Guild, giving D&D players the opportunity to utilize the awesome power of psionics in D&D 5E.
Now we only await the introduction of the sun-scorched setting of Dark Sun.
D&D Spelljammer Warlock: Stars are Right
The Owl looking appropriately star warlock-y. [Art by Jesse Ochse from ArtStation]
There is a balance to the encroaching Void in my home campaign of D&D taking place in a Spelljammer-esque setting. A warlock can strike a bargain with a star drake in the same fashion as with a void dragon. The Illumination Pact warlock acts as a counterpoint to the Void Pact. In both situations, excellent material from Kobold Press does the heavy lifting. For the Illumination warlock, Deep Magic: Illumination Magic is the source material.
Star drakes and void dragons both appear in the Tome of Beasts. Both of these amazing creatures fired my imagination on all cylinders when I began conceptualizing the Spelljammer elements introduced to a traditional D&D campaign early on. I won’t reveal too much about the specifics here, since my players read these articles. But as more is revealed to them through our gameplay sessions those details will be shared.
This material is an evolving work in progress stemming from my home game. Although it’s inspired by the Spelljammer setting, it can be adapted for any D&D campaign.
D&D Spelljammer Warlock: Into the Void
In a past article I mentioned customized warlock pacts in my fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons Spelljammer campaign.
It came up again during a live chat with Nate the Nerdarch.
With my feet now held to the eldritch fire by publicly mentioning it twice, I’d better put money where my pact-making mouth is and get into it.
This material is an evolving work in progress stemming from my home game.
Although it’s inspired by the Spelljammer setting, it can be adapted for any D&D campaign.
D&D 5E Spelljammer Makes the Most of Monsters
It’s been a few weeks since the last trip into the wildspace of Spelljammer for D&D 5E. My home game dabbled in a few one-shots and welcomed a new, first time Dungeon Master. Origins came and went, and several Nerdarchy projects kept me from sharing more insights into the exploits of a fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons Spelljammer campaign.
Then I saw this tweet from Mike Mearls the other day.
I know patience is difficult, but we really are looking at ways to bring all the settings back. Even Spelljammer! #WOTCstaff https://t.co/eKu48e5RjF
— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) July 3, 2017
And the enthusiastic replies.
And a long list of other Spelljammer fans sharing affection for the setting.
And fan groups on Facebook, Google+ and more.
We’re out there, Wizards of the Coast! While I can’t speak for all of us, it’s encouraging to know the folks behind the game we love include all of our favorite aspects from its rich history in their grand vision. In time, I’m confident we’ll get our Dark Sun, Al-Qadim, Dragonlance and Eberron fixes in official capacities.
Spelljammer ship combat primer for 5E D&D
You can’t throw a d20 in 2017 without hitting a space fantasy RPG. Tabletop gamers looking to combine swords and sorcery with science and starships can take their pick of several products hitting the market this year. Starfinder utilizes the Pathfinder engine to explore fantasy...
