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D&D Ideas — Vacations

Welcome once again to the weekly newsletter. This week’s topic is vacations, 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 vacations when’s the last time the adventurers in your life got away from it all? Wizard’s Wake includes a map and details about the Gylathacean Isles along with the colorful folk who make their home on the sea, plus a one shot adventure to discover the mysteries within the wreckage of an ancient ship. 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.

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Pop your claws for the week that was! Be the best there is at what you do (even if what you do ain’t pretty), summon sneaky soul power and delight at a carnival campaign plus a new live chats and live game play rounds out this week’s Nerdy News. Check it out here.

Delving Dave’s Dungeon

Vacations are a slice of life that could be introduced into any RPG, Dungeons & Dragons or otherwise. Initially I thought it would be an excuse for a beach episode or session of D&D. Turns out vacation episodes are their own thing that can coincide with a beach or poolside episode. These are both popular tropes from TV and anime.

If you know anything about Nerdarchy we are huge fans of borrowing from our favorite media to help us tell better stories in tabletop roleplaying games. Both of these genres are about going someplace else, but this is already what adventurers typically do. The question becomes can we still have beach and vacation episodes in our D&D games?

The short answer is yes, of course. We might have to put a bit of thought into it though. A good example of these kinds of sessions for D&D is the shopping episode. During many games this just happens in the background other games like Critical Role for one highlight it and roleplay a lot of it out together. Matt Mercer and crew make it look easy but with a little prep you can too. If characters are going to spend an extensive amount of time in a place like a city, town, or on a ship it pays to flesh out possible places for them to explore. Think about what makes a place interesting and where someone might want to go while there.

Is there a wizard in the group? Consider placing a library or bookstore complete with NPCs and interesting books.

Got martial classes? You’re going to need an armorer, weaponsmith or general blacksmith for sure. Who works at these places? Do they have any unusual items or materials they are known for working with? What about a military academy or training hall where warriors to learn special techniques?

What about characters of faith in the group? Will they want to visit shrines, churches or temples of their gods or even of different faiths?

Another take is one of the characters receiving a message from a long lost relative. It reads they’ve left an estate or manor. One catch — they must stay the night first. Perhaps it’s haunted, or maybe someone is trying to make it seem like it’s haunted Scooby-Doo style.

What about actual vacations? Maybe the adventuring party performs a good deed for a monarch or noble. They recognize the characters are overworked and as reward they send them on a vacation at one of their manor houses. It could be bad luck or timing, but something goes wrong and antics ensue. Or maybe it’s an extraplanar creature like a genie or celestial being that doesn’t give the group any choice and just whisks them off to an exotic location for a vacation whether they want it or not. It could be another plane of existence. Next thing you know, surprise! Antics ensue.

From Ted’s Head

The life of a D&D adventurer can be really tough. Just like us in real life we all need a vacation. As Dave recently traveled out to GenCon, my family took a nice little vacation to Minnesota. It was a whirlwind of 48 hours or less of checking out The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota, The Snake Discovery Zoo, Great Wolf Lodge and the Mall of America. It was an absolute blast. We wore masks when we were not in our hotel room and stayed as socially distant as possible.

When we look at vacations from an RPG standpoint the player characters should be familiar with places where one might want to rest and relax at or venture to after some hard fought battles. Making some interesting locales based on local legends or heroes from times gone by is certainly worth the time. Dungeon Masters ought to consider creating such locations and providing opportunities for characters to explore and relax at these places. We can get to spend some quality downtime.

But there are other ways to use vacations in our D&D games as well. With all the fey themed adventure in Wild Beyond the Witchlight and more specifically the approach of encounters designed with noncombat solutions included I have an idea brewing to get characters hooked on adventure.

Let me know if you want me to adopt this into a full Out of the Box encounter on Nerdarchy the Website. Here’s the rough outline:

In our campaign world the deity Joelivia is worshipped for beer, wine, partying, celebration or anything else along those lines. A high level cleric might set up an event using either custom high level spells or Divine Intervention to make an ongoing party start in a very largely populated area.

No one thinks of a party as a problem (unless it is too loud). This is a social event with many people willing to join but they find out too late they are unable to pull themselves away. With spells like heroes feast and magnificent mansion how hard would it be to have a spell or magic item that made limitless food and drink as long as the party goes?

However you want to have the event the issue could start when the adventurers realize how long they have been at the party or are brought in by someone who is concerned about this party getting out of hand. Characters have to find out what is the cause of the party and get it to stop. You can use any NPC as the center or something that changes over time, again as you see fit. This can be divinely influenced by either our deity or your own. It could also be set up by the fey who always love messing with mortals and love to party.

From the Nerditor’s Desk

The thing about D&D is no matter where the characters go they’re almost certain to find adventure. It’s uncanny, really. Even an innocuous meeting at a tavern spins into an epic journey. Taking anything from our own mundane world and adding magic, monsters and potential for escapist mayhem is my bread and butter as a Dungeon Master.

Vacations fall right in line with this notion as something relatable to the players so it does a tremendous amount of heavy lifting for establishing tone and atmosphere. At the wildest end of the spectrum you could start a campaign for even 1st level characters on another plane of existence in the context of a vacation and already it becomes easier to wrap your head around the fantasy elements.

At the most basic level vacations break state for the purposes of relaxation, rest or simply travel for travel’s sake. There’s an expectation of seeing new things in a fresh state of mind during a specified window of time before returning to regular life.

There’s lots of ways to go about taking a vacation too. A group of people can spend their own funds, win a trip as a prize for some sort of contest or receive an invitation to attend as a guest for some examples. I like this last one the best. Even 1st level characters could be considered experts compared to commoners. When a 1st level bard can literally kill with three jokes in 18 seconds that’s extraordinary!

This handful of everyday aspects of vacations provide a solid structure for adventuresome storytelling. Once you start filling in the blanks with all the fantastic elements of D&D and drop a group of adventurers into the mix the session practically runs itself.

During the yearslong Spelljammer campaign I ran for my friends at home at one point after a really pivotal point for the whole campaign and two characters in particular the group wondered aloud if there were any extra special getaway locales floating around in the phlogiston or a crystal sphere somewhere.

Of course there was and the crystal sphereverse’s swankiest resort asteroid traveled the phlogiston pulled by trained kindori (giant space whales). You already want to take a vacation there yourself, don’t you? It was on Ataraxia’s Haven where Lorn’s Gambler’s Gambit greatsword came in handy to clean up at the gaming tables, Theophrastus Bombastus discovered a new identity with which to try and hide from his Otherworldly Patron and Chodak the business monk wheeled and dealed with fantasy outer space’s movers and shakers.

As Nerdarchist Dave might put it, antics ensued as well. They got duped by an evil mining magnate to bust up a legitimate mining claim of a rival and dealt with some chaos vortexes and whatnot. You know, typical D&D stuff that happens anywhere the characters show up — even vacations.

It’s the reason I enjoy our Wizard’s Wake module so much. When I ran the scenario for our monthly one shot the premise was the group had won a vacation from their adventuring guild to the tropical isles, where naturally a magical mystery led them into a sunken shipwreck after enjoying what the islands offered. Whether these dangerous developments are world threatening or simply poking a hornet’s nest they give characters something intriguing to discover while otherwise enjoying the break state and the razzle dazzle of being on vacation.

One last idea is something we advocate all the time and that’s asking the players for their ideas too. Does a character have a favorite vacation spot from their childhood? Is there an exotic garden in a far off land a nature loving character hopes to visit someday? Welcoming players to the worldbuilding helps the setting come to life in a more vibrant way. Not for nothing it also gives DMs tons of cool ideas for free, ones you know they’re interested in because they came up with them in the first place.

*Featured images — Welcome to the Gylathacean Isles! Adventurers earn a vacation to this tropical locale and find fun in the sun. It’s not long before they learn about Wizard’s Wake, an ancient shipwreck tied to a magical disaster. No true 5E fantasy vacation is complete without an excursion into danger to discover arcane secrets and treasure. Check it out here.

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