Thrain and Barrai spooked by the noise decided to book it towards the direction of the mess hall. There they run into a stone wall and Barrai thinks it’s a dead end but Thrain, with his dwarven eyes study it and see that there appears to be a single stone, large, that looks like it’s loose that he could push out of the way. It takes some effort and Barrai’s help but they push the door out of the way and they see that they are in the cellar where they were supposed to have gone for shelter during the dragon attack.

Bokken thinking that everything is good leaves Sanphire up in the tower after their dagger throwing competition and heads back into the mess hall through the kitchen. In the kitchen he is caught by Narius. But Narius, after having gotten beaten up by their group once decides not to fight him and just finishes drinking his water. Bokken settles down watching the door for the night.

Thrain and Barrai thinking that they are being smart decide to loop back around, sneaking outside to see whom they can see who was following them down the tunnel. They make it to a corner and they see Sanphire, out of the tower where he had been keeping watch, going to pick up the two daggers. One of the daggers is lying by the trapdoor which is propped ever so slightly open by a piton. Barrai, thinking quickly, decides to try and cast sleep on Sanphire. However, the spell doesn’t seem to have an affect on him, instead there is a thump from down inside the tunnel and Sanphire notices the trapdoor and the piton. He throws open the trapdoor and messages Tormin. Tormin sees the trapdoor and looks surprised by it. He wakes up the other teachers and they all come out. Barrai, watching the proceedings notices that neither the teachers Dadellous or Linken seem surprised or as surprised as they should be by the trapdoor. Or at least as surprised as Assendial and Tormin did. Barrai and Thrain sneak back inside.

Inside they go back to sleep and are awakened early in the morning by Assendial and Tormin who wake up all the students. Tormin tells them about the secret tunnel and that something was found underneath the barracks where the dragon had attacked and where Castillia had gotten her leg broken. They then tell the students that they are going to question them one by one and start on that process while Linken and Dadellous continue to study the tunnels.

Bokken is the first to go in to be questioned. He steps in and realizes that the room has had some spell cast on it, a zone of truth, and that he has to tell the truth, not Liar Liar style but he cannot right out lie. Assendial is sitting there and she asks him if he knew about the tunnel or any secret passage prior to Tormin telling them about it. He answers truthfully that he did. She asks him what entrance to it he knew of, he answers truthfully. She pulls out four items, a necklace, a scarab, an amulet, and rock with runes etched into it, she asks him if he knows which was found down in the tunnel underneath the barracks. He answers truthfully that he doesn’t.

Barrai is next, and he also fails his saving throw against the zone of truth. Realizing this he hems and haws a bit about it. Assendial asks him to clarify if he knew about it, and he hems and haws some more. She next asks him where an entrance is, he gives a vague answer but not a lie about how a place as old as this there are probably several entrances. Finally she asks him which of the items was under the barracks. He guesses that a dragon would probably want the items that have the most value and that the necklace, amulet and scarab are all golden. Or maybe it’s the rune covered rock because that’s different.

Parrag goes in next followed by Thrain. Thrain who has a very high charisma doesn’t fail the saving throw and he and Assendial know it. She asks him if he knows about the tunnel, he answers truthfully that he does. She asks him if he knows where they are or if he’s been down in there. He successfully deceives her that he knows less about the tunnels and where they go then he actually does. She pulls out the items and asks him about them, about their origins, which was found under ground, what he knows about their magical properties. Thrain is 100% truthful with her that he really doesn’t know much about them. She believes him.

Everyone else is sent back into a large group except for Narius, Addrus, Barrai and two second year students. They are all brought into one room together with all the teachers and are asked a couple of questions, the first that they had to write down was how many different directions the tunnel splits at it’s single junction point. Narius says outloud 4, but had written down 2. Addrus says 4 and has written down 4, Barrai says 4 and has written down 4, one second year has said 4 and written down 4, the last one has written down “?” and says 4. Next they are asked where the four directions of the tunnel go. The first 2nd year just writes down “I don’t know” and says “I don’t know”, the next one says “Moody’s Bar, the field, the cellar, and the tower” and has written that down. Barrai has written down “Not not the field, not not the cellar, not not somewhere fun, and not not somewhere awesome” and says that. Addrus gives the same answer the second year who knew all the directions. Narius, on the other hand, gives all the right answers but only had written down “the field, the food, and the drink”.

The two second years are let out of the room as is Barrai while Narius and Addrus are kept in the room to answer more questions.

The group decides to go to Moody’s bar, since they assume that the trapdoor and the hidden door into the cellar will be blocked off for good now, and they should try and find another way in. Moody’s Bar is the one where the fighting circle that Barrai and Thrain had made some money before, and they had seen Sanphire and Esmelda fight. Bokken decides to give them a good cover as they search around. Barrai and Thrain spot Zaphir, an older student from another school whom they’d swindled before in a fixed fight. They go up to him and see if he wants to bet with them on the Bokken fight. He recognizes them and knowing that they had taken his money before, he orders two beers, plus he has one in front of him. When the beers arrive, he takes one in each hand and smashes them into the faces of Barrai and Thrain. A bar fight ensues and Thrain unleashes an eldritch blast on him, plus hex damage and takes him down. The bartender kicks them out of the bar so that they don’t get in more trouble since technically Zaphir started it, and they head out just until Zaphir is gone. Then they sneak back in wearing fake moustaches (a Dwarf and a Tiefling) and join the crowds who are getting ready for the first fight. They get their program which has the betting odds and see they can get 5 for one on Bokken, slightly worse than normal first time fighters. So Thrain puts down two gold and Barrai puts down 10 gold, that he’d stolen off of Zaphir. And the announcer came out….

“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to the week night fights…. Let’s get ready to rumble………”

Behind the DM’s screen:

Most of this session was ad libbed. I had some plans for them down in the tunnels, but because of choices that were made, mainly Bokken heading back when he did and not picking up the daggers things changed. Had he picked up the daggers even, they could have gone through the cellar, come back around, and repeated the process. I’m assuming they would have been the ones to find the odd object in the tunnel under the barracks, instead of the teachers. And that was going to be my main plan, things clearly went differently.

One thing that was a lot of fun was the Zone of Truth just to see the different tacts and different successes for passing. I like how Zone of Truth works where you know as the person who is in it what is happening so you can talk around the truth, but the caster also knows if you pass or fail. It makes for some interesting moments in gaming.

And Zaphir being at the bar was totally something the players asked about. So the fact there was a bar fight is on them, Zaphir survived to fight another day.

We’ll have a few weeks off now from any more Tower of the Gods. I’m in the midst of moving and seeing as this is remote, I’m not sure when I’ll have my computer and full set-up ready to go again.

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In this campaign, I have an idea that can be added into any campaign, plus a fun way that you could use it in a new idea. The idea of the Losers Club in some ways comes from the movie Mystery Men. The “heroes” in the movie are worthless to start out with, but eventually become actual heroes, kind of. And that’s what we want to show off here in this campaign, the hero going from no one into a hero.

The PC’s are actually going to be that rag tag group that isn’t all that good at what they are supposed to be good at. In fact, the requirement for character creation is that you put your worst stat into your class stat. It’s obvious for some classes what this is, but if a rogue has a 6, that goes into dexterity, if a wizard has an 8, that’s going into intelligence. We’re creating a real inept band of adventurers who are going to become heroes.

This is going to give the players a really interesting chance to roleplay, because you’re going to have some odd stats and odd ways that you need to play. Maybe you spend your stat bumps to make you into a normal character that is doing what’s expected, or maybe you have a tank wizard.

As for the actual campaign itself, I think that this group of inept adventurers is going to be trying to make a name for themselves, and you lean into their story of trying to defeat some evil organization that is out there. However, when they successfully take down a small gang, the city guard and mayor shouldn’t believe them that it was them because they are too inept and the guard/mayor didn’t see it. There was no one there to tell them that the adventurers had actually done it.

After this happens a few times, and you’ll have to give the players some strong hook into the adventure so that they don’t leave the town. I’d give them some family in town or some love interest, something like that. You can also have them, after a few successful battles, have the end of a fight witnessed or something like that, so the players start to have their characters get recognized.

I’d do a fairly over the top villain for this campaign who isn’t really inept, but likes to monologue and comes up with extremely complex plots. This is going to create a lighter and funnier feel to the game, so when the players aren’t getting noticed, it can have that goofy, over the top feel as well. In fact, I’d have some fights where the city guard shows up seconds after the fight has ended, but just missed it.

Alright, one funny fight idea, in the streets, probably evening when there aren’t as many people out and about, the players fight some gang of the BBGE’s. The city guard is out in the street, but they are helping an old lady get her cat out of a tree a block away. They are so focused on that, that they miss the whole fight, and you can narrate at the start of each round how the city guard are not seeing what is going on.

Like I said, I think you could slap this idea onto any campaign idea that you have. However, keeping it lighthearted will probably make the game seem better in the eyes of the players. You don’t want to have a very serious game where most of the time they have to run away from a fight because they aren’t strong enough and have to grind their way up.

What do you think of this idea? Would you want to play in a game like this?

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Normally this isn’t something that I would want to do, the players are clearly going to be the hero of the game or if it’s an evil campaign the villains of the game. But they had one idea that I want to run with more, and that I think could be an interesting game that would allow the players to still be the heroes of the game, while dealing with a chosen one hero who is going to save the day in the end.

Long ago in this game world, there was a prophecy of a chosen one who would defeat the mighty Zorlack, an evil deity from another realm. The hero would be born under a blood moon when the faeries sang their mid summer song and they would be born with the sign of the lioness on their right shoulder.

A couple of thousands of years have passed, and you are not that hero, but you know who the hero is. They are a big pain in everyone’s arse, because while they might be the way to defeat Zorlack, they’ve almost died ten times in the year from silly little problems like getting shot by a single arrow from a goblin, stepping off the edge of a cliff and falling 10 feet, because they wanted to get a better view, swallowing some bird poop from a bird flying overhead that they wanted to look at. They are not the hero that everyone was expecting.

Now, the signs for Zorlack’s return are starting to be fulfilled and you, a scrappy band of adventurers have your hands full dealing with this impending doom. But your life has become more complicated than just the monsters that you’re starting to deal with. There was more to the prophecy, and you’ve been tasked to help deal with the rest of the prophecy.

This is where the game really begins. I don’t see this is a massively long campaign, but it’s going to be a goofy campaign. To start, I think I’d have the players do a few fetch quests to get a few items that the hero is going to need to defeat Zorlack. I think that it makes sense that they are all pieces of an epic weapon that only the hero will be able to wield, somehow. With that, you can introduce Zorlack’s minions, some sort of small monster who are going to be a bother in numbers, but pretty easy to kill.

From there, I’d make the players have to fight their way to the remote monastery where the hero is being kept to keep them protected. This should be a pain in the butt for the adventuring party, dealing with wild creatures, fighting more minions of Zorlack, and probably dealing with some crazy weather. And when the players meet the hero, they are going to find that the hero is whiny, self-entitled, and basically a level 0 character that the players are now going to have to protect on the next fetch quest. But they need the hero to be able to get the weapon together. All the time they are doing this, I would have the hero almost die over and over again, if you have a cleric with revivify, definitely actually have the hero die a few times and have the party have to save them. But do it in absurd goofy ways so that the players don’t feel like you’ve added a complication to them, because it’s so absurd.

Eventually once they’ve collected all the pieces, there’s probably going to be a last part of the prophecy, where only a certain dwarf will be able to forge the weapon by heating it from the lava flows of a volcano. Again, making the players lives more annoying, but probably drop off the hero in one of the large cities at that point to keep him safe. Once the weapon is back together and delivered to the hero, now it’s time to ride into the massive storm that is the battle of the human, dwarf, and elf armies that are holding back the now massive hordes of minions to get to where Zorlack is so that the hero can destroy or banish Zorlack. Don’t have the players really take much part in the battle as the armies will clear a path for them, they’ll just have to deal with a few bands of minions, which should be easy.

Eventually they’ll finally face off against Zorlack who should be either tiny or the most over the top villain of all time, like those from 80’s cartoons. And I don’t think I’d even have the final battle be a normal battle. Borrow from something like The Devil Went Down to Georgia or Guardian’s of the Galaxy. Have it be a competition of some sort, and something that the players can help with, probably by either performing with the hero, rigging it so that Zorlack does worse, and the hero does better, whatever the rules are for the actual final battle.

In this game, I’d also be adding is something heralding with Zorlack actually shows up. Like a light in the sky that is getting closer, or something that is incredibly stupid, 80’s, and metal.

I’m definitely thinking that this game gets some of it’s styling for making everything over the top from 80’s hair metal bands, He-Man, Heavy Metal/Heavy Metal 2000. Really taking those 80’s sci-fi/future things and twisting them for a fantasy setting. Maybe Zorlack doesn’t end up being a deity, but a super powerful alien that this more primitive world would see as being almost god like powers.

Compared to some of my other ideas, this one is clearly the most silly. But sometime you want silly games with geysers of flame going off as Zorlack’s Minions are chanting the lyrics to We Will Rock You by Queen.

What do you think of this idea? Do you like to prefer in a more serious game or a sillier game?

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So instead you have to plan out your dungeon to make sense. Though, there is an easy way to make an old school dungeon, and that’s with four simple words: “A wizard did it.”. That will get you out of jail free when your dungeon doesn’t make sense. But that only works in some situations. A lot of the time you’re going to be building a dungeon for a specific reason. Maybe it’s an old abandoned temple that is hidden away in the jungle. Having ice monsters in there isn’t going to make sense. You’re going to want to have something like Yuan-ti in there, and they can be bossing around another race. Or maybe it’s in a volcano, well, then fire elementals are probably going to play a big roll in the dungeon.

But it could be boring to just have one type of monster in the dungeon, and I agree with that. If I was playing in a dungeon, I wouldn’t want to run into a fire elemental in one room, then two in the next room, and one after that, then an empty room, and so on and so forth until I reached my goal.

Instead, start by thinking about if there is a big bad in your dungeon? Is there a boss monster that your players are going to have to fight? If there is, who is that guy, is it a demon? Is it a Mind Flayer? Is it a mad wizard? All of those are going to have a different group of monsters working for them. You might, for example, run into lesser demons or even weaker creatures like goblins that the demon has conscripted to guard the upper levels. Then maybe the further in you go, you run across a demon who is in charge of the goblins and imps who is a mid point battle. From there on, you face a mixture of demons of various powers and a few goblins thrown in until you finally face the big boss demon at the end of the dungeon who is most likely doing some evil plot when you get there so you have to stop them from being able to do it.

Another example with the mind flayer, you’d be looking at Underdark creatures, such as Duegar and Drow who would be being controlled by the mind flayer. You might even run into a band of Githyanki or Githzerai who might want to stop the mind flayer as well, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be an encounter, just might not be combat. Eventually you’ll probably have a situation where you have to sneak around a bunch of mind flayers to get to the elder brain or the main mind flayer leading the charge to disband the other group. But since this is the underdark, which is almost a dungeon onto itself, you can also use natural monsters down there. Various oozes and slimes might be clinging to the wall. A cloaker might be off in the shadows waiting for the next unsuspecting drow or adventuring party to come by.

You can start to see how you can build out a dungeon that really has a theme and feel to it. In fact, that’s one good way to start with a mad wizard dungeon, what sort of theme would they have put in it. Maybe they have it elemental themed and each floor has a different type of elemental in it and the traps are built so that they aren’t an issue to the elemental type on that floor.

But there are also some dungeons that don’t have a big boss in them, or if they do, it isn’t because someone has set this up. The examples above, all of them are probably something that’s been tailored to the group in them. But what happens in the example of the abandoned temple? There isn’t some big bad Yuan-ti in there who set this up to be great for snake people? It was most likely a human or Elven temple from a long time ago. So you have to start to think about how they are going to be using the place. Maybe they’ve only cleared the first few levels of the dungeons because the traps later on are just too nasty. So you’re going to have to deal with them early, but eventually the dungeon will be “safer” or less monster filled, until maybe you get past those really bad traps.

In the example above, it’s possible that the ecology even changes part way through. Maybe the original owners of the temple left some construct monsters further down. Or maybe something is also coming up from the bottom (or down from the top) of the dungeon. Or maybe instead of constructs, there are a group of Drow who are using it for some dark ritual, but it’s easier for you to get to them by going down through the temple, through the Yuan-ti, through the traps, as compared to searching the underdark with it’s dangers and maybe finding what you’re looking for in time.

Hopefully it’s starting to make sense how you can use a dungeon in your game and have it be a part of a bigger story of the world and of your game. By having a more tightly built dungeon you don’t have to have it be a random wizard, but you can tailor it specifically to the spot in your world that you want the dungeon to be and build it to a specific theme, monster, or boss, whatever your game needs.

Have you made a dungeon with a really cool theme or some really cool monsters? Tell us about them in the comments below.

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Yes!

I wanted to talk about one half of Dungeons and Dragons, and that is the dungeon. I haven’t talked about dragons yet either, but that will be some time later. Instead, I wanted to talk about how you can build interesting dungeons in your D&D game if you want to use them. Dungeons aren’t something that I use that often, or at least what would be considered a dungeon traditionally.

So let’s define what a “dungeon” is for the sake of this article.

A Dungeon is any sort of building or location where the players need to get through it by progressing forward, either to a goal or an exit.

So that might seem wrong to you, you’re thinking of some labyrinth hidden deep under the ground in some remote area that has been long forgotten. That certainly is a dungeon, but a mad wizards tower climbing high into the air is a dungeon. A Minotaur’s labyrinth is also a dungeon. It could be the ruins of a city on the surface, or a druids grove that they’ve grown up to protect them.

All of these options really do want you to move forward or are likely to have something that you want at the end. You’re going to have to fight through monsters and deal with traps.

Let’s also talk some about what dungeons aren’t?

Dungeons aren’t a static thing. The old school dungeon was a collection of monsters and traps thrown together to create a challenge for the players. You’d have an orc in one room, a bugbear and some goblins in another room, a handful of drow the level down in the dungeon with a bunch of random traps and puzzles thrown in the middle of them.

Instead, Dungeons are living locations. While the current inhabitants might not be the original builders of the Dungeon, there is going to be a reason for the monsters to be there. Maybe there are goblins living on the upper levels, and some drow on the bottom levels of the dungeon, but they aren’t going to be living in rooms next to each other, they’d have killed each other. So maybe they would split up floors of a dungeon, leaving buffers between them. The same way, it’s going to have traps or puzzles, have the monsters figured out how to deal with them, or do they just avoid the section that has managed to squish members of the goblin tribe, so it makes where the trap is obvious to adventurers?

Dungeons also aren’t there for no reason. Someone has built them, so they are going to have had an original purpose, which might be the same purpose as of now, but there was a reason. So there also has to be a reason why it is like it is now. But if you’re going to put a random wizard tower deep into the forest, there are going to be stories and legends about this place and a reason the wizard put it there for a reason.

So now that we’re all on the same page as to what a Dungeon is, let’s talk about what is going to come up after this?

We’re going to talk about the ecosystem of your dungeon and why that matters.

We’re going to talk about using puzzles in your dungeon and what that might do to a dungeon.

We’re going to talk about how traps work, and how you avoid bogging down your dungeon with traps.

We’re going to talk about why you’d use a dungeon in your game.

So join me in those upcoming articles as you think about building a dungeon for your game of Dungeons and Dragons.

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Why would a farmers kid who has had a nice life on the farm, loves their family, their whole family is still alive, and they have a sweetheart, why would they join an adventuring group?

Why would a noble who might not be in line to inherit the throne but they would have a very comfy and relaxed life with basically anything they could want join an adventuring party?

Why would a wizard who has a comfy job in a wizarding school with a family and their students love them and they won’t have anything else they want join an adventuring group?

Why would a cleric who has a community surrounding them that attends their temple, they all believe in the deity of the temple, and they have found their calling, why would they join an adventuring group?

The answer most of the time is that they wouldn’t. It doesn’t make sense for them to join a group because they have a good life. The most common reason would be that they want something more and something greater. That’s a pretty safe and simple story, but not all that interesting if you’re playing that character. So how are you going to able to spice up your characters story?

And when I say spice up the story, I don’t mean add in some tragedy. How are you going to make it more interesting without adding in some tragedy, some death in the family, some desire for revenge, some scandal happening to your PC?

Let me see what I can do with the four examples I gave of pretty comfortable backstories:

As cleric you’ve had a good life and have set up a nice temple and community in your peaceful little town. You have made friends and settled into a nice groove. One evening while you are praying you are shocked to hear a voice speak to you. It commends you for doing so well and tells you that there will be another cleric of your deity coming to town. They are older and have some information that you must carry on for them and find for them while they take over your duties. The next day a cleric comes to town and they tell you of an artifact, a relic of long ago, that would help increase the bounty of your farming communities crops and help the kingdom as a whole find peace. They are too old now to continue their quest to look for it, but your deity had sent them here to find you so that could continue the quest. It’s hard, but you have heard the word of your deity, and everything they said came true. You pack up your bags, promise to return, and say many a sad farewell as you head out on the road to find those who can help you complete the quest.

The life of an academic suits you greatly, you’ve spent years at the university studying, then teaching, and the city that you’re in has become your home. You have a family and two kids. You’re in the middle of a class when you get a message sent to you from an old teacher. They have some exciting news, they have discovered a lost ruins and texts for magics that you thought had been lost ages ago. You agonize over it for a week, but eventually, at the prompting of your spouse, you send a message back saying that you will head out there, you just need to convince the school that they should fund your research. When they hear about it, they quickly help you find an adventuring party so that you will be safe on your travels.

Your life has been practice sword fights, sitting through fairly interesting meetings, and generally learning how you’re going to be able to rule your lands when you inherit the seat of power. It isn’t much of a lands and you are going to be under the king, but that’s just fine with you. You’ll have a simple but nice life dealing with the problems of a few farmers about whose cow is whose when someone’s fence breaks. But you know before that you have one last thing coming up.  You’ve been putting it off for a while now, because it isn’t something that you wanted to do, you’d rather learn from watching your parents at home. But every generation, the child who is taking over the seat of rule has to go out and see the real world like they were nobody. You understand why, it will give you a perspective on things, but you’re not all that excited about it. Your parents have put together a group for you to travel with, so the time has finally come, and you set out on your own, not sure what you might find.

Life on the farm has been wonderful to you thus far. You love the routine of it. You love your cows, your parents and siblings, and your sweetheart. The only thing you’re not sure about is if they think enough of you. They are the child of the towns doctor. You’re just the child of a farmer.  You are betrothed and everything is set for you to be married in two years time. With the blessing of her parents and your parents, you decide that you are going to go out and see the world for a year so that you are going to better be able to provide for and help your sweetheart with their dreams as well as yours. After a tearful good bye, you set out on the road where you run into a band of adventurers who take your under their wings.

Those aren’t my normal backgrounds, there is no revenge in them, though I did keep the quest for a lost artifact that I’ll often use as a potential backstory plot hook. But in the case of the first two there is a big plot hook for the DM to latch onto. The last two fall more into the adventuring for adventuring sake. But because everyone has their family still, and they have a clear objective of what they are looking for and possibly timelines for things as well, there’s plenty to play around with as a DM.

For example:
With the cleric, the artifact 100% won’t do exactly what the legends say it will do, so yeah, you’re going to have to deal with that. Also, you’re going to be racing against someone else to get the artifact.

With the wizard, you are going to get to the ruins and find everyone dead from some curse and then you’re going to find that you’ve been cursed as well. Now you have a deadline to figure out how to break the curse that was laid upon the ruins so that you don’t end up dead as well.

With the noble, as DM I would have you stumble across a plot against yourself and your family to kill all of you. However, you’re only ever going to see the edges of the plot, unless you want to keep your disguise and infiltrate the organization and find out who is at the top of it and who is after your family.

With the farmer, something is going to happen to your village or your sweetheart. Most likely a questionable noble is going to show up in your village, fall in love with your sweetheart and demand to marry them. When that gets turns down because you are betrothed already to them, they are going to start demanding taxes and making the life of your town miserable and you’re either going to have to deal with that noble yourself or do something to get the attention of someone higher up to rein in that noble.

Which of these backstories would you want to play? And have you made a character before with a non-tragic backstory?

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The best laid plans of Nori, Von’thre, and Syldi go sideways pretty quickly on them. What is the next twist and turn?

If you have questions for Nerdologists: Dungeons and Flagons emails them to nerdologists@gmail.com or find us on Facebook or Twitter! We’ll be doing a recap and Q&A every twenty-five episodes.

Our players are:

Ashley – Nori the Mountain Dwarf Champion Fighter

Kristen (@Kefka73) – Syldi the Half-Elf Rogue Thief

Clint – Von’thre the High Elf Divination Wizard

The DM:

Peder (@TheScando)

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There are plenty of other classes though that could use the background, they give you a number of areas that you could have studied, but being a Dwarven metal work professor would be out of the ordinary and go against the normal teaching options that they give, or area of study options. It’s also a background that people will use to play a smarty pants character who is condescending or thinks they know more than everyone else, because they might actually  know more than most people. I’d say if you are going to go that route, be aware of two things, make sure that if you are going to be condescending in the game, have it be clearly between characters so it doesn’t seem like it might be above the table and directed at a player. Secondly, consider it being a character arc, maybe this is your characters first adventure and they think they know everything and don’t really need others to make decisions but then as the game progresses, they can come to the realization that they need others, and that book smarts are not the same as street smarts.

Beyond that, I do think that there are two main reasons that people go with this background. It gets two nice features in the Researcher, which means if you don’t know the answer, you know where to find it. Very powerful in a game, especially a city game where you can always go and research. That means that you are going to probably be able to find that information pretty quickly and without much travel. The other being that you get two languages. Might not seem like that big of a deal, but if you are in a port or if you are going to travel a lot in the game, you are going to run into races and places where they might not speak common, or at least will drop out of common when they are going to talk about you.

Now for some story ideas using the sage background:

You grew up on the rough side of the city and it was your goal to get away from that. When you were a teen, you ran away from home and found yourself on the doorstep of a temple in the nicer neighborhoods. Pretending that you weren’t from around the city and that you had been mugged wasn’t that difficult when you had nothing your whole life. The temple believed me, or if not took pity on me and took me in. They started training me, and gave me shelter and food. As part of our agreement, I was going to work for them and pay back, in work, what I had been given. I got a job in the city library as a librarian, turns out it was run by the temple. After I paid off my debt, I continued to work there and get more training through the temple, then one day, some people who I had known as kids came in before hours and killed a guest from out of town who had gotten special permissions to come in early. They were caught, but they implicated you in the crime, that you had let them in. You were kicked out of your job, but the head of the temple believed you. Now you have to track down who actually called in this hit and clear your name.

Class: Cleric
Alignment: Chaotic Good

Your time in the university was fascinating and you got a great love for people, races, and creatures out of it. In fact, you got so much love for them that you decided to leave any chance at a easy job or well paying job at the university to go out and research some of them. Finding a tribe to follow around and study wasn’t too difficult, but getting close to them and really learning about them was very difficult. The tribe of orcs didn’t let you in easily, but once they were used to you, they opened up. After spending years with them, you were starting to truly understand them like no one had before and they were teaching you their ways. Then a plague hit their village, but it didn’t affect you. You watched as those you had known died around you and you felt powerless to stop it. When the chief became ill, he asked you to help save what was left of his village, because they couldn’t seem to get away from the plague. You took off with a handful of hunters and those who had dealt with society before. Then you met a strange woman in the woods and she offered to help. You needed to save them, so you agreed to go with her, but when you saw her place, you quickly realized she was likely the cause of the plague. Calling her on that, she fled, and while a small bit of the tribe was saved because she left, you want to hunt her down and keep her from experimenting on others.

Class: Barbarian
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Notes: This one I like because you are playing the dummies of the D&D world with a barbarian, but it’s something that you learned after you were a sage, so it makes a very uniquely flavored character.

Your family was poor and life was hard for you and your six siblings. Your parents had trouble keeping food on the table. When you were a young teen you told your parents that you’d drop out of school to go out and work at a farm to help make ends meet and to keep everyone fed, but they told you they wouldn’t let you throw away your chance at a better life. That night, you made up your mind, you didn’t want to work on a farm, but you didn’t want to be a burden to your parents and not help. Packing the little that you had, you snuck out of the house and made your way down the road for a week where you knew a wizard lived in a tower. You’d heard stories about them and how they sometimes used an apprentice. You knocked on the door and introduced yourself. It took some begging and testing to get the position. It didn’t make you much money, but you sent, anonymously, the little that you made home to your parents. It wasn’t until you had studied more under the wizard that you realized they were not a good person. They started to do experiments on you and run you through the ringer. One night a voice came to you offering to help and get you away, you took the chance and escaped. You went into hiding for almost a decade before the voice came back to you and told you that your parents had sold  your youngest sibling to the wizard and that it was time for you to act.

Class: Warlock
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral/Chaotic Good

Less backstories than normal, but some longer ones than normal. I hope that you’ve enjoyed them. There are three more backgrounds left to do after this.

Have you played someone with a sage background? Why did you choose that background and what was your backstory?

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Now, it’s very possible the noble doesn’t consider it a step down. Maybe they consider it to be more exciting or interesting to be an adventurer than to be doing whatever they were doing before. Regardless, I do still think there are some key differences between your standard adventurer and one who is or was a noble. The noble is often going to care or know more about the history of the locations they and their party are going to. A noble gets the skills of history and persuasion from their background, so they are going to look at situations differently than just another chance to kill monsters in a dungeon; they will care more about the history of the dungeon or at least know more about it. It is also probable that a character with a noble background will expect to be more in charge. They’ve had people waiting on them for much of their life, and camping out in the woods might not be quite their thing.

Before I give away all my story ideas while talking about the background, let’s get to them. Here are some suggested backstories for your D&D Noble.

I was only a child when my uncle killed my father and took over his lands. I was supposed to have been killed myself, but my father gave his life to give my mother and myself time to escape into the woods. We walked for days before we were taken captive by a native tribe living deep in the woods. I was young, and my mother says she was terrified for both our lives, but they didn’t kill us. They saw how hungry we were, and they fed us and taught us to live off the land. I honed my skills as a hunter, and my mother instilled a hatred of my uncle in me by telling me stories of a father whom I could barely remember. Much later, we were forced to run again as my uncle tried to clear his lands of all the natives. The tribe used me as a scout, and I realized I could integrate myself back into society and get my revenge. I said goodbye to my aged mother and my spouse from the tribe, promising to return. Now I am trying to get revenge on my uncle, take back my lands, and let the tribe return to their lands. But taking down my uncle won’t be easy — I’ll need help.

Class: Ranger
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

I put the last of my money down onto the table. It’s not that I’m a bad gambler, I just have bad luck when it comes to games of chance. I felt the weight of my signet ring in my pocket and thought about putting that on the table. Or maybe I could sell it if I found the right vendor. It might get me enough money to get back to my lands. I didn’t really want to come back to my parents as a beggar. I had run away from home several years ago, and I had a decent amount of money with me. It’s amazing how much things you don’t own will sell for when they come from a noble’s household. If I don’t come back with some money, it’s going to go very poorly for me. I have a sword still, and I can fight; maybe that will be my plan, since I just lost the last of my money.

Class: Fighter
Alignment: Neutral

When you come from a large family, you can’t always get what you want. In my case, I wanted to just live an easy life. My parents are rich — what would you expect for someone who is nobility? I was given a few options. I could marry into another family to strengthen an alliance, I could join the military, or I could join the temple. Those were the only positions that were good enough for me; anything else was too much of a step down. Ideally, I’d choose one of the last two and still do the first anyway. I might be ready to settle down sometime, but it is going to be on my terms, and I am not much of a fighter. So my option was to join the temple. That life was a little bit boring for me, but I found ways to make it interesting, much to the chagrin of the temple. Turns out, that might not have been my brightest plan, because they have decided I would be a good person to start an offshoot of the temple in a small town. I need to travel there, but maybe I’ll do it in a roundabout way and have some fun as I go. They can’t complain if I say I’m spreading the good word, right?

Class: Cleric
Alignment: Chaotic Good

There are expectations for every child born into my family. You had to look a certain way, you had to behave a certain way, and you could not be connected to magic at all. Magic is evil — that is what I was taught from a very young age. I believed that too. But a voice came to me in the middle of the night, and took me away from my bedroom. According to my parents, I was gone for less than a day, but to me it seemed like a week. They could tell that something had changed when I came back. There was magic running through my veins. The doctors said that my blood had been tainted, and my parents believed them, and I believed them. They kicked me out even though I cried. I said that I wouldn’t use the power, but the law of our land is clear — I’m an outcast. I want to find out how I got these powers to see if I can get rid of them, but they have helped me, so I need to know more to see if they are evil or not. I don’t know much about the world, so I probably should find someone to travel with.

Class: Sorcerer/Warlock
Alignment: Neutral Good

What sort of Noble have you played before? Is it a background that has interested you, or does it seem too simple/straightforward?

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Resting after their nearly fatal encounter with the drow, Von’thre, Nori, and Syldi decide to use the tunnels that Von’thre had found out about to see if they could track down the drow and their way back to the warehouse.

If you have questions for Nerdologists: Dungeons and Flagons emails them to nerdologists@gmail.com or find us on Facebook or Twitter! We’ll be doing a recap and Q&A every twenty-five episodes.

Our players are:

Ashley – Nori the Mountain Dwarf Champion Fighter

Kristen (@Kefka73) – Syldi the Half-Elf Rogue Thief

Clint – Von’thre the High Elf Divination Wizard

The DM:

Peder (@TheScando)

Please give us reviews and let us know how you listen to the show!

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