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D&D Ideas — Reflections

Welcome once again to the weekly newsletter. This week’s topic is the reflections, which we discussed in our weekly 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 reflections we’re encouraging your serious thought or consideration for our latest big project. Mage Forge is ideal for GMs who run short on time for game prep by providing magic items with the potential to define your adventures and the characters who uncover them. You can get the Nerdarchy 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. You can get the Nerdarchy 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

Shuffle on back to the week that was! Call on the dark powers of homebrew necromancy, my background can beat up your background and now that the campaign finished what’s next? Plus new live chats with industry pros and creative folks round out this week’s Nerdy News. Check it out here.

Delving Dave’s Dungeon

Reflections is one of the more amorphous topics we’ve come up with for our live chats and newsletter editorials. The funny thing is reflections have actually come up in a few of our RPG experiences in meaningful ways.

• Court of Wyrms — live stream 5E D&D with Save or Dice. One of the characters was walking down the street past a shop window. I had their character look in the direction of the window and describe the reflection to the rest of the group.
• Those Bastards! — live stream 5E D&D at Nerdarchy Live. We had a great reflections moment where the adventuring party came upon a hall of mirrors. Our DM Robin asked us each three things about our characters from the previous session. The reflections in the mirrors showed us different aspects of our characters and we got to roleplay them. Nerdarchist Ted described these scenes as some of the best he’s ever had in an RPG.
• Moon Rises — live stream 5E D&D at Nerdarchy Live. The opening scene of this Cypher System campaign saw the group trying to enter a city along with a lot of other travelers. The city was near the Hudson River. During their wait lunar daemons attacked. One of the characters was a retro-astronaut in full space suit so the characters he traveled with could see their reflections in his space helmet and I asked the players to describe what they saw. Another character was nearby the water and used the reflections there for the description. Another fought with hook swords as they drew their blades and crossed them in front of them guess what? Reflections on the blades. The description came off the reflections on another characters’ eyes.

During another 5E D&D game (not live streamed) set in the Court of Wyrms setting I used reflections in a different way. All the characters were granted visions reflecting on past decisions they made but the visions they experienced gave them even more perspectives on those situations than they had at the time.

I love the idea of this topic as a tool for storytelling whether it’s reflections of the past, self reflections or just shiny surfaces you use for describing the setting. One of the other things I think of is mirrors. Mirrors are great in RPGs as traps, magic items and plot devices.

Two plots come to mind right away. The Bizzaro World where things are the opposite of how they normally are — including evil versions of the player characters. You can tell they are the evil versions because they all have goatees of course. The other is just a mirror that creates another version of anyone who looks in it. Their duplicate wants to murder and replace them — perfect if you’ve ever wanted to have your players face themselves in battle like our Shadow of Your Former Self encounter.

From Ted’s Head

Reflections are such a big deal in RPGs because these phenomena really have the power to invoke our imaginations. When we play a fantasy RPG we tend to gloss over many details but in reflections many of those details can become highlighted.

An adventurer out on the road rarely has time to take in their appearance. I will give you how certain characters might make sure they are presentable because this is their norm but on the road I daresay many if not most characters do not have a comb or brush to make their hair look nice let alone a washcloth to scrub their face. When they look at their reflections they are full of grime and blood from previous battles. This of course need not be the case.

Reflections can be something like deflecting missiles that Monks get the ability to do or it could be like the hide of a tarrasque or shell of a flail snail. I even copied this ability and gave it to my big bad in the last campaign I completed. In previous games I had failed in so many counterspell competitions that having a “spellcaster” endboss was a real challenge. If I gave it abilities instead of spells, they would not be countered. One such ability was like a counterspell or a reflect as instead of it targeting the BBEG it went to a target of my choosing. It was their spell so I used their own stuff against them. In Strixhaven there is a creature that just duplicates the spell another casts but replaces all attacks or saves with its own, which is incredible. I know reflecting a spell back at its caster is tough, so I gave it only one use. I like creating unique abilities and unique enemies. So regardless of if you are reflecting missiles or spells have fun with it but use it sparingly.

Reflections are something that can easily be used in puzzles. Whether the entire riddle is written as a reflection, reflection is the answer or you have to put the answer in backwards the concept is easy to make adapted to a riddle. If you are the kind of DM who likes to make props you can even print out your riddle and flip it over and copy it. This method gives you one page with the riddle properly and one page with it that you can hand to your players. I personally do not do a lot of props but I have some ideas that I would certainly like to do.

From the Nerditor’s Desk

Since we’re in the throes of our second Kickstarter I’ll shamelessly promote it while keeping the spirit of this week’s topic front and center. Nothing says reflections like a mirror and within the collection of 250 magic items there’s four of them with a connection to those reflective surfaces. One of them began in a newsletter just like this one.

When we explored ideas surrounding what lies beyond death in D&D an interesting magic item spun out of the discussion. A mirror of the otherside is a rare wondrous item with the power to contact any creature no longer living for a short period of interpersonal communication. Through the mirror a character can speak with the dead without the normal requirements of their corpse with a mouth. But you’d better make sure your conversation partner is worth it because you only have one shot at getting in touch with the other side.

My imagination is whirling with the adventuresome possibilities here. Searching for knowledge is a pretty pervasive pastime in D&D. Characters quest far and wide to uncover ancient texts, interface with eldritch entities and often simply put in the hard work searching through tomes and scrolls at a library or other storehouse of information.

But you can’t beat firsthand accounts, right? During their quest for knowledge the adventurers learn of a powerful mirror whose fabled properties cast back reflections of anyone in history. Proper handling of this mirror is even said to allow those in the present to pose questions to those from long ago.

Now the search is on! Not only must the adventuring party figure out where to look for this rare magic item but also who to reach back to once it’s found. They’ll need to determine who might be able to help them and learn this historical figure’s name. Influential people of the day may be easier to find out about but suppose the key to completing their quest lies in the knowledge held by one of the common folk or an uncertain individual of any stripe.

Because the Mage Forge magic items share a close connection with our own game experiences I can tell you at least one way this pans out. The adventurers traveled far afield from the safety and comfort of their seaside home town following a fragmented trail of clues. Their self-motivated quest led them to discover the ancient origins of a myth they’d all but forgotten about hearing in their earliest adventures.

Eventually they learned the name of the myth’s protagonist, a young hunter led astray by cruel fey and his own misplaced sense of valor. It then became another leg of their quest to discover the possible whereabouts of the mirror of the otherside, which they planned to use as a conduit to the spirit of the young hunter. That was a spectacular adventure in it’s own right!

After these incredible journeys culminating in facetime with the young hunter’s spirit the party was so moved by what they learned that one of them offered to exchange places with the spirit so it could be freed! (This wasn’t necessary though — he was a-okay on the Olympian Glades of Arborea.)

All told these events formed a significant part of the entire 12 session campaign. The characters heard the myth at the tavern their first night in town and became absolutely enthralled by the story. Learning more, traveling to the place where the myth purportedly took place, tracking down the young hunter’s name and discovering the mirror of the otherside were all things the players pursued, driven by their own curiosity.

See what we mean about magic items with the potential to define your adventures and the characters who uncover them? Our motivation for putting the Mage Forge collection together is to celebrate our love for magic items and share them with you to create the same kinds of amazing experiences together in your groups. This doesn’t mean Game Masters only either! We hope these magic items inspire your own imaginations and ideas for adventure.

For those of you curious about the other three Mage Forge items with sharing a connection to reflections the collection also includes the Frozen Mirror of Spell Reflection, Mirror of Vanity and Vargarian Eye.

*Featured image — Anyone who loves fantasy art or compelling magic items for the world’s most popular fantasy roleplaying game can add to their collection with this deluxe box set of tarot sized magic item cards. Each card includes gorgeous illustrations on one side, with detailed item features color coded by rarity for ease of use on the other. Discover the Mage Forge here!

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