August Nerdarchy Celebrity Partner Crate

This crate is stacked.

Dungeon Crate teamed up with Nerdarchy to curate this month’s crate, and there’s some awesome exclusive Nerdarchy branded and themed items you can use in your D&D and Pathfinder games.

Even if you’ve never heard of Nerdarchy til now, there’s a lot of great stuff to use on your game table in your next session. Everything in this box is something you can use in your RPG sessions.

Do you like dwarves? You’re gonna love this box.

Of course, this box once again contains a mini adventure module, and all the pieces in the box are useable in that module.

So, let’s get to it!

Whiskers in the Dark

Written by Dungeon Crate’s Floyd Cocklin, this four-page adventure involves the fellas from Nerdarchy. A trio of dwarves have been captured, and they need your help. The adventure has some baaaaad monsters and an incredibly ingenious trap that’ll take some clever roleplaying to pass. This month’s Digital Dungeon Crate has a bunch of extras for the adventure, including monster stats and extra artwork from Dungeon Doodles. It’s awesome.

 ArcKnight Minis

Included in this month’s box are six flat plastic miniatures - three dwarves, a gelatinous cube, a mind flayer and a roper. You know those cardboard pawns? This is what happens when they level up! ArcKnight prints them on clear plastic sheets, and the miniatures show a front and a back to each character and monster. They look slick on the game table. These are all usable in any game and they’re also part of Whiskers in the Dark.

      

Beardspiration tokens

Once again, these tie into the included adventure and are a nice little nod to the bearded gentlemen at Nerdarchy. These acrylic tokens lovingly crafted by Advanced Deployment are intended to use with the Inspiration mechanic in D&D 5th edition. Best used with dwarven PCs or your more hirsute friends.

Nerdarchy Dice Bag

Your dice bag is overflowing. Ours, too. Now you have some extra space with this neat little cloth bag sporting the Nerdarchy logo.

Mini Dice Tower

Dungeon Crate has delivered full-size dice towers in the past, but we dig this miniature design. Cut and assembled by Deep Dungeon Games, this small wooden dice tower is extremely portable and looks cool. It sports the Nerdarchy logo and it’s a great little item to make your dice rolls more random.

Rune Dice

Tired of stepping on sharp d4s? Or flipping a coin? These sweet little items from Q Workshop are about the size of a d6, but their rounded edges give them only four sides. They roll well, and they look cool, too. Plus, they’re edged in runes, making them great for your dwarf PC. We love unique dice.

Nerdarchy Button

Show your love for Nerdarchy! It’s a cool little button. Does your button have a goblin on it? You win a prize! Drop an e-mail to wayne@dungeoncrate.com.

Axe of Durin coin

More dwarf stuff! These coins are pretty sweet. Minted by Shire Post Mint, these “Lord of the Rings” coins depict the famed dwarf Durin, father of dwarves, on one side and his axe on the other. It also has a description in Angerthas runes about Durin

Treasure Deck

This is a replacement item from last month’s crate PLUS it’s an awesome item unto itself. Unfortunately, Nord Games had an issue with their printer and July’s crate included those decks. But the folks at Nord are super cool, and they replaced those decks with the proper ones in this month’s crate. So, if you subscribed last month, you’ll end up with two of these. (Share with a friend!) If you just joined up this month, bonus item!

Anyway, the decks were created for D&D 5th edition, and they let you randomize treasure in a dungeon by drawing a card. The deck has more than 200 items, keeping things interesting. Each deck has 52 cards, and each card has four treasure options. Each card has complimentary items, so you could use each one together. The deck is also used in the adventure, but you can use it for any game you’re playing.

A donation to charity

Feel good about getting Dungeon Crate this month. Or at least, feel even better than your normally do when opening your box of loot. A portion of every box went to charity. Nerdarchy chose Reading is Fundamental, which is committed to literacy. 

Our Favorite Rogue Archetypes in D&D and Pathfinder

If you’ve played a rogue in any party, you’ve likely been a thief of some kind.

The thief’s ability to snatch items from unsuspecting folk - say, a powerful magic item from under the nose of a dastardly bad guy - as well as their penchant for disabling traps, picking locks and having a nose for gold make the thief a pretty likely choice when building a character.

Who doesn’t like being the Han Solo type as they steal, smuggle and smarm their way across a campaign?

But as much as we love thieves, we dig the other wild abilities rogues can get into. We dug through the annals of Dungeons & Dragons to find our favorite rogue archetypes, subclasses and variants.

Spellthief - This 3.5 class functioned like the rogue, except it substituted the ability to steal magical abilities and even spells in place of the sneak attack. As described in the book Complete Adventurer, the spellthief can roll up to a powerful sorcerer, attack and (instead of dealing sneak attack damage) steal one of the sorcerer’s spells and cast it himself. Pretty badass, huh?

Relic Raider - Do you want to play Indiana Jones? This Pathfinder rogue archetype from the Black Markets sourcebook is what you want. The Eric raider specializes in stealing artifacts and items from dungeons and castles. We like the disable curse power (disable curses like you would a trap), which comes in handy when you're raiding a cursed tomb looking for gold and glory.

Lurk - Rogues use cunning and guile to pick pockets, hide in plain sight and deal backstabbing damage, but the lurk uses psionic powers to find weaknesses in enemies and exploit them. They operate like rogues and deal sneak attack damage but use special psionic abilities to augment their attacks. Lurks were published in the 3.5 edition book Complete Psionics.

Shadow Walker - From 2nd edition’s Wizards and Rogues of the Realms comes this take on a rogue, which uses limited magic ability to keep yourself hidden and use various shadowy powers. It’s a creepy one, but very effective.

Assassin - Better than having a few skills and lockpicks is the ability to shift through shadows, use poisons and quite literally stab people in the back. If you dig the rogue’s ability to move about unseen or take down big bad guys, this is that in steroids.

Swashbuckler - Another 3.5 class, this one from the Complete Warrior sourcebook, it's a combo between rogue and fighter classes. They deal damage like fighters but move with finesse like rogues. Tasty.

Mastermind - Want to work the king’s court and use your words as much as your weapons? This 5th edition archetype will let you master misdirection, tactics and manipulation in addition to straight attacks.

Arcane Trickster - One of the least used rogue options, the arcane trickster is awesome for one reason: Mage Hand. Want to pick a lock you suspect of being trapped? Do it from 30 feet away using Mage Hand. Want to take the wand from the evil wizard and render him useless? Mage Hand. There are lots of other ways to employ this rogue archetype’s little bag of magical wonders.

Heister - Looking to steal? This Pathfinder rogue archetype is a stealthy, unseen thief that's good at picking locks and taking what isn't his. He's your man if you're planning any kind of heist. 

Dungeon Crate in the Making

Filling a box of loot seems easy: Pick some cool items, drop them in the box and send them off.

But it’s not.

Don’t get us wrong, working on Dungeon Crate is the coolest job in the world. It’s also lot of work.

Let’s give you a little behind the scenes look into how we put together your boxes of gaming loot every month. The Dungeon Crate you opened this month started several months ago.

We’re D&D and Pathfinder and RPG players with decades of gaming experience, and we know what we like to use when we play. If you’re anything like us, you’re going to love it, too.

The first thing we do is find a theme. Recent themes included Dungeon Lifestyle and Thieves. Once we have a theme, we start dreaming up ideas about what items could go into the crate including adventures, tokens, miniatures, terrain, cards and tons more. (If you subscribe, you know exactly what we’re talking about.)

And this is where we get a little pie-in-the-sky.

We come up with wild ideas about customizing items or dreaming up items that don’t exist. But here’s the cool part: A lot of times, those dreams actually come true.

Let’s look at the thief crate.

That started with our adventure, Against the Dead Hands, and ended with some awesome custom items.

We were finishing up the adventure’s final details while we were putting the box together, but we had an outline that got us thinking.

What monsters and NPCs were in the module? What was the story? What other pieces could we fit into the box that would complement the adventure?

One of the pieces we thought of early was the Dead Hands coin. The thieves’ guild that takes a starring role in Against the Dead Hands was first mentioned in the previous adventure, Xander’s Lost Orb, so we already knew a bit about them.

Could we make a custom coin for the adventure?

We started talking to our friends at Advanced Deployment and found out, yes, they could totally make us an acrylic token exactly like what we wanted. Awesome.

Meanwhile, our list of items for the box was getting bigger and bigger. We figured out what would work and what wouldn’t and started contacting our pals at Reaper Miniatures, Nord Games and elsewhere to get the items for the crate.

We also wrapped up editing the adventure and sent everything to our shipping facility.

We’re proud of that last crate, and it’s one of the most packed we’ve done.

Our next crate, done in partnership with the fine fellas at Nerdarchy, is shaping up similarly.

We’ve dreamed up a host of items, several of them custom pieces, and we’re trading ideas back and forth with the guys at Nerdarchy to make this a truly awesome crate.

We’ve been working on it for awhile and are just know locking down the details. And yes, we’re already getting items for crate after that as well as plotting out the next several crates.

If you want to know what to expect in your crates, there’s lots of information available. We review the crates every month right here on this blog, but there’s also tons of unboxing videos and reviews out there, too.

If you do a little homework, you’ll know exactly what to expect even if each month’s contents are a surprise. (That’s kind of the fun of it, you know?)

We pack tons of value into each crate. The actual retail cost of each crate is typically double what you pay, so you’re getting a deal.

If you’re already subscribed, we can answer your questions. We’re as communicative as we can be on social media, our e-mail newsletters and especially if you contact us in person. By the way, if you reach out, you’re talking to an owner, not some faceless minion. That’s how much we care about our customers.

Q&A with "Against the Dead Hands" Adventure Designer Kevin Coffey

We’re building the world of Halcyon.

This month, Dungeon Crate released the second in a series of adventures that take place in our very own campaign setting.

The world of Halcyon has everything - fiery dragons, forsaken gods, fiendish orcs, wild magic and lots more.

For starters, we’re diving into the area of Rhimms. Our first adventure, Xander’s Lost Orb, and our brand new adventure, Against the Dead Hands, take place in the region and mark our first expedition into Halcyon.

We talked to adventure designer Kevin Coffey, who wrote both adventures, about the direction of Against the Dead Hands and how it incorporates loads of items from Dungeon Crate.

Q. Is this adventure related to the last one?

A. It’s a direct continuation of Xander’s Lost Orb. DMs could run them back to back as part of a campaign. And a third adventure, which you’ll see in a future Dungeon Crate, comes right after this one.

They all take place in Dungeon Crate’s world of Halcyon. It’s been fun fleshing out the continent and its locales.

Q. Where does this adventure pick up?

A. It continues from where Xander’s Lost Orb left off. In that adventure, a young lord asks the adventurers to help him find an artifact, a magical glowing orb, that was once in the possession of his grandfather. He wants it to help fight off an army of orcs.

In Against the Dead Hands, the lord still needs some help. He’s busy prepping for a fight with the orcs, so he needs some help at home. There’s a thieves’ guild called the Dead Hands that is causing him trouble, so he asks the adventurers to help.

Q. What was the idea behind it?

A. I love the idea of a thieves’ guild with these bad guys having a private bar where they conspire, keep treasure and all that stuff. And what would it be like to raid the place where all these thieves are hanging out?

It’s always sounded like a ton of fun to me, and writing a den with all this treasure and drunk thieves and stuff was a blast.

Q. So it’s just a straight raid?

A. Not exactly. Even though it’s designed to be a single-session adventure, I tried to make it as robust as possible. The adventure presents several different ways to tackle it, depending on how the players want to do it. I don’t want to give too much away (check out the adventure!) but they could knock down the door or infiltrate the place as thieves or sneak in any number of ways. It should be fun.

Q. Where does it lead?

A. Well, it’s set up to take you one way, but it goes a slightly different direction by the end that sets up the third adventure, which I’m working on right now.

Q. This month’s entire Dungeon Crate box is centered around thieves. Are any of the pieces from the box usable in the adventure?

A. Actually, a ton of them are used in the module. As always, we wanted the adventure to be playable with little preparation, so we worked really hard to match up items from the box to the adventure. Some items were specifically picked to use in Against the Dead Hands.

My favorite piece is the Dead Hands coin made by Advanced Deployment. The thieves each carry a special coin that’s sort of an identifying badge, and if you have one, it makes getting in and out of the thieves’ guild quite a bit easier. The coin in the box bears the Dead Hands’ mark, and it’s beautiful whether you’re using it with the adventure or as an inspiration token or whatever. Advanced Deployment did an excellent job.

People should also be sure to check out the digital crate, which has a bunch of pieces related to the adventure including artwork and maps.

Kevin is a Dungeon Crate contributor and  and a writer for the Omaha World Herald. He rolls dice, writes adventures, and goes to a lot of concerts. His blog Crit for Brains offers more words and stuff to point your eyeholes to.