Kickstarter Korner for June 2018, Week 2
Each week during the Quests & Adventures live chat, Saturday at 2 p.m. eastern, Nerdarchists Dave and Ted and Nate the Nerdarch hang out live with fans from the Nerdarchy YouTube channel. It’s a chance to share announcements and news, answer questions from the live chat and generally just hang out and talk nerdy with the Nerdarchy community.
Deadly Foes of Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder Battles
Today we are going to talk about Deadly Foes. Now if I tricked you into clicking this expecting me to talk about encounter design or specific monsters, I am sorry. What I am here to talk about is the Pathfinder Battles: Deadly Foes miniature line put out by WizKids. Looking at this list while waiting for my minis to arrive is a lot of fun. I purchased a booster box, just like I did for Maze of Death and that results in 32 minis. It is never enough, hence the minis addiction I have, but that is beside the point.
5 Tips for Avoiding RPG Frustration
Hello folks. Your friendly neighborhood nerd here with some thoughts and tips for gaming during the summer. When you start a Dungeons & Dragons or other RPG you don’t always have a concept for timeline. The length of a game or availability to play can change drastically depending on players, work, school, or other things that could affect play. I’m here with 5 tips to help you with avoiding frustration that can come with gaming during the summer.
New D&D Campaign Settings Coming in 2018
The Stream of Many Eyes ended less than 24 hours ago and Wizards of the Coast dropped even more news for upcoming fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons products this morning. According to an exclusive from Comicbook.com, “Dungeons & Dragons plans to announce several additional publications in 2018 which will add new D&D campaign settings for players outside of the Forgotten Realms.” The website spoke with Nathan Stewart at the Stream of Many Eyes to ask what lay ahead in 2019 for D&D and the brand director and executive producer revealed there’s still more to come in 2018 aside from Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage!
Kickstarter Korner for June 2018, Week 1
Each week during the Quests & Adventures live chat, Saturday at 2 p.m. eastern, Nerdarchists Dave and Ted and Nate the Nerdarch hang out live with fans from the Nerdarchy YouTube channel. It’s a chance to share announcements and news, answer questions from the live chat...
Using Fantasy Tropes and Player Expectations in D&D
Everyone knows the standard fantasy tropes, the cliches and traditional storytelling elements that make up our favorite stories. The knight fighting the dragon, wizards studying dusty tomes, the kingdom-saving enchanted sword — they’re all pretty standard, but when you take fantasy tropes and turn them on their head against player expectations in Dungeons & Dragons you’ve got something recognizable, but new.
Paizo delivers with all new adventures, cards, pawns and maps
With PaizoCon just ending it seem there is no rest for the wicked. Paizo is going strong towards the end of spring with 8 new releases. We have pawns and a new flip map for our universe-exploring Starfinder friends and more pawns, adventure, cards and flipmats for our Pathfinders still delving the jungles. These are all already out in stores so if you haven’t gotten any of these treasures feel free to drop in on the links below to pick them up. For those still trying to catch up on the events at PaizoCon, follow the giggling goblin over to the Paizo Twitch.tv channel for all the live streams. For those of you scrambling for more Pathfinder Second Edition info you can check out the Paizo Blog, which has new content every Monday and Friday.
Worldbuilding: Different Styles of Monarchy in D&D Political Campaigns
Salutations, nerds! I’ve been giving a lot of thought to fantasy governments and how they tend to be portrayed in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. Most of the time you’ve got a pretty standard monarchy in D&D set up and that’s all right if you’re playing a kick-in-the-door style game, but sometimes you want more out of a D&D political campaign than that. Today, we’re going to talk about monarchies (by which I mean ‘one ruler’ more so than the specifics given in the Dungeon Master’s Guide) and a bit about feudalism for worldbuilding.
Kickstarter Korner for May 2018, Week 4
Each week during the Quests & Adventures live chat, Saturday at 2 p.m. eastern, Nerdarchists Dave and Ted and Nate the Nerdarch hang out live with fans from the Nerdarchy YouTube channel. It’s a chance to share announcements and news, answer questions from the live chat and generally just hang out and talk nerdy with the Nerdarchy community.
Descriptions Over Dice: Roleplay Character Actions Before You Roll Play
Hello! Nerditor Doug here to welcome guest posters from Dork Forge to the Nerdarchy family. Dork Forge are “a righteous, funny, and super humble group of fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons adventurers with killer memes.” The folks at Dork Forge stream games live on Mondays at 1:30 p.m. central on Twitch, with VOD on YouTube. They also have their own website with articles and video archives. This post comes to us from Dork Forge co-founder and Dungeon Master Tom Ball. Tom tackles a great topic that can trip up a lot of players from veterans to those new to the RPG hobby — how to roleplay character actions when the player themselves isn’t an expert. Using description in front of rolling those dice can enrich a character’s actions when it comes time to make that crucial check.
Delving into the West Marches RPG Campaign Style: Better, Faster, Stronger
We continue this archiving of my experience running a West Marches adventuring campaign style and if you haven’t read the first article and second article, you really should for context. My tabletop roleplaying game background is one that heavily focused on narrative and story. With that being said, this new RPG campaign style is a bit of a departure. This article will focus on the portions of the West Marches formula that I fell in love with, the major changes I made and the additions I constructed to bring the game closer to what I consider makes an enjoyable campaign style.
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.
Get Your Paizo On At PaizoCon — Live or Live Streamed
Savage Worlds: Exploring RPG Options Past the D&D Gateway
As you play Dungeons & Dragons, several things will enter your thoughts. One of the more common among them is “I wonder if …” A lot of the time those if’s run along the lines of “can I play Star Wars with this?” or “can I do a sci-fi setting?” With any roleplaying game system you can put in some time, make some tweaks and you can do those things. That said, there are many generic RPG systems out there with a variety of source material. Savage Worlds from Pinnacle Entertainment Group is one such system
