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5E D&D myths mythology

D&D Ideas — Lore

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Welcome once again to the weekly newsletter. This week’s topic is lore, which we discussed in our live chat. We hangout every Monday evening at 8 p.m. EST on Nerdarchy Live to talk about D&D, RPGs, gaming, life and whatever nerdy stuff comes up. Speaking of lore, Standing Warning is one of several Out of the Box encounters with opportunities for customized lore drops baked right into the description for the encounter. This and 54 other dynamic encounters ready to drop right into your game come straight Out of the Box here. You can get the Nerdarchy Newsletter delivered to your inbox each week, along with updates, info on how to game with Nerdarchy and ways to save money on RPG stuff by signing up here.

5E D&D myths mythology

Nerdy News

Slither back to the week that was and coil your mind around new character options, tips for players and Game Masters and three ways to make minions more than mooks in your games plus new live chats with creative folks and industry pros and actual plays round out this week’s Nerdy News. Check it out here.

Delving Dave’s Dungeon

How important is lore in your in Dungeons & Dragons games? Do you go with official D&D lore from Wizards of the Coast or do you craft your own lore for games, or perhaps a hodgepodge of homebrew and official D&D lore? D&D lore can be pretty intimidating when you think about the history of the game. The game is closing in on being 50 years old. Much of the lore has changed from one edition of D&D to the next. This alone makes it quite the challenge.

Here at Nerdarchy we are more inclined to craft our own lore but allow source material from WotC inspire us, weaving official stuff in and out of our home games. Obviously when it comes to our published content we create fresh whole cloth but that is a big part of the draw for embarking on new projects. A good example of interlacing the two is a recent newsletter we sent on hidden treasures of the Dungeon Master’s Guide. I created a magic item based off of the Treasure Special Features section in chapter 7 of the DMG. I literally allowed the material to guide me through taking a standard longsword +1 and crafting it into something with lore specific to the game I’m running.

I hadn’t initially intended to put it into a game but since I went through the process I decided I would give it to one of the players in that game. So why stop there? I created several more items for some of the other players. Those items will have more obscure lore I’ll reveal over the course of the campaign. The first item is a reprint from last month. Then I’ve got the moon bow of the archfey and spirit bracers of Ala’Goona. These two items I gave some vague details about, which I’ll delve deeper into as the campaign goes on. They are pretty custom. The bow I just threw together for fun but I’ll make it more relevant as the game goes on. The bracers I made to tie into information from the character’s backstory and to fix a problem I see with the Way of the Four Elements monk.

The last two magic items are based off of magic items out of the DMG. The staff of the woodlands for our druid character and a modified instrument of the bards for the bard that gains the power of an instrument of the bards of the next rarity up with each tier of play. Even these items I’ll add lore to as the game progresses. The modified item will level up in it’s rarity and power as the character possessing it moves through the tiers of play.

All of these items came from the party’s patron, a mighty dragon of unknown origin. Even that is going to begin introducing more of the lore from my Court of Wyrms setting to the players.

Drukal the Fang of Drasusgino

Weapon (longsword), rare

You have a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with this magic weapon forged of the scales of the Dragon Emperor Drasusgino. Set upon the pommel is a large emerald from Drasusgino’s hoard. Whenever danger nears and action is required Drukal the Fang of Drasusgino invigorates you. You have a +2 bonus to initiative. More than that Drukal the Fang of Drasusgino knows its own and pulses with warmth when another dragon is within 120 feet of it. Drukal the Fang of Drasusgino was first gifted to Drasusgino’s first knight and may be recognized as a significant relic from that organization’s history. The sword seeks to serve it’s realm and master with enthusiasm, so much so the roaring of a dragon accompanies your unsheathing of this fine blade.

Moon Bow of the Archefey

Weapon (longbow), uncommon (requires attunement)

Crafted in the lands of faerie by a Seelie craftsman noble, the pale white wood has veins of gold running throughout and lacks a bowstring or any way of stringing one. When a wielder makes a drawing motion an arrow of force appears. The bearer suffers no harm in temperatures as cold as −20 degrees Fahrenheit or as warm as 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

Spirit Bracers of Ala’Goona

Wondrous item, rare (requires attunement by a Way of the Four Elements monk)

Bracers of defense carved of etched bone by the dwarven monk Ala of clan Gold Fire instructed by the spirit Goona of Clan Gold Fire. These fabled bracers were crafted to destroy undead. Some have dubbed these items Wristguards of Undead Smiting. Damage from your Flurry of Blows attacks and elemental spells deals an additional d6 radiant damage. While attuned to the bracers your ki reserves are doubled. The bracers grow cold when evil undead are within 60 feet, but warm when in the presence of unquieted and unhostile spirits. Unseen spirits are also visible to you.

From Ted’s Head

When it comes to lore in D&D or any roleplaying game, it is the element bringing the story and the world together. I know some Dungeon Masters spend hours and hours making up rich cultures while other DMs wing it. Both methods are valid and both have good points and bad points.

If you as the DM want to take the time and develop your world away from the gaming table you have the time to make something truly remarkable. Based on my experiences this is what Matt Mercer from Critical Role does. In watching more hours of this great program than I care to calculate you can see he occasionally needs to check his notes and you can tell from his narrations he has spent time creating the world he shares with all the players and those viewing at home as well.

This style is great for those who enjoy planning. It is perfect for those who do not think fast on their feet. This style gives you the opportunity to compare and contrast your world with other gaming worlds as well as elements of the real world. Time is your friend here as you can take as long as you feel you need to come up with the right answer to all your questions.

The downside is if you over prepare you might have to look through a lot of notes to find exactly what you are looking for or your players might not even ask about all the things you have prepped. It might be useful for another session or it might not. If you are doing this for a home game it might wind up being wasted time.

On the other side is the prepping at the table, or gaming on the fly. You might come to the table with a couple of sentences ready of what you think the players might want to do or nothing at all. Everything else will be just made up on the spot.

This is great if you have some handy resources loaded up like a random name generator or some roll charts but if you want to have the information ready for next time you are going to need to have the players or yourself taking notes the entire time you are spouting off this lore.

The upside to this method is you will never over plan but if you hit a speed bump on a mental pathway you have the ability to slow the pace of the game, which could allow players to lose interest. Unless you are really good this method is not going to produce as rich a world as above, which is okay if your players are not as invested in the world as they are in the game.

But there is a third option. With my most recent games this is how I have begun handling my sessions. I do not have a lot of time every week to write material but the games I run are only once a month. So I do not write everything out but I instead make some generalities I can easily build off of.

The more the players investigate the more I know what they are looking for. Since my sessions are 3-4 hours long and typically have one combat, I know there is only so much they can do. If you end each session with a cliffhanger you know they will want to explore then you have a strong idea where the players’ interests lie and this makes prepping for the next sessions’ lore much easier.

From the Nerditor’s desk

Lore in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons is an empheral thing. At least in my experience playing many different games with lots of different people and running games in my own quasi-setting lore comes and goes on a session by session basis.

The multiverse of 5E D&D comprises planets where campaign settings exist, and space between them. And other planes of existence. And demiplanes. And pocket dimensions. And whatever other gonzo concepts players come up with in advance or on the fly. Labyrinthine maze dimensions is another one.

The point is there’s a lot of creative space to work with in any game and the opportunities for rich lore are ripe! Even the most prolific Dungeon Masters and world builders can’t account for everything in the multiverse. Leaving room for players to contribute more than only their avatar in the setting does tremendous good for a campaign. Conventional wisdom says checking with your group and sharing an understanding first is the sensible thing to do and if everyone is simpatico you might find your RPG stories gain whole new layers of depth.

I’m not 100% certain but strongly suspect no small amount of the lore in our Those Bastards! campaign results from the speculations and perspectives of our characters. This is a wonderful thing. DM Megan’s world leapt to vibrant life pretty much the moment we started playing the campaign.

This isn’t an established setting or even a deeply developed homebrew concoction but the lore — the facts about the world being strong together like jazz while we play — makes it feel as rich and complex as any other campaign I’ve ever participated in. Not for nothing but I’ve played with GMs who have deeply detailed settings with elegantly complicated lore and you know what? I don’t remember a thing about those.

One of my very favorite methods of creating a starting point for lore in RPGs are random charts and tables. Have I mentioned my affection for these before? I’ll share two examples of how random table results translate into lore gold.

In Xanathar’s Guide to Everything a series of tables called This Is Your Life provides bullet point details for character backstory. I used these for my character on Those Bastards! and as it turns out Vent was born on an Outer Plane of my choice, his adoptive parent was a brass dragon and he witnessed a falling red star that stirred a sense of destiny. I’d say Megan wove those elements into the lore of the setting pretty adroitly.

On the other side of the screen a GM benefits greatly from a bit of rando lore generation too. I’ve been stoked about Quest RPG lately and the World Profile fascinates me. Using a phrasal template the Guide fills in select words to create the basics of a fantasy world and an adventure hook in no time flat. What I adore about things like this is it grants permission to get behind even the more bizarre results. This is super refreshing to me as a long time GM and simultaneously establishes that the most fantastical stuff a new GM can think of is okay for a game too.

Here’s the World Profile and Adventure Hook I came up with by making all the selections randomly:

“Your story begins on the lonely moon of Visma, a rough and tumble region. From the gleaming tower of Ielion to the chasm of Clodiff, you’ll find pioneers looking for a home. In this world, magic is mysterious, danger is right around the corner, and daily life is challenging but rewarding. (It’s a lot like Howl’s Moving Castle.) People here are hopeful that the great harvest is upon them, but a strange star haunts the sky.”

 

Adventure hook: The Portrait. As the party investigates the mansion of a local person who was murdered, they pass by a wall-sized portrait of a finely clothed woman standing in front of a famous keep. When they pass by the portrait again, the woman is missing. When they touch the portrait, the surface seems to ripple and give way, as if their hand can pass straight through.

Look at all the juicy lore! Life on a moon, evocative location names, strange stars and even a question to be answered — where are these pioneers from originally? The parenthetical is actually part of the process too, encouraging you to choose a fictional work to help everyone imagine the world.

Now I’ve got these compelling elements and discovering the connective tissue I’ll leave for the players and events unfolding during the campaign to determine. I’m as interested to find out the lore of this world as anyone. Perhaps we’ll explore this lonely moon after Those Bastards!

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