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Kickstarter Korner for Nov. 2017, 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.

DriveThruRPG digital RPG

DriveThruRPG Sponsors Nerdarchy and Saves You Money on RPG Stuff

Nerdarchy is proud to announce a terrific sponsorship from DriveThruRPG – the largest RPG download store! Since 2001, DriveThruRPG has been a premiere online marketplace for digital and print-on-demand roleplaying games. Even more, the expanded family of sites makes comic books, card games, fiction and more available with ease. With DriveThruRPG as a sponsor, we can now pass along great deals to the Nerdarchy community.

Are Tabletop Games Destined To Go Digital?

I know, I know – the very title is blasphemy. Tabletop games in digital form have been tried before, and while they can be perfectly enjoyable, they kind of miss the point. These games are about gathering together, enjoying a tangible game board (with pieces and/or cards), having a few drinks together, or even dressing up for the event. It’s about community and friendship as much as the game itself, and there’s a depth of experience there. For crying out loud, it’s even become the foundation for Stranger Things, which is one of the most popular shows on the planet right now!

Marvelous Phile: Popularity in Marvel Super Heroes RPG

Hey, guys, Professor Bill of Comic Book University (where tuition is always free) and I’m bringing you the fifth article of the Marvelous Phile, an homage to the excerpt in Dragon Magazine back in the ’80s. FASERIP game mechanic - popularity In the previous adventure (season 2, episode 5)...

Creating Winged, Wild and Fierce Elves for 5E D&D

Between the time this article was written (Sunday 11.12.2017 afternoon), sent to editor (Sunday 11.12.2017 evening), and scheduled to appear in front of you (scheduled for release 11.14.2017) Wizards of the Coast released Unearthed Arcana update (11.13.2017) that is of near identical nature, offering new subrace options for elves. It is not my place to claim mine is better, and I do highly encourage checking out the WotC version and using both versions as you, and your table, see fit. Thus you would achieve a more thorough play-test when time for the survey comes around. 

The Wizards of the Coast Unearthed Arcana: Elf Subraces can be found here

In my gaming group I got into a big discussion about things we wished would be brought from older editions of Dungeons & Dragons to fifth edition. This lead to the two older gamers in our group discussing the most varied classic player race we could think of, elves.

We began to describe the wild elves, and the most elusive of elves, the Lythari. Let me bring you these subraces, and my quick versions of them. As always these are in no way official or the limits of these subraces but are merely meant to get you started bringing these elves into your world.

D&D Flavour Shot: Dark Fey Portals

A Flavour Shot is a short description of game artefacts and phenomena for use by Dungeon Masters, Game Masters and Storytellers in their roleplaying games. Feel free to drag and drop these into your own games, and modify to suit. Let us know if you end up using them. Some will be portals to other realms, some will be magic items, others will be monster encounters. This time, it’s…

Kickstarter Korner for Nov. 2017, 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

Out of the Box D&D Encounters, Series 2, #23, “The Librarian”

Out of the Box introduction

A classic monster from D&D has always been the beholder. However, when one says that word, it tends to conjure images of the largest and worst version of the species. To be fair, there are a lot of different versions of this species, each with their own specialty. They range in power and size from the tiny gazer to the undead eye tyrant, with a few variants to fill the gaps in between.
Eye of the Beholder Dungeons & Dragons art

Gazing Into Eye of the Beholder: The Art of Dungeons & Dragons

Whether you started playing Dungeons & Dragons out of the original woodgrain-colored box and the three little brown booklets inside or you’re new to the hobby and go completely digital with D&D Beyond, before you make a single die roll, you’re drawn in by art. From Greg Bell’s Doctor Strange “inspired” mounted warrior on the original 1974 box cover to Tyler Jacobson’s depiction of an adventurer battling King Snurre on the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook, fantasy art’s history and influence on D&D is woven into the fabric of the game.

The stories behind the art, helping to create the worlds we play in, are the focus of the new documentary Eye of the Beholder: The Art of Dungeons & Dragons from the team of X-Ray Films and Cavegirl Productions. The film profiles artists who contributed to the rich world of fantasy D&D art and features insiders, designers, writers and fans sharing the impact of art on their games and lives.

Hyperlanes Classes: Sci-Fi for D&D

Following up a live chat and offline interview with Hyperlanes creator Ryan Chaddock and a look at species from the cinematic sci-fi ruleset fueled by the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons engine, we’re continuing on through the Hyperlanes corebook with Chapter 3: Class.

One of the best things about D&D 5E is the modular design philosophy. Stripping away all the class features, slots and so forth, D&D character classes are great framework to hang homebrew elements onto. I’ve had a lot of fun creating and playing with things like the barbarian Path of the Azure Primal Path and warlock Void Pact. There are six core classes in Hyperlanes, each with their own archetypes just like D&D. In fact, the class options in Hyperlanes are each built using one of the core D&D classes as a chassis. I’ve read through them all several times, ran a couple of sessions for players using them and certainly imagined more than one character I’d like to play.

Curious as to which ones?

NaNoWriMo writing

Quick and Dirty Writing Tricks for NaNoWriMo

Salutations nerds! It’s November, and that means National Novel Writing Month is in full swing. I’m willing to bet if you clicked on this article you already know what that is, but permit me a brief recap on the off chance you aren’t already in the know.

Basically, NaNoWriMo is a word marathon where a bunch of crazy people decide to attempt to write at least 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. The rules are simple. You aren’t allowed to actually start writing your story until November starts (but really you’re only cheating yourself if you do), and it has to be 50,000 on the same tale. Typically, you’re looking at writing about 1,667 words a day to be able to finish on time, but there are some even crazier people out there who shoot higher.

D&D Flavour Shot: Druid Portals

Any Dungeon Master will be able to tell you how hectic running a fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons session can get, especially when your players go in a totally unexpected direction and you start having to make stuff up on the fly to accommodate them. To make life a little easier, I’m putting together the Flavour Shot series. They are descriptions you can drag and drop into your D&D campaigns to quickly introduce mechanics for players to make use of.