MCU’s Failure Can Be Your Infinity War D&D Campaign Success

More Marvel Cinematic Universe talk within the honored halls of Nerdarchy. As I scribe away on scrolls and interdimensional glyphs, I ponder on the MCU films in D&D terms and how the limitations they had could easily be fixed at the gaming table. Let’s explore what I believe to be the largest weakness of the collective movies and how you can take advantage of the MCU’s failure to infuse a clever narrative arc and create your own Infinity War D&D campaign. Oh, fair warning, super minor Infinity War spoilers.

Crafting an Infinity War D&D campaign

Who’s this purple dude?

While I love the films, even the less desirable ones, I cannot avoid noticing the MCU’s failures within the films. The big one that really felt like missed potential was Thanos himself. I understand the limitations that came with undertaking this massive multi-billion dollar experiment and don’t hold it against the heads of the MCU for not doing a better job building up and foreshadowing Thanos. Yes, he was shown, and yes, they did a few things here and there, but it would have been so much more interesting had we seen Thanos moving towards his goals over these ten years? Seeing his children engage the heroes a few times and get more depth out of them over a few skirmishes would have been a wonderful build up to Infinity War. I understand why they didn’t and that’s why I still had a wonderful time with these films and greatly enjoyed Infinity War. However, you can take their example and do so, so much better.

Growing darkness

Professor Bill heads to Limbo to bring the Infinity War to your D&D game… (Click image for more)

The benefit of being a Dungeon Master is that you have full control over what you show to your characters and where the narrative is building. You can introduce an NPC early in the campaign, even as an ally to the party, giving them tasks or aid then once they become more skilled they find this NPC is a complex villain and maybe even working for a more powerful foe. Having a prophecy or some growing dread, physical or not, mentioned multiple times over the course of many sessions can have a powerful payoff.

Planting seeds is important to this style of writing in table top role playing games. Best tip I can give is just to throw in something small here and there with no plan to grow it. A small trinket found in an owlbear den or a marred coin in a treasure pile can mean nothing when the party finds it but maybe 12 sessions down the road, you come up with something or even better (and more likely) the players speculate about the trinket and you fall in love with one of the ideas and build off of it. These small additions can make a huge difference in your players’ level of immersion and buy-in.

[NERDITOR’S NOTE: For another awesome take on a D&D campaign inspired by the MCU, check out this video of Comic Book University’s Professor Bill takeover of the Nerdarchy YouTube channel.]

What do you think? Have you ever used these tactics? Do you have any further suggestions that help put the MCU films in D&D terms? Let us know down below.

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