5TDM – Day of the Deathmatch
GREETINGS, MORTALS!
We have a new event coming up next month that you DO NOT want to miss!Get ready for high-octane D&D 5th Edition Team Deathmatch!
Join us all day long on Saturday September 26th at three separate times – 10:00am, 3:00pm, and 8:00pm EST!
We are now open for teams of players to sign-up for any single match. If interested, please send an email to ddeadventures (at) gmail letting us know your intent and what game time you want to play (10am, 3pm, 8pm). Act quick, these openings will quickly be filled on a first come, first serve basis!
It will be your responsibility to collect a full roster of four players. Lone wolf players and those with only partial teams can head on over to our Discord server and post in the LFG channel – https://discord.gg/8njsVZu
Matches will be held on Roll20 with Discord for audio. These matches are intended to be recorded and broadcast.
Team Fortress – 10:00am EST
A capture the flag variant featuring jump pads, equipment power-ups, and hidden underwater entrances to the heart of the enemies’ base.
Death Wyverns’ Crucible – 3:00pm EST
Eight slabs of black marble jut from a lake of hissing dracolisk bile. Watch out for telefrags in this transporter-packed arena.
Wind Tunnel – 8:00pm EST
Razor-sharp blades spin at supersonic speeds at both ends of this gore-caked hallway. Get ready to be blown away – literally – in the world debut of this newest arena.
DM’s Fiat: Aaracockra are disallowed for this non-tournament event.
What is 5TDM?
5th Edition Team Deathmatch is a contest of skill, wits, and luck where you and your team of friends compete against others using the D&D ruleset in deadly and unique ways. In 5th Edition Team Deathmatch, small teams of 3rd Level characters are pitted against each other in a no-holds-barred frenzy of carnage in a team-based, player-vs-player competition. Fast, frantic play is encouraged over a wide variety of bizarre, twisted hellscape arenas. 5TDM pushes the tactical boundaries of the original game in new and exciting ways. We’re taking on the promise of an intense tactical option for 5th Edition.If you’re a powergaming, min-maxing, overkill seeking player that wants to win at roleplaying games and be its ultimate champion, then this is the game for you.If you want to strive with your comrades in arms to overcome the greatest foe in the most over-the-top, gonzo locations, then this is the game for you.This game is much more nuanced, challenging, and rewarding than simple one-on-one duels. It pits teams of 3rd-level characters against each other to see who can outmaneuver their opponents and survive the longest by suffering the fewest numbers of deaths during a 90-minute match. It requires an understanding of the 5th Edition ruleset, strong teamwork and communication skills, and an unending thirst for blood.Death is not the end. Dead player characters Respawn to come back in on their next turn to take revenge on their enemies and even the score. It is an unending struggle of violence and pain.
Get the full rules here – https://ddeadventures.itch.io/5tdm
D&D Championship – Scoring Guide
HELLO, DUNGEONEERS!
An exciting update on the D&D Championship!
The D&D Championship is a unique, multi-table adventure! Join the party and compete against other “tables” for fortune and glory. The game will be a strictly timed race against the clock to solve puzzles, explore dungeons, and uncover the adventure’s big mystery. Bring in a group of 4-6 of you and your friends to compete against others.
What makes the Championship such a blast? It starts with the fun of D&D, then adds elements that most tabletop RPGs games lack: challenge, high stakes, and urgency. In the Championship, challenge is high because the odds favor the monsters. A Championship DM can do things that would cause hard feelings in a regular game. This challenge makes the threat of failure real, and it offers a reward: When you triumph against long odds rather than against a stacked deck, the victory tastes so much sweeter.
Only one table can win! Each group will be awarded points based on secrets uncovered, treasures claimed, and number of characters who survive (see guidelines below).
Sign-Up: Interested players please email ddeadventures@gmail.com
Groups must sign up with 4-6 players in total. You will pick a day and time within the last two weeks of August and then we will match you up with one of our Dungeon Masters to play.
Our Purpose
D&D is all fun and games. But there is a higher reason that we are getting together, the reason we are putting all of this work into the world. We are trying to raise awareness and money for the legal defense of Amanda Nagy (aka Mandy Morbid). Please read her story and spread the word – https://www.gofundme.com/f/gxywr5-legal-funds
Registered Teams
We have seven (7) registered teams already – we are super excited!
- Tom Christy & Co.
- Game scheduled Thursday August 27th, 8:00pm EST!
- Team WhoGivesAShit: Topher, Lindsey, Andy, Rachel, Russ, +1
- Team Saltire: Charlie Bain, Sydney, Nate Adams, Quill, Wesley, Starbrite
- Team Bad Taste: Jon Green, Tony B., Anthony Brown, Sarah
- Team Buffalo: Michael Bolis, Gavin O’Brien, etc.
- Jay Elmore & Friends
- Katherine, Keegan, looking for more
Scoring Guide
What you’ve been waiting for – the scoring guide for the 2020 D&D Championship – Into The Black Cabinet!!! Use this and the forthcoming rumors (coming out next week) to help develop and guide your character creation process.
TIME TO COMPLETE ADVENTURE
Complete in less than one hour 500 VP
Complete in less than two hours 150 VP
Complete in less than three hours 75 VP
Complete in four hours or less 0 VP
QUEST BONUSES
No spoilers! Varies, 10 to 150 VP
TREASURE BONUS
Find a treasure cache in Millwood 10 VP (max 5)
Win a century 10 VP (max 5)
Win a millennium 100 VP
Retrieve the Lattice of Power 50 VP
Recover the Mantle of the Voidnaut 75 VP
Forge the Cosmic Annulus 100 VP
Transcribe the Septivium Harmonicus 50 VP
DUNGEONEER SPECIFIC
Each dungeoneer death -50 VP (each)
Gain Inspiration 25 VP (each time)
Summer Updates!
Hello, adventurers! New for July, Defy Danger is committing to our support to causes we believe in with two important changes.
Firstly, all product prices through July are being changed to flat-fees with 100% of profits being donated to the Black Trans Emergency Fund – link.
We have also taken down one of our top selling games, Crush the Rebellion, and will no longer be selling it or supporting it in any way. We need to acknowledge that this game deals with themes of fascism and could be played in a way that glorifies such malicious ideology. We do not support fascism or fascist ideals. Crush the Rebellion is about agents subverting an all-powerful Star Wars style Emperor while also destroying resistance movements and committing war crimes as part of their duties. It was written many years ago to try and help examine what causes societies to act in this way, what unrestrained power does to a person, and what the cogs in the governmental machine can do about it on their own. It was also written during a time when we didn’t feel the real life threat of fascism rising up around us so acutely. That time is now long past and it is naive of us, as well as harmful, to keep this product out in the public.
This game has been taken down and the Star Wars themed online games scheduled for July have been cancelled. Defy Danger apologizes unequivocally for the harm caused by it. This is long overdue and we feel relieved to have finally done this. We have questioned how this game was being consumed by readers and our role in profiting off of such a venture. All contributors are in agreement about this decision.
Moving forward, get ready for August when we unveil an online competitive D&D Championship! Taking the same format as from past conventions, we will be hosting a delve-style competitive adventure to see which team has the best strategy and exploration skills needed for victory in our all-new adventure INTO THE BLACK CABINET! Gather your friends and get psyched!
Fantastic Lairs
Improving XP – Ideals, Bonds, & Flaws
You look at your character sheets and find that same disused, neglected corner of paper. It takes up a fair bit of real estate, but for what? I’m talking about Ideals, Bonds, & Flaws.
These three character personality traits are invaluable descriptors on the softer, rules-absent side of your D&D character. Many players adore them during character generation. The game’s reward mechanism (experience points) and interaction systems (combat, spells, etc.) never touch on these personality traits. Players tend to shoehorn them into conversations awkwardly and anecdotally, without rhyme or reason and with few players ever even bothering to do that much.
If we want D&D to be a game about roleplaying, then we need to make a game out of roleplaying. In our home game; Ideals, Bonds, & Flaws become part and parcel of the experience points system. Experience points are not awarded for slaying monsters. Our games are not trying to encourage simple brute force methods of combat to solve problems. Instead, at the end of each session, each player describes a moment in the session where their character acted in alignment with their Ideal, Bond, or Flaw. For each of these categories touched upon during play, the character earns an amount of experience equal to 50 times their current level.
For example, Tordek the Level 3 Dwarf Fighter has a bond “I would die to recover an ancient lost artifact of my faith” and has the flaw “I am suspicious of strangers and think the worst of them”. During play, Tordek goes out of his way to roleplay a scene in town where he snoops around for information on this lost artifact from the shady tavern-goers. During that same session, he is given a map and a clue to the artifact’s location, but from a mysterious stranger. Tordek plays out the scene as a suspicious Dwarf and roleplays his unfair questioning of this stranger before reluctantly agreeing that he has no choice but to chase down this clue.
Tordek is awarded 300 xp (50 xp Bond + 50 xp Flaw x Level 3 = 300 xp).
Alternatively, don’t track individual character experience points, and instead just have a single group total with all characters gaining a level together. In this case, each Ideal, Bond, or Flaw acted on in a session only earns 10 experience points. This has the advantage of keeping all characters on an even playing field, while still encouraging the less strong roleplayers to contribute to the team.
COVID Clearance Sale!
Inspiration – The Forgotten Part of D&D
Inspiration is a great incentive in 5th Edition D&D designed to be a reward to players who put their hearts into their characters rather than strategy or metagame. Encouraging this is a goal which many groups seek after. After all, it is a roleplaying game, so there should be a gamified component to the roleplaying.
In practice, however, we commonly see groups forget about Inspiration session after session. As-is, the awarding of Inspiration is whimsical and capricious, dependent on when the Dungeon Master remembers and if they are feeling in a generous mood. We’ve talked to players who feel as though they should be considered for an Inspiration, but were too polite to ask. We’ve been those players ourselves. At our home games, DDE Adventures sets down more structure surrounding Inspiration to bring it to the forefront and out of neglect.
We take the core end of session rewards procedure from the roleplaying game Torchbearer and modify them to be a part of 5th Edition D&D Inspiration and experience points (to be covered in another article). We have a suspicion that the explosion of independent, story focused games that happened before the launch of 5e influenced the much of its design elements. What we would be doing here is taking that soft influence and making it much clearer and more obvious. We’re taking the ideas from another game, Torchbearer, whole cloth to mash up. This system is an option that can be added to any D&D game with little fuss. It helps establish a rhythm to the game and a satisfying way to end each session. You’ll need at least three players at the table for this.
At the end of each session, go around the table and ask for one player to be nominated for the MVP, Team Player, and Embodiment. No player can be awarded more than one of these awards per session and the Dungeon Master cannot be nominated. Players, including the Dungeon Master, vote on which character exemplified the ideals of each reward.
The MVP award goes to the character who pulled out the most crucial roll, the most important move, or the most vital decision.
The Team Player award goes to the character who was always there for the others, who supports and elevates the group to achieve their best.
The Embodiment award goes to the character who delves deepest into the roleplaying and embodies the persona of their character the most.
Characters who gain one of these rewards gain Inspiration. This is a lovely and positive way for players to affirm each other. It gives structure and order to these needed rewards. It’s a safe space for us to care about one another.
5TDM Online Tournament – Trophies
Behold!
After a long campaign full of both the thrill of triumph and the crushing weight of despair, one team of Dungeons & Dragons players has emerged victorious over all others!
A huge congratulations to Team Warbirds for beating out their competitors and securing their place of victory in the 5th Edition Team Deathmatch online tournament!
Customized trophies have been commissioned to honor these stalwart warriors. Remember their names.
Katherine Offutt
Nate Adams
Liz Armour
Daniel Sprechman
5TDM – Online Tournament Finale
GREETINGS, MORTALS!
are you ready to die?
and die … and die … and die … and die!
The 5th Edition Team Deathmatch Online Tournament of Champions is nigh upon us! With our major Kickstarter campaign nearly ended, this conclusion comes at a most auspicious time!
This ultimate showdown takes two teams of veteran dungeoneers, grizzled survivors from the previous bouts, in the closing match to determine who is the 2019 Champion of Dungeons & Dragons Combat.
All eight of the competitors are exalted warriors deserving of our veneration. Listed below are summary sheets of our competitors. Tell us in the comments whose team will reign supreme!
Team CareBears
Team WarBirds
Catch us live on twitch.tv/defydanger on Saturday July 20th, 9:00pm EST or look for the replay on our YouTube Channel!
AVARICE is available in print!
Hello, my fellow Dwarves!
AVARICE is now available for print on demand. It is a silly roleplaying game where you play as a population of Dwarves venting out their rage and frustration while trapped under the earth.
STRIKE THE EARTH
DEFY DANGER 