The Bard's College

General announcement: The new Barbarian Path of the Ragecaster subclass is now officially published on DM's Guild. Please check it out!

Hello and welcome to The Bard's College. I am The Bard and today's materials include a pair of new subclasses for the Monk which will be headed for the DM's Guild. As always, my brilliant students have the advance opportunity to review the beta version and provide any feedback on the new content before it is finalized and released on DM's Guild.  Check out the playtest PDF HERE>> I am also keenly aware that my lectures have not been posted with the regularity I had hoped. Nevertheless the college is far from abandoned, even if my responsibilities beyond the academic do place a greater than anticipated burden upon my schedule. I have been continuing my work on the Metroidvania module previously mentioned and will hopefully have a worthwhile update soon (complex map design is certainly a process). Additionally I've been hard at work getting our first few DM's Guild releases formatted and finalized for release. As one might expect this is slow going as the ...

Hello and welcome to The Bard’s College. I am The Bard, and this is the first in a series of posts which will outline my experience developing a new campaign. Specifically, with this campaign I am attempting to create something I’ve long been curious about, but have never found an adequate answer to. Can you make a tabletop RPG campaign that is also a metroidvania? For anyone who is not aware, metroidvania is a portmanteau of the titles of two massively influential games, specifically Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, which is used as a shorthand to describe a genre of game built around exploring a map finding keys/powerups which will open up more of the map for further exploration. I love metroidvania games and I’ve especially fallen in love with the original Dark Souls, a game that has spawned its own genre-defining label with the “souls-like” or “soulsborne” game. The real thing this experiment will teach me is whether the metroidvania gameplay style can fun...

Hello and welcome to The Bard's College. I am The Bard and today's materials include a new player race which will be headed for the DM's Guild in the next few weeks, but for you, my noble students, an early preview of the beta version.  Check out the playtest PDF HERE>> I, of course, welcome feedback from any students of the College on all playtest material shared here. I'm also working on a few new lectures which will be posted as soon as possible.  Until then, game well my friends,  -The Bard

Hello and welcome to The Bard's College. I am The Bard and you are one of the fortunate few to have found your way to our illustrious institution of intellectual intrigue. Here you will find varyingly notes, musings, and dissertations relating to tabletop role-playing, storytelling, and worldbuilding. Within this miscellany you may also stumble across special (free) resources to help you enhance your gaming experience. I'm also considering starting up a YouTube channel for the college and will soon be posting resources to DM's Guild. If I elect to move forward with these projects I'll be sure to update with links here. Until then, game well my friends, -The Bard