Thac0 with Advantage 57. DnD and Diversity

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends who have been playing D&D for a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D keeps us company on the long roads we travel.

Sometimes, when an adventuring party loves an NPC very much, they start traveling together and setting common goals. We’re going to talk about the companion characters, those NPCs with their own goals and sidequests, that we love from CRPGs, why you might want them in your campaign, why you might not, and how to make a standard NPC feel like a companion character.

Thac0 with Advantage 56. Companion Characters

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends who have been playing D&D for a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D keeps us company on the long roads we travel.

Sometimes, when an adventuring party loves an NPC very much, they start traveling together and setting common goals. We’re going to talk about the companion characters, those NPCs with their own goals and sidequests, that we love from CRPGs, why you might want them in your campaign, why you might not, and how to make a standard NPC feel like a companion character.

Thac0 with Advantage 55. Worldbuilding Part 2

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D.

A few episodes ago, we talked a little about homebrewing and setting building, but much of that was hypothetical. This week, We’re getting practical by talking to Chris about his homebrew ideas and how he’s used them in our play, The Heroes of Hovel’s Way. We’ve custom-crafted a new episode just for you.

Thac0 with Advantage 54. Range of Player Skill

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D was our training wheels for getting into roleplaying games.

How much experience do your players have? Not their characters, but your players. What do you need to do to run a game for players that don’t think about tactics and how classes complement one another, versus players that know the best collection of abilities to actions to defeat monsters way above their weight class. On the other hand, what about players that are naturally tactically minded, but haven’t quite warmed up to the aspects of D&D that doesn’t revolve around finding the best way to navigate combat? We’re going to look at different levels of player and their ability and appetite for tactics.

Thac0 with Advantage 53. Backgrounds

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D is the five page backstory we wrote for our characters.

Characters in our fantasy stories have always had varied and interesting backgrounds. From Conan being born on the battlefield to Raistlin being weak and sickly his entire life. These moments in their lives helped push them into who they were as the characters we’ve enjoyed in fiction. RPG characters can be the same but it’s nice when the game helps us get there. Jared and Ang discuss the history of backgrounds in DnD and then their current implementation in D&D 2024 and other contemporary high fantasy games.

Thac0 with Advantage 52. A Question of Evil?

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D has almost completed the process of ceremorphosis on us..

Senda and Phil, our beloved Pandas That Talk About Games, were recently discussing nefarious player characters in a campaign and how to handle them, and they just happened to ask “I wonder what Ang and Jared think about this topic in D&D.” Today, we’re going to explore what Ang and Jared think about evil characters in D&D campaign. Does it work, and if it does, how does it work. Join us in our descent into evil.

Thac0 with Advantage 51. What Goes In Your Homebrew?

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D still has a lot of potential energy.

From 3rd edition forward, when asked, the majority of DMs indicate that they run a homebrew campaign, rather than a published setting. But what does that mean? What goes into that homebrew setting? Where the the inspiration come from? Does this mean that setting material is less valuable than general material? We’re going to pick apart what goes into creating a campaign from the ground up, and look at what gets ground up to make a homebrew setting.

From the Bardic College

How many official Dungeons & Dragons settings have been published over the years? If official means published by the current owner of D&D, there are more than 35 settings, including some interesting familiar locations from beyond D&D’s IP, like Conan’s Hyperborean Age, the movie version of Red Sonja’s word, and the Blizzard properties of Diablo and Warcraft. But, to be clear, Warcraft was a D&D setting briefly, but World of Warcraft was a d20 game using the 3eSRD. And the Warcraft movie definitely isn’t a D&D setting.

Thac0 with Advantage 50. What Have VTT Done to Us?

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D has followed us into cyberspace.

Time changes all things, including the procedures we engage with when we set up and run our games. We’ve broadly looked at VTTs before, but this time we’ll be examining our time using VTTs, how that’s changed over time, and what other VTT experiences we’ve had to expand our horizons.

Thac0 with Advantage 49. Trouble at the Table

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends who have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D lets us practice our diplomacy skills.

Dungeons & Dragons is a game that requires social interaction. It is a game that can inspire strong emotions and great feelings of satisfaction. It is also prone to miscommunications and mistakes, just like any other social interaction. This episode we’re going to look at when there are problems at the table, and what we can do when those problems come up.