Kickstarter Korner for May 2018, Week 3
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.
D&D Etiquette from Metagame to Manners
We decided to do a video response to an article over on the Jimmi Waz Ere website. We copied the article below for convenience, as well as our thoughts on the 10 Things You Need to Respect About D&D Etiquette video. By all means if you like Jimmi’s article click the link below to take look at the articles he’s got on his site and show him some love by sharing and commenting on the original article.
Delving into the West Marches RPG Campaign Style: First Adventuring Sessions
We continue this archiving of my experience running a West Marches style adventuring campaign and if you haven’t read the first article, you really should for context. In an effort to not only gather my thoughts, but help you decide if this is an RPG campaign style you want to toy with, we are going to dive deeper into this experiment. That’s really what the whole thing has been and what I’ve stressed to my players: this is an experiment. I started running this with strict adherence to what I saw as the core tenets of the RPG campaign style. That’s what we’ll be covering here, my and my players’ reactions to what I saw as core of the prescribed West Marches adventuring philosophy and the beginnings of us altering that vision to our needs.
Ironrise – A Steampunk Adventure Board Game
Spires of heavy metal scrape the smog stretched skies. Below, the rabble of its citizens toil away, working in the seemingly countless factories to scratch out their existence under the thumb of the oppressive government, all the while under the shadow of the Obligation, a massive airship that patrols high above. Will you be the hero needed to wrest these people from their poverty and ill-fortune, or be the villain who puts the vision-less rabble back in their place? In Ironrise – A Steampunk Adventure Board Game, you are doing just that. Heroes attempting to deliver their people from endless servitude pitted against villains forced to hold the line and secure the way of life that they know. Let’s delve deeper into this new board game, currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, and its unique setting.
Kobold Press Adventure Module The Tomb of Mercy has Perfect Timing
Thanks to Kickstarter and late-night impulse shopping online, getting the mail is much more exciting than a trip from the mailbox to the recycling bin. But it was extra nice a few weeks ago to find an unexpected package. Even moreso one from Kobold Press! An unabashed Kobold Press fan, I tore open the envelope to discover an adventure module. The Tomb of Mercy, a very slick booklet on several levels, is a 5th Edition adventure for five 8th-level characters. There’s always a lot to like in a Kobold Press product, and The Tomb of Mercy, designed by Sersa Victory, is no exception. Soup to nuts, I’m digging it.
Is There a Best Way to Build a D&D Party?
We had recently did a series on Playing D&D without Filling Party Roles. We did a video for each party role and how play without them both as the Dungeons Master and a player. As a follow up we thought we’d combine some of the lessons we took away from that series as well as go into the opposite direction.
The Name Game Part IV: Game Titles (And Why Your Campaign Should Have One)
Salutations, nerds! Today I want to take a moment to talk about game titles. A lot of home groups don’t have them, but plenty of character sheets (looking at you World of Darkness) have slots for ‘campaign name’ on the page and promote doing so. So, allow me to put on my saleslady hat and try to convince you this is a good idea.
D&D Character Builds Gets Creepy with the Lizard Wizard
We do several different types of D&D character builds here at Nerdarchy. There is a series we call D&Dize. In those videos we take fictional characters from movies, TV shows, novels, video games, and comic books and stat them up using fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. Then there is just our normal or regular D&D Character Builds. These builds are based off of standard tropes in D&D. Each of these 5E D&D character builds are optimized to really good at a specific part of the game and fit into typical D&D tropes.
Tilting on the Axis of Alignment in D&D 5E
Some would argue alignment no longer has a place in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. No matter where you lie on alignment it has been and will be, for the foreseeable future, a part of D&D. We had better get used to it because it’s here to stay. Alignment is a moral reference point we as players use to guide our actions and make sure we are sticking to the concept we have laid out. As important as the Traits, Ideals, Bonds and Flaws are, the core concepts of law vs. chaos, good vs. evil and all of the gray area leaves room to play there within.
5 Magical D&D Weather Phenomena
Salutations, nerds! We play fifth edition Dungeon & Dragons, and a lot of the settings we spend our time in come equipped with intense magical nonsense that permeates almost everything from wizards to weapons to other odds and ends. Depending on the kind of campaign you’re playing, the weather can sometimes be overlooked unless the Dungeon Master is specifically trying to drive characters someplace to take shelter, and honestly that’s okay. We drop details to enhance play, not to get in the way of it.
Starcalled Studios Creatures of Vathis: Volume One Kickstarter is a Beast(iary)!
The team of Starcalled Studios is a group of long-time gamers dedicated to bringing you tabletop content. In addition to streaming fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, RPG video games and board games on their Twitch channel, they also created several books for their Zodiac Empires setting including a full-color, illustrated campaign setting guide and player’s guide, and an adventure, all compatible with both 5E and Pathfinder. Their latest project, Creatures of Vathis: Volume One, successfully funded in 24 hours on Kickstarter with several weeks left to go on the campaign.
Kickstarter Korner for May 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 and generally just hang out and talk nerdy with the Nerdarchy community.
Out of the Box D&D Encounters, Series 2, #44 – “Airquarium”
Out of the Box introduction
There are two occasions when a Dungeon Master might wish to make an encounter something other than an obvious combat encounter. The characters may be wounded or otherwise diminished to the point where combat is a lethal risk. Or, the party of adventurers may be so averse to combat as to wish to avoid such at any cost. The latter can be prevalent when running a game for younger players.
Things Get a Little Chaotic When We Review Deep Magic: Chaos Magic from Kobold Press
We recently looked at the Deep Magic series Chaos Magic PDF over on the YouTube Channel. Nerdarchy has become great fans of the Kobold Press Deep Magic series. There’s tons of options for players and Dungeon Masters alike in this series.
Extend your 5E Game World with Limitless Adventures 5th Evolution
Andy Hand and his team at Limitless Adventures have heard your frustrated call. These top creators in the gaming community have assembled under the Limitless Adventures banner and have brought to you 5th Evolution (5Evo). The intrepid band of writers have sat down and given your favorite Fifth Edition rules new life in three fantastic genres: 80’s Horror, Super Heroes, and World War II. They’ve taken their favorite genres, added new equipment, rule supplements, and monsters, and made pregenerated characters and an 8-page introductory comic with an epic cliffhanger to start players right into the adventures, with the 5Evo Kickstarter set to launch on June 4, 2018. [NERDITOR’S NOTE: Updated June 6 with link to live Kickstarter]
