D&D Treasure — When Gold Isn’t Enough
When it comes to rewarding players in Dungeons & Dragons, there is gold and silver coins, magic items, titles, and more. But what if that isn't enough or your player's characters don't care about that? This is an an issue that came up in a...
Education Adventures: Math and More from D&D for Students
Education Adventures is a column written by educator Megan Hardy. Through the Outschool program, Megan teaches a series of Life Skills courses using fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. During the six week campaign, heroes head out to save the land from an evil ruler, facing challenges and battles and making friends along the way while learning logic and critical thinking. The campaign is designed specifically for children ages 9-14 and highlights problem solving, logic puzzles and team work while participating in a grand adventure. In the Education Adventures column, Megan shares insights and lessons she learns through teaching D&D for students and their experiences.
D&D-izing He-Man’s Power Sword for 5E D&D
At Nerdarchy, we get requests to D&D-ize characters from movies, TV, comics and literature fairly regularly. There’s a whole playlist on the Nerdarchy YouTube channel for D&D-ized fictional characters, which I’ve included for your convenience below. And my very first assignment as a contributing writer here on the site was to D&D-ize the Sword of Omens from the Thundercats mythos. (I’d written a few columns before but that was an assignment from Nerdarchist Dave.) I spent quite a few hours researching, referencing the Dungeon Master’s Guide for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, writing and refining that particular artifact. More recently, we had a request via the Nerdarchy Facebook page to D&D-ize another legendary cartoon weapon — the Power Sword from the Masters of the Universe mythology. This will be my fourth go around with D&D-izing something. I also have our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man under my belt, as well as collaborating with Professor Bill from Comic Book University on my two favorite comic book characters, Mister Miracle and Big Barda. So let’s get to it and create He-Man’s legendary weapon that makes him the most powerful man in the universe, for 5E D&D.
Player Agency and Why Some Curses Are Total Garbage
I promise you I’m not finished talking about Dungeons & Dragons villains, but something came up this week that requires my immediate attention and I will get right back to those as soon as I’m done with this one. Yeah, we’re going to talk about player agency in 5E D&D. I can hear people groaning already. The thing is, player agency has kind of lost its meaning in the midst of all of these discussions about it and I hear it used incorrectly as often as I hear it used right.
Kickstarter Korner for October 2018, Week 2
Each week during the Quests & Adventures live chat, Saturday at 2 p.m. eastern, Nerdarchists Dave and Ted and Nate the Nerdarch hang out live with fans from the Nerdarchy YouTube channel. It’s a chance to share announcements and news, answer questions from the live chat...
The North Seat 5E D&D Campaign Setting from Ethan Hudgens
Often, I find myself wandering around different Discords and Twitch channels wondering what other gamers are up too. Recently I’ve been watching something on the UnMadeGaming channel and found Mike in a game being run by Ethan Hudgens, and I watched in fascination as they tried to kill a bear. As usual Mike had a rough night, but I found myself more and more curious about campaign setting. After the game I was chatting with the folks in the Discord channel and found out Ethan has his work up on DriveThruRPG presented by Encounter Roleplay (another great channel I strongly recommend you check out). After buying The North Seat primer and book one titled Hostadd, Our Home, I am completely intrigued by the story and I think you should be too. Today, we’re going to take a look at the primer and do a review of the books. Hostadd is a 5E D&D alternate campaign setting and style. After reading book one and the primer, I think you’ll really enjoy it so let’s take a jump in and start looking at things.
Pacesetter Games and Simulation with Unexpected Miniatures
I filled in for Nerdarchist Dave on one of our weekday live chats a while back when we were doing them regularly, and I got to sit down and have a great conversation with Ben Barsh from Pacesetter Games and Simulation. They have a range of products for a variety of different roleplaying games, but we talked about their Kickstarter and bringing Pasesetter into fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons adventures. You can check out their successful Rise of the Nefarious: A 5th Edition Campaign and and their other 5E adventures on the Pacesetter website.
5E D&D Monsters Become BFFs and Adventurers Pay the Price
One of my favorite things about Dungeons & Dragons is the monsters. There’s so many incredible creatures throughout the history of D&D! My go-to method for creating adventures in my own games is starting with a monster and developing ideas from there. It’s no surprise the Monster BFF series from Nerdarchy the YouTube channel ranks high on my list of likes. In this series the crew takes two or three 5E D&D monsters, puts them together and discovers what sort of encounter emerges. I’ve had the privilege of sitting in on two planning sessions for these videos and contributing ideas. The first one got me hooked enough to work on an adventure based around the monster pairing. And the second one, in the video below, I helped turn into Nerdarchy’s first Monster BFF product over on the Dungeon Master’s Guild. The Roper Wrangler’s got ropers (duh), it’s got fomorians, it’s got faerzress, it’s got an Underdark location — basically it’s got deadly peril for adventurers who stumble across this encounter. Because sometimes a creature’s gotta hit a creature with another creature.
5E D&D Magic Item Deep Dive — Stone of Good Luck
The stone of good luck, or luckstone, has been a staple good, yet persistently underrated, Dungeons & Dragons magic item since some of the earliest editions of the game. It retains this status in 5E D&D, as an (un)common item virtually any player would say is good, but which nonetheless gets overlooked compared to other items. In my experience, for the cost of one attunement slot, there are few items out there — even of higher rarity — that greatly surpass the luckstone for a wide variety of characters, though any given class or race has some specific items that beat it out.
Kickstarter Korner for October 2018, Week 1
Each week during the Quests & Adventures live chat, Saturday at 2 p.m. eastern, Nerdarchists Dave and Ted and Nate the Nerdarch hang out live with fans from the Nerdarchy YouTube channel. It’s a chance to share announcements and news, answer questions from the live chat and generally just hang out and talk nerdy with the Nerdarchy community.
In the description of each weekly video, Nerdarchist Ted compiles a list and links to all the videos and website content from the week. But he also shares a selection of cool Kickstarter campaigns. As an avid Kickstarter supporter, he’s happy to share his favorite RPG and gaming-related Kickstarters with you, the Nerdarchy community. Enjoy!
Forest Kingdom Campaign Compendium for 5E D&D
When Nerdarchy went to GenCon 2018 I met some of the people over at Legendary Games and got a copy of their Forest Kingdom Campaign Compendium for 5E D&D to check out. I am a huge fan of fey and forest games out in the wilderness and away from normal civilization. If you want to pick up the book on Amazon you can do so here. You can also head over to the Legendary Games site and check out this or other amazing products they offer.
D&D Campaign Settings — Eberron has Come to Adventurers League and 5E
While at GenCon 2018 we got to sit down with Keith Baker creator of the Eberron — one of the official D&D campaign settings. Eberron was launched via a contest during third Edition Dungeons & Dragons. It was then updated to fourth edition D&D. Now on the DM’s Guild you can pick up the Wayfarer’s Guide to Eberron the 5E D&D conversion. On Sept, 21, 2018, Adventurers League started offering an Eberron Campaign. Normally Adventurers League is PHB +1. For the Eberron campaign it will be Player’s Handbook, Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, and bugbears, goblins, and hobgoblins from Volo’s Guide to Monsters.
If you aren’t familiar with Eberron it’s a arcana punk setting. It takes place after a 100-year war between what is now the five nations of Khorvaire. The catalyst for the ending of the war is a apocalyptic event known as the Mourning. It wiped out Cyre, one of the warring nations, and no one knows what happened, leaving behind a haunted wasteland. Nothing like the threat of an apocalypse to bring people together.
Way of the Zen Archer Monastery for 5E D&D
Why not a Way of the Zen Archer Monastery for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons? With the release of Xanathar’s Guide to Everything for 5E D&D a lot of options have been opened up. The zen archer is a fun archetype for a fantasy game. That wasn’t possible previously. There was absolutely no mechanical reason play a monk who used ranged weapons. But XGtE changed things up by allowing for the creation of the ranged attack-based monks. We can now have a zen archer build. Why not take it a step further and create a monastery of zen archers. We recently did a character build video you can watch down below. We made it Adventurers League legal. We also did a character build guide and put it up over on the DMs Guild.
Armor Up Your 5E D&D Character Sheets With Gauntlets
Our friends over at ArchVillain Games have asked us to sponsor an article to help get the word out about their KickStarter for Gauntlets — Beautiful 5E Character Sheet Cases. I’m not sure how much help they needed though. After only 16 hours Archvillain Games has successfully funded their first KickStarter. Cameron Rout and Konstantinos Martinos are the minds behind Archvillain Games. I know some might be put off by this being a first KickStarter, but Cameron is one the minds behind D&D in a Castle with several more castles planned for next year. He’s got my vote of confidence after witnessing the inaugural D&D in Castle firsthand. Gauntlets are designed to have 5E D&D character sheets inserted in them or they can act as template for your character sheet by just using a blank sheet of paper. They come different options and designs. I don’t think it would be an overstatement to call the Gauntlet an artisanal way of displaying your character sheet either on the gaming table, a book shelf, or anywhere else you keep your gaming gear.
Big Monsters Have More to Love for Exciting D&D Encounters
Part Dungeon Master creativity, part player buy-in, exciting D&D encounters with big monsters in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons have a lot of moving parts to consider. Whether a low level party needs to deal with an awakened tree situation, or a group of characters at the pinnacle of their adventuring careers take on the tarrasque — or Tiamat herself — there’s more to consider than hit points and armor class. Adventuring ain’t easy, and anything from a pack of goblin bandits all the way up to Acererak itself are dangerous foes. But when huge and gangantuan sized D&D creatures squares off against the party, the threat escalates by orders of magnitude. A clever DM looks beyond the stat block, and collaborates with the players to create an immersive and memorable experience.
