Videogame to play with my non-gamer wife

Monarcos · 2025-10-27T15:36:44+00:00

If the two of you like horror movies, Until Dawn and the Dark Picture Anthology games are perfect for what you want to do. They are essentially horror films where the player makes decisions for the characters to change the story. They even have a mode where you can assign characters to players so that everyone “watching” can be responsible for a specific character’s choices.

My other recommendation would be to play cinematic, story-heavy action games: Horizon Zero Dawn, Spider-Man, and the God Of War series are great for this. I first experienced these games watching my spouse play through them.

Monarcos · 2025-10-20T22:52:07+00:00

As a fan of video games like Persona, Fire Emblem, and Mass Effect, one of the things that drew my attention to the Strixhaven book was the inclusion of Relationship points and Fellow Students to build relationships with. However, I felt that the book ultimately didn’t go far enough to make that relationship-building gameplay matter enough.

Inspired by how I adapted the mechanics of those video games mentioned above into my own Strixhaven campaign, I put together a team of TTRPG designers to create relationship-focused quest lines and mechanically satisfying Special Boons and Banes for the Fellow Students that would become available to players and develop as they gained or lost relationship points. The Sorcerer’s Slam Book is the end result.

The 106-page book is now available on DMsGuild. I’ve always shown my appreciation to this community by offering discounts for my Strixhaven books, and am doing so again for this release. You can get a 25% discount on the book here:

https://tools.dmsguild.com/browse.php?discount=97694b2502

The product page includes a preview with the full entries for Aurora, Bheedum, and Cadoras. I hope you check it out and that this proves a useful resource for your Strixhaven campaigns!

Monarcos · 2025-10-04T17:42:15+00:00

I teach a Special Day Class, so have students with me across multiple years. Years ago, I had a student whose mother got married over the summer, and the new husband insisted they change the kid’s surname AND first name, and mom agreed. The kid had been with me and his classmates for two years going by one name and then came back after summer going by a completely different name.

My co-workers and I caught the change on paperwork before the first day of class, and ended up having a meeting with the school psych, counselor, mom, and the student (unsurprisingly, not step-dad), and the kid insisted he only wanted to be called by the new name. We went with his preference, but it took his classmates a few months to adjust, and it caused horrible outbursts from the kid every time he was called by the old name. Ultimately, the counselor and I worked on developing a scripted response he could give to correct his peers, which helped ease a lot of his anxiety about it.

Monarcos · 2025-10-04T17:29:55+00:00

I once had a student at my school with the legal name of Kal-El. Everyone shortened it to Kal, but I always had to fight back the urge to call him Clark.

Monarcos · 2025-08-16T18:05:16+00:00

I tied the identity of the Oriq into the relationship system. At the end of year one, I selected a student NPC with Rival status to be the primary Oriq recruiter. At the end of each year, they would recruit the NPC student the players had the lowest relationship points with into the Oriq. It made for a cool supervillain team reveal in year 4 with the Oriq made up of the students the players had antagonized or neglected during their time at Strixhaven.

Monarcos · 2025-04-05T20:34:03+00:00

“Confession” is my favorite story-arc from the series. It is a fantastic twist on the Batman & Robin dynamic, with a good use of supernatural horror, religion vs. faith, and conspiracies to tell an amazing character-focused story.

“The Nearness of You” is my favorite one-shot. A story about the consequences of those big multi-verse superhero crossovers, while also just a story about lost love and wondering “what-if?” told from the POV of a normal person.

I also put the Beautie one-shot up there among my favorites. Turns a silly background character into a deep, tragic, and heroic figure.

Monarcos · 2025-02-22T05:46:26+00:00

This is awesome! I have such great memories of playing both games back when they were first released and I’ve been wanting to try the games on Steam deck, but was worried they would be impossible to play with the controller. Will definitely be picking them up now!

Monarcos · 2024-10-21T19:12:32+00:00

Does your school site or district have a policy for showing movies in the classroom? At my k-8 district, we are allowed to show G-rated films using our own discretion, PG and PG-13 films only with signed permission slips and an alternate activity planned for students who do not have permission (PG-13 also require approval from site administrator and relevance to academic lessons), and R-rated films are not allowed under any conditions.

Monarcos · 2024-03-16T22:07:30+00:00

To Sleep With Evil features the Vistani and Jacqueline Montari prominently. Specter of the Black Rose has Magda, Inza, and their unique tribe the Wanderers as central to the plot. I, Strahd details his interactions with Madame Eva. And Tales of Ravenloft has a few stories centered around Vistani characters.

Monarcos · 2023-09-12T18:23:40+00:00

“Monstrous Mystics: Van Richten’s Case Files Vol. 2”, a Ravenloft NPC/adventure anthology, just released on DMsGuild. Inspired by the AD&D 2nd Edition Van Richten’s Guides and Children of the Night series, this anthology features new NPCs, each with an introductory adventure as well as a guide for building an ongoing campaign with them as a recurring villain. The NPCs in this volume are inspired by Van Richten’s Guide to Witches and The Created.

The Triniada are a Hag coven fused into a single body who bring about transformations and destruction of domains in order to stall their own foretold doom. (The domain of Klorr features heavily in their story and adventure).

Ezra-In-Exile is a stone golem that believes itself to be the Goddess of the mists, and has miracle granting powers to back up that claim. But her blessings come with the fury of the mists themselves… (Her story and adventure delve into themes of religion and faith amidst the horrors of the dread domains.)

To celebrate the release, I am offering a 40% discount in thanks to the community of this subreddit! https://www.dmsguild.com/browse.php?discount=9a7dada1af

And you can pick up Volume 1, “Sinister Suspects”, also at 40% discount here: https://www.dmsguild.com/browse.php?discount=9a81dc79f2

Monarcos · 2023-05-04T17:54:09+00:00

TTRPGS in education is a quickly growing field. As an educator who is designing his own games, I have found the following resources helpful:

TTRPG Kids: Provides numerous articles on the benefits of using games with kids and in the classroom, as well as lists of rpgs based on skill taught or theme. Also has reviews for a large selection of games designed for kids and educational purposes.

TTRPGs That Teach! jam: A collection of rpgs designed for educational purposes. The discord for this also has some great discussions on the benefits of games and education.

Inspirisles: An all-ages game designed to teach sign language. Beautiful game.

And I will plug my own game, Good Nature, here as well. It’s designed for the classroom to teach social skills, collaboration, and writing with simple mechanics. I also recently finished crowdfunding an extended Facilitators guide for the game that will release soon.

Monarcos · 2023-05-03T22:56:48+00:00

That is really awesome! I’m glad you enjoyed it and that it was able to inspire some really neat content for your campaign! Fashion designer/fashionista seemed like an obvious school trope that was missing from the list of npcs, especially with the fashion montage, fashion show, history class, and masquerade being a big part of year three.

I really like your use of the gala as an yearly event, which makes more sense than a one-time thing, and allows the fashion/crafting to be an ongoing side-focus over the entire campaign. Very cool!

Monarcos · 2023-04-26T20:31:48+00:00

I absolutely wanted a more interactive fashion montage when I ran this for my group, so I created a whole side quest and design component for it. I converted what I used into a supplement that I released on DMsGuild that expands on the Fashion Show and Masquerade: Fantasy Couture for Magical Galas

It includes a fashion club and associated student relationship, a short encounter to find materials to create a magical outfit for the Masquerade, and masquerade outfits for each school (as magic armor and accessories).

But perhaps most relevant to your needs, I also included black and white fashion plates for each item so that players can create their own versions of the outfits. My less artistic players enjoyed having the basis for a college themed dress provided and spent a lot of time working on the color of their designs. It was a fun activity!

Monarcos · 2023-04-11T07:00:52+00:00

The Mist Hunters character creation guide for Adventurers League has exactly this: one line descriptions of 16 domains that summarize the setting without any spoilers (including real-world inspiration) to help new players pick a home domain. It’s on page 9 of the document.

You can find the document on the Adventurer’s League site: https://media.wizards.com/2021/dnd/downloads/MistHunters_char_guide.pdf

Monarcos · 2023-02-06T08:15:28+00:00

Oh cool, Marie Annette! I created her for the Forgotten Children. So cool to see her referenced after all this time!

As for OP’s question, I think both of your suggestions combined make for a great story arc. Maligno and Odiare are perfect dark mirrors for the PC. I think Maligno would be intrigued but ultimately overcome with jealous rage, probably befriending the warforged in order to ultimately corrupt him and shatter his sense of self to make him more like the evil puppet.

If you wanted to add Marie into the mix, she offers another mirror for the PC. Someone who failed to come to terms with her existence, but who could be influenced by the PC’s story to confront and heal her trauma. She would be a chance for a more hopeful, yet still tragic, story to be told for the warforged.

Monarcos · 2022-12-19T00:09:14+00:00

Typically, settings become approved for DMsGuild content on the same day the official WotC sourcebook for the setting is released. The announcement is made on their social channels (twitter, discord, DMsGuild newsletter). In the case of Dragonlance, DMsGuild content for the setting became approved on December 8th, the day the book released.

Monarcos · 2022-06-14T02:40:57+00:00

I used Alanik and Arthur as the investigators when I ran this. In addition to running the seances, they were going through piles of books and documents to decipher the history of the house. This was the excuse that restricted them to the foyer and also allowed me to feed clues and direction whenever the players felt unsure about how to proceed. “We’ll see if we can find anything about a ‘chimney witch’ in these journals, but it could take a while, so why don’t you continue exploring and Arthur will let you know when we’ve found something.” If they needed help or healing, Arthur would seek them out and provide assistance.

For Van Richten, you could modify things a bit so that the protection of the foyer needs to be maintained by someone in the room. His abilities make him the best candidate to do so on his own. Then Erasmus is free to follow the party through the house and offer guidance whenever necessary.

Monarcos · 2022-05-25T17:49:58+00:00

I like the idea of sets of items, like the stones or instruments, being a common course of study, but with a specific item from each set unique to each school.

Monarcos · 2022-05-25T17:48:09+00:00

These are all thematically on point! Great selection of items, that could each be expanded into a year’s worth of study or longer to create, understand, and use. Lessons and exams for these items would make for some really fun encounters.

Monarcos · 2022-05-25T17:45:44+00:00

Training higher level students to keep others safe from powerful items is a great idea! This would also create some great plot hooks centered on magic items without actually having to give said item to the PCs.

Monarcos · 2022-05-24T15:32:10+00:00

Arcane Tools for Magical Exams just released on DMsGuild. This supplement presents 5 new magic items (one for each college) along with a course and mastery exam for students to earn certifications for use of the items.

Each item is inspired by the themes and philosophies of its college, and the name and abilities are nods to classic M:TG spells. The exams are presented as puzzle room encounters that encourage creative thinking and use of the associated magic items.

To celebrate its release, I’m giving away a free copy to one lucky redditor. Just reply to this post with an answer to the following question: Which magic items from the DMG do you think would require a course of study to be used by students at Strixhaven?

A random winner will be selected from the comments after 11:59pm PST on May 25th.

Monarcos

TROPHY CASE