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D&D Ideas — Games Within Games

Welcome once again to the weekly newsletter. This week’s topic is games within games, which we discussed in our weekly live chat. We hangout every Monday evening at 8 p.m. EST at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel talk about D&D, RPGs, gaming, life and whatever nerdy stuff comes up. Speaking of the games within games our own Taking Chances module is a collection of games of skill and chance for Fifth Edition with new and different games for both characters and players to engage with, using their in-game skills and proficiencies for some and relying on the luck of the dice for others. You can get Nerdarchy the Newsletter delivered to your inbox each week, along with updates and info on how to game with Nerdarchy plus snag a FREE GIFT by signing up here.

Nerdy News

Go for the eyes of the week that was! Take a look at the big picture of Spelljammer for D&D and start playtesting One D&D now! Plus our weekly hangout, a chat with an industry pro and find out if Zoo Mafia RPG’s Split Up Gang gets made or gets got to round out this week’s Nerdy News. Check it out here.

Delving Dave’s Dungeon

Minigames or games within games in D&D and other RPGs offer fun ways for characters to explore a campaign setting. Minigames within your favorite RPG open opportunities for great roleplaying and exploration. If you decide to add them into your D&D adventures think about the origins or an interesting piece of information about the game. One of the other NPCs playing the game might strike up a conversation and drop this tidbit of information during play.

Games within games in your regular D&D session could very much be like a beach episode without the beach. The biggest danger of introducing games in your games is they can side track your sessions as your players just want to gamble. We’ve got our Taking Chances product that includes premade games in it along with rules for cheating.

You can also find a bunch of minigames for D&D online. Here is a Reddit post collecting them. Minigames can be anything such as card games, dice games, tile games, table games, randomized games like wheels and more. In our Pool of Bliss module we even have magic slot machines and it takes place in a casino.

I’ve been known to make up minigames on the fly. My favorite is grab three of any particular dice. Tally all three dice and t highest total wins. Doubles beat the highest tally and triples beat doubles. In the case of a tie on doubles the highest number on die number three wins. A tie on triples means you have to do another throw and increase the ante. If you can’t match the ante you forfeit.

I just came up with this in the moment while writing.

Minigames also add interesting locations to your game world. There are gambling halls, casinos, festivals, carnivals and fairs. All of these could certainly include minigames. Some of these can be games of chance and some of skill. Archery, axe and knife throwing competitions would all be great additions. A spooky or haunted carnival would be a great backdrop for an adventure. You could fight fiendish clowns and have to overcome carnival games to get through the quest.

From Ted’s Head

Roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons are first and foremost a game. Regardless of how much you follow the rules, use your own house rules or simply roleplay and have fun with the experience it is still a game.

I brought the idea to the Nerdarchy team while planning a slight diversion to Untraditionally Arcane, the campaign I run at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel. Since this is an all wizard campaign I planned to run a session focused on the wizards’ familiars. How often do you get to do such a thing, right?

During my planning phase, Critical Role released their one page rule set during Free RPG Day called a Familiar Problem. It is essentially exactly the thing I needed. Rather than homebrewing something or stretching the 5E rules on familiars it was a perfect rule set for me to use. This is a concept we have talked about numerous times. It is really use an existing ruleset if one exists rather than trying to force it into D&D.

Games within games need not be wholly new rule sets or take up an entire game session. Anytime you decide to run a skill challenge as a game taking place in the story it could very well be a game within a game. Do you want to run a joust? A dice or card tournament? Any gaming set really can be done using a set of skill rolls or a serious skill challenge. Doing so can take the characters much longer in game time to do something, just as much as combat takes so much longer out of game than in game. [NERDITOR’S NOTE: Gambler’s Gambit and Inscrutable Defense from our Mage Forge collection function as an attuned pair of magic items, upping the ante for warriors at the gaming table and the field of battle alike!]

D&D game within a game

Whether it is Magic: The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon or any other card game out there wherein you summon creatures to hurt your opponent there are plenty of options and an easy system to use. This game is called Arcanum Beasts. In this game you use a deck of cards stylized to look like beasts and magic animals in the D&D world. Players arrange their decks and strategize how they are going to play. Using your wits and deception you attempt to lure your enemies into a trap and use your beasts to kill them.

Mechanically, Arcanum Beasts is a two player game played over three rounds. Each round consists of three contested skill rolls. The first round takes place away from your opponent to see how good your strategy is and comprises a d20 Test of Intelligence. The second round players move into a contest of wits and this time it’s a d20 Test of Wisdom (Insight). The third and final round is a d20 Test of Charisma (Deception). Participants score one point for each of their wins over the course of nine rolls. (Ties are rerolled so a clear winner for each roll.)

Visually there are decks that are actually just regular playing cards all the way up to decks that are made of precious materials and magically make the beast appear as an illusory image over the card when it is placed on the table. It animates and looks aggressive as it does so.

Feel free to add this little game to your world and see if it takes off.

From the Nerditor’s Desk

Even in the often perilous worlds of Dungeons & Dragons creatures find time for leisure. Games within games present an opportunity inject what I consider one of the most crucial components of a good D&D adventure — relatability. And it’s certainly not just the player characters or even the crowd at the local tavern who balance out their survival in a harsh fantasy realm with the occasional game of chance.

Satyrs may indeed pursue lives of endless reverie but the endless games of skill in which they revel translate to uncanny aim on the battlefield — something for no nonsense warriors to keep in mind. And according to Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons it’s entirely likely that a young amethyst dragon and a cloud giant regularly host each other to play strategy games. If this isn’t something nerdy gamers can relate to I don’t know what is and how interesting would this encounter be for players?

Rather than making life Hard for four 12th level adventurers in a fight to the death, what sort of scenario might emerge with the characters in your campaign? Interrupt their game and you get the Singularity Breath!

Players love minigames. At least in all my experience they sure do. Long ago I ran a D&D campaign and for flavor the setting included a popular collectible card game. Any person might be likely to have a deck of cards on them for a match. I got the idea from Triple Triad in Final Fantasy 8 and came up with some very simply dice rolls and tables. It was basically rock-paper-scissors with opposing elements like fire and ice, light and dark and so forth.

Turned out the players enjoyed this more than any adventure hooks and the campaign became their dangerous journeys to various locations for tournaments, challenges with other card floppers and whatnot. This was back in 3.5 D&D and it was interesting to see the players delve into all that deep crunch developing their characters for a much differently specialized kind of adventuring.

Introducing the very notion of games within games can profoundly impact a character. Back in 2015 for my very first 5E D&D campaign based loosely on the Quest for the Heartstone module mashed together with Against the Cult of the Reptile God I stuck a magic sword in a hard to find — and harder to reach — spot in a murky sea dungeon beneath an island. The black iron greatsword had a d20 in the pommel and when you spun it you’d get a temporary effect like advantage on all your attacks for a while. (If you roll a 1 you get disadvantage for that same while!)

Gambler’s Gambit has another effect too. While you are attuned to it you’re proficient with all gaming sets and apply your proficiency bonus to any roll involved in games of chance. Further, if it offer it up as an ante in any game, you add twice your proficiency bonus for that game. On top of this if the weapon is placed as a bet during a game, you have advantage on any skill checks during the game.

Let me tell you, after the 2nd level elven fighter survived swimming through a submerged tunnel and fighting off a hunter shark to reach the little grotto where he discovered the unlucky previous owner, he became a real game enthusiast ever after. Quite a risk considering they took no time to examine the area whatsoever. He just went for it and dove in like a true adventurer. Come to think of it most of the characters from that campaign, which evolved into a Spelljammer campaign lasting many years, found quirky magical items early in their adventures that would go on to become important parts of their personas. Huh.

In those and just about any other case for me players steer the game towards games within games especially if there’s even a hint of the possibility and in my experience going for it led to fun, memorable moments. There is a reason characters pick up a tool proficiency or two along the way and it’s not just because you get some circumstantial bonus with another d20 Test. Tool proficiencies essentially represent a characters hobbies or as I like to say it’s what they nerd out about.

Protip: Remember the tool proficiencies in your party — and this goes for you too, players. Dungeon Masters didn’t choose a character’s tool proficiencies. Look at situations from your character’s perspective through the lens of their tool proficiencies. What details would they focus on? If gaming sets are your thing, what does this mean? A character could look at everything as a game, whether one left to chance or winnable with the right strategy.

This says nothing of the desire to enjoy games too. We all come from different walks of life and play this game of D&D within the larger game of life. Who’s to say any creature from an unusually clever almiraj to Bahamut might enjoy any number of games and adventurers are just the sort to find themselves part of the experience. Do you think the Seven Heavens of Mount Celestia has wifi?

Delving into dungeons, battling monsters and saving the world provides the thrills of adventure but between those exploits a campaign — and a world — can really come alive through games within games. Even an impromptu dice roll off game like Nerdarchist Dave describes, given some razzle dazzle for what’s taking place in the world, connects with players in a deep way because let’s face it: we all love us some games, right?

*Featured image — Along with the games Taking Chances includes establishments where characters can discover and play them. The largest of these, Union Salon, introduces several new tool kits and even more games giving characters a chance to use their tools in arena-style battles as well as to investigate a mystery. Check it out here!

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