Double Sized Grab Bag of D&D Ideas

D&D in a Castle with headshots of Nerdarchist Dave and Ted to either side of it.

Double Sized Grab Bag of D&D Ideas

March 19, 2023

Dungeons & Dragons/ Editorial/ Free Nerdy Things/ Game Master Tips

Welcome once again to the weekly newsletter. This week there are several topics, We got a little behind on the newsletter so you get a double helping. We hang out 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 on the fly some unexpected circumstances kept us away from the usual weekly live chat so this week it’s anything goes! Enjoy four different topics instead of one.

Spotlight

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The adventure begins with Nerdarchy on Round 2 of the castle, July 8-12 2023

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Delving Dave’s Dungeon

Traditional Medieval Fantasy

Who only plays Traditional Medieval Fantasy? Years ago I would have scoffed at adding anything else to D&D. I was an obsolete purist when it came to D&D. Something happened to me and it changed in me like someone flipped a switch. I can’t specify what that something was but it happened. I chalk it up to boredom and playing the game of Dungeons and Dragons the same way for 20 years or so.

Over the years I started adding in and allowing other genres and inspirations into my games. I even ran an Eberron D&D campaign for a couple of years. It took place mostly in Sharn the City of Towers not even close to a traditional medieval fantasy setting. In other campaigns, there were goblin zombies wearing steam-powered armor, a collective of magical construct humanoid hybrids inspired by the borg of Star Trek, black powder weapons, and arcane-powered motorcycles in a post-apocalyptic world. The motorcycles and their mechanics can be found on Patreon here. The vargarians are our arcana-borg can be found here.

My current D&D campaign is inspired by Descent into Avernus and its Devil’s Rides. Heck one of Nerdarchist Ted’s games that he refers to as the kid’s game, Swamp Gate, is all about clockwork mechanisms and discovering arcane-infused technological artifacts left over from the vargarians. I don’t think traditional medieval fantasy makes sense in modern D&D anymore or at least not as the only flavor. Sure it is how it started out but things change and evolve over time. Even in AD&D, it didn’t take long for other flavors to begin to creep in. You can go crazy all at once or slowly change what D&D is to you and your friends if you want. Adding black powder cannons to a nautical campaign is just a fun idea. Or a game where you incorporate firearms into it. With the addition of artificers and giff into D&D it’s hard to not have those things.

If you aren’t sure about adding elements from outside of traditional medieval fantasy, but want to take a stab at it here are some ideas.

Unique items or gear that can’t easily be reproduced as treasure.
NPC or monster show-up gear the players have never seen before.
Players travel to another world, dimension, time, or isolated location that is full of these elements.
Players scry on any of the above.

Victory and Defeat

Is Victory and Defeat a part of your TTRPG experiences? If not they both should be. I’m victory is an all too familiar part of any TTRPG whether it is Dungeons & Dragons or some other role-playing game, but what about the other side of the coin? Defeat can be a great motivator as well as a learning experience. In the media, our heroes’ victories are so much sweeter when they must overcome a defeat first. We can do the same in our D&D games. I think one of the problems with defeat with D&D is DMs and players think of it as having to have finality.

Defeat = Death

It doesn’t have to though. There are several ways to handle the defeat of the players or their failure to accomplish a goal or task.

Villain gets away with McGuffin.
Characters are all get knocked out.
It didn’t really happen in version One: A shared dream sequence.
It didn’t really happen in version Two: The illusion.
Important NPC is killed or taken hostage.

Having a villain that manages to stay a step ahead of your players can be very frustrating for them, but it also heightens the sense of victory when they finally take them down. You wouldn’t want to do this all the time, used sparingly it can add fun and excitement to the game. Introducing a powerful villain when the party is low-level and letting them work their way up to finally defeating this powerful foe towards the end of the campaign can be a great way to keep the players invested in the campaign.

Another idea is at the start of the game before session 1 introduce the idea of this villain to the players and ask each of them what awful thing they suffered at the hands of this enemy. Then work those pieces of their backstory into the campaign.

From Ted’s Head

Castles

Castles are a big thing in Fantasy Games, Like Dungeons and Dragons! Castles can fill the role of the centerpiece of a political game, a goal for a player that wishes to be a general or even a ruler on any kind of level. I once played a fighter in an earlier edition of the game whose goal was just that. He wanted to be a general. The DM pushed that to mean that he wanted to be king and allowed that to be an option, though we did have to conquer a castle to make it happen. Castles can be a dungeon.

I of course bring this up because in July Dave and I are headed to a castle to play some dungeons & Dragons at Lumley Castle in England. There are still some seats available at our tables. The castle experience is so much fun, and the people involved are just great. This will be my third round of running games at this castle and I have loads of ideas. Both Dave and I are planning to discuss with our players and allow them to help decide what kind of game and story we are going to run. Dave and I are both DMs that try to incorporate character goals and the player wishes into the story so spending some time ahead of time to gather those precious details makes for a better game.

Castles can easily be themed

Loss

Today I am going to talk about loss, but as it relates to Dungeons and Dragons. Be it a person moving away, an argument at the table, a campaign ending for one reason or another or a beloved character dying, loss happens. Everyone processes things differently. I once had friends angry that I ended a campaign as the story was over. They were having so much fun and I had never finished a campaign before, so without any warning, the story was over and the whole group was so distraught.

Now obviously this ties into the sports game that happened recently. Here is Nerdarchy Headquarters we were routing for the Eagles, but they did not manage to win. But it also pairs nicely with this loss. Playing a game for years and not having a story culmination can be a bad thing for the psyche. If you follow me onto Mini Terrain Domain, you would know that I had been playing as part of the Dawnbringers on a regular basis for over years. Sadly some things happened, which I will not go into, and that game will not be completed. I have to admit it hurts that I cannot complete that game with my friends, dare I say, Family? After spending so many hours just about every week a bond was made and now it is gone. I and some players are going forward with a new game, and I have permission from the DM to kind of narrate my own end, for my sake, but I am sure it will not pair up with what others in that game might do.

Our last encounter was with a mighty red dragon, and I will say he smoked us. We won, but we had our asses handed to us. I feel it would take divine intervention to fight the fight I saw coming. So, Again, I do not know what the others saw, but I am sadly inclined to say that the Dawnbringers put up a Legendary fight against a terrible foe, but Thorgarn would not have made his way out of it. If the dragon lives or not is someone else’s call. But Thorgarn has met his fate and is off to see Moridan and if he is lucky his deep gnome wizard that he fell in love with in his back story: Shamorla. Perhaps he will get to see his Hero Vondron Foehammer, an ancient dwarf of legendary skill. Perhaps he will once again see his mentor Father Greffin.

But not all losses are a bad thing. We as humans learn from growth. Years ago Dave ran a game and again it was a thing that we ended right at a moment of excitement. Sadly that game was not to be finished, but how could our heroes not win? But with a mere 1 session left to play our story sat unfinished. I trapped Dave recently with a ploy of taking me to the airport. In that car ride I pitched an Idea that I wanted to use that happened to tie in nicely with the possible end of the game he ran. A 20-minute car ride infused me with such vigor as I not only got to find out what happened at the end of our game but catapulted another part of our world forward with some fresh ideas and a new direction that magically fits with everything I had already laid out for my players.

So if you have ended a campaign or lost a character recently and it is still affecting you let it get to you. Do what you need to, We make emotional connections with our campaigns, our characters, and our worlds. And it is fine to do so. Emotions are powerful for a reason, but I just hope that should it affect you, find a way forward and let it springboard you into something else equally as great.

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