Introducing the Tarrasque (5e)

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Giant Tarrasque

Image credits: https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-M9usahTVHiYqci1OHYA

On this week's blog for Enter the Geekdom, we will be diving into what we like to call Monster Appreciation Week, and today’s monster will be the Tarrasque (5e)

You thought I was going to say the Beholder didn’t you, or maybe a dragon? Or Vecna, for my Stranger Things fans currently reading. However not today, today’s monster of the week is a monster that we as DMs, are too scared to use. When it’s mentioned during a campaign, your players will pack their stuff, throw away their dice and call it a day—leaving you the DM alone at the table with no more players.

Full body image of Tarrasque

Image credit: https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Tarrasque

Now you’re left with an empty room; the only company you have are the crickets climbing the wall in the corner. *DM: Great*

The Tarrasque is a 70 feet long and 50 feet wide monster, that lives under the earth's surface and is summoned by any kind of cosmic occasion. They eat kingdoms whole and will have no issue eating you in one bite like a McDonald's chicken nugget. Leaving you wondering “what the heck just happened”.

So if you have bards, sorcerers, warlocks, or wizards in the party and any of them have wild magic, keep them in a box and don’t let them out unless you really gotta use them. (Unless you don’t have a Tarrasque lying somewhere.)

Tarrasques have damage immunities to fire, poison; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks. So if your party has little hand swords and a wooden bow and arrows, running the other direction might be the best option for you. (Unless you as the DM need a TPK (Total party kill) then you’re gonna love this one.)

But don’t let that discourage you from needing to pay for your whole party’s therapy session after playing a session with a Tarrasque. As the DM you’ll need to make sure that your party has reached the proper level, and that you make sure nothing happens that’ll summon it until your party is ready. The Tarrasque is challenge 30 (155,000 XP) and anyone above level 15 shouldn’t have an issue fighting one.

Image of the real mythical Tarasque

Image credit: https://warriorsofmyth.fandom.com/wiki/Tarasque

*However be aware that fighting a Tarrasque might take some time, especially if you’re going into it right away. Some players might start to get bored while playing. But if you can find ways to extend it by adding side quests at the same time and sacrificing a couple of kingdoms and NPCs you can always turn it around and make it entertaining.*

I’d suggest that if you’re going to sacrifice a player to the Tarrasque, make it the player that summoned the thing in the first place. My party did that, and it made everyone’s life much easier... (Don’t do what they did, we had to play 2 extra sessions so that they could save up enough gold to bring him back to life :) )

Fun fact about the Tarrasque, it’s based on the French mythology creature ‘Tarasque’. The Tarasque is a beast that had a lion-like head, its body was protected by a turtle-like carapace. six feet, with bear-like claws, and a serpent’s tail. And could expel a poisonous breath. (Yikes)

So there you have it! Honestly, when it comes to D&D, the creative ability to use any kind of monster from the Monster Manuel is there for you to indulge yourself in. You can be original and stick with using dragons or add a Kraken while you’re party is travelling through the ocean on their sailboat that they managed to steal after 2 hours of trying to convince the guard that they owned it.

Quick Notes from the author

Hi everyone! If you haven’t read my previous blogs, where we talked about joining the world of Tabletop RPG and where to start. Along with my second blog, where I introduce to you the world of Dungeons and Dragons, what are you doing? Go check those out! I also want to thank everyone for joining Enter the Geekdom, and I hope you had a blast reading everyones blogs!

- Blogs -

Blog 1: (So you want to get into Table Top RPG?) https://spineonline.squarespace.com/eek/2023/9/22/valerie-ngh3e

Blog 2: (Welcome to Dungeons and Dragons) https://spineonline.squarespace.com/eek/2023/9/22/valerie-mn2lh

- Useful Links -

DnD Beyond Tarrasque page: https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/17034-tarrasque

Monster Manuel (5e): https://orkerhulen.dk/onewebmedia/Monster%20Manual.pdf

Picture of a DnD party

Image Credits: https://dnd.wizards.com/resources/fan-site-kit

Hey, I’m Valerie Robert! I’m a Dungeons and Dragons DM. I’d get your D20s ready, because I’ll be taking you on an adventure into the world of Table top RPG games and why they’re taking over the world by a storm. For the past couple of years I’ve been intrigued with writing fiction, and decided to join the amazing world of Table Top RPG to take my skills to the next level, and have fun with my friends. I love being able to express my love for creating worlds and characters along with anything involving RPG games.

So before we begin our adventure, I’d love for everyone to please roll initiative.

Welcome To Dungeons & Dragons

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Let’s Begin

Image Credits: MT BLACK GAMES https://www.mtblackgames.com/blog/top-20-free-dnd-adventures

So you read my first blog, and decided that Dungeons & Dragons peaked your interest. Amazing! I’m happy to announce that you’ve come to the right place. In this blog we’ll go through everything you’ll need to know as a beginner in D&D, what to expect, and how gameplay usually runs and tips and tricks to help you in your journey.

Learning D&D always comes in 3 parts:

  1. Seeking interest and wanting to learn to play.

  2. Learning to play, getting overwhelmed, and quitting cause no game should be this complicated to learn.

  3. Coming across this blog, and realizing that I’m here to help you make things easy.

When learning, you might feel overwhelmed. Everyones tells you that you should be learning all types of different information and to read all the books, but that’s not the case. Of course if you were to do that you’d be overwhelmed, you’re forcing yourself to learn so much that isn’t necessary at the moment. D&D, though, is a game where it’s good to learn before you play. It’s a “learn as you go” experience.

D&d 5th edition Character sheet (Page 1)

IMage Credits: DiceGEEKs https://www.dicegeeks.com/dnd-5e-character-sheet/

Now don’t go reading the Players Handbook from front to back, you’ll quit after 10 pages. Youtube is your friend, it’s what I used for months before I got the books. Youtuber’s like ‘Pointy Hat’, ‘Ginny D’, and ‘The DM Layer’ helped me so much in my journey. If you want a visual feel on how a session is run, I suggest watching Critical Role or Dimension 20.

(Because books are expensive, I’ve got your back. I’ll leave a link to a PDF of the player handbook at the end of the blog)

Now you’ve got an idea about how things are run during a game, you’re ready to move on to the next step. Character creation! A character sheet in D&D might be your most prized possession when playing. It’s more valuable than the magical item you found in session three and completely forgot about.

Character creation can be intimidating at first, especially if you have no idea what anything means. Luckily there is an amazing website called D&D beyond which will help you create your character with step by step instructions and proper description for everything to help. The main focus when creating your characters is choosing your race and class.

List of all races: https://www.dndbeyond.com/races

List of Classes: https://www.dndbeyond.com/classes

Note that some races are harder to play than others, if you’re not creating your characters with your group contact your DM and ask what would suit the campaign better, and if there is any information needed when creating your character.

Something you should keep in mind is your ability scores, the vertical column on the left side of your sheet

Here’s a little idea on what each ability score is used for:

Dexterity: How you can walk under/around/over something

Strength: How much you can throw, carry, pull, push, etc.

Constitution: Now the character’s physique, toughness, health and resistance to diseases and poisons.

Intelligence: Refers to “reasoning and memory” or “logic, education, memory, or deductive reasoning”.

Wisdom: character’s practical intelligence, cleverness, perceptiveness, and how in tune they are with the world around them.

Charisma: Charisma measures a character's force of personality, force of will, persuasiveness, personal magnetism, ability to lead and physical attractiveness.

A party of 3 fighting on a small sail boat fighting a Merrow.

Image Credit: red erpg https://www.rederpg.com.br/2019/03/03/dd-5a-edicao- ghosts-of-saltmarsh-proximo-lancamento-de-dd/

Finding a group can be hard if you don’t have a group of friends willing to play or you don’t know someone who already plays. That’s okay, with how popular it’s gotten there are so many online communities you can join.

Something a lot of players forget and I always need to remind my own players is that your DM is there for you! Your DM will always be there to answer any questions you have rather than when you’re trying to learn, or even questions that come to gameplay.

“What am I going to expect when I start playing?”

Illustration of a D&D party around a table playing and solving things while playing

Image credit: Nerdarchy https://nerdarchy.com/start-your-5e-dd-campaign-with-a-single-encounter/

D&d is a collaborative game where you work together as a team to explore worlds created by your DM. It's a great game to build team building and strategy skills especially when you’ve accidentally walked into a race belonging to an owlbear and you need to find a way out.

It’s a game meant to have fun with your friends, messing around trying to convince the guard that you didn’t break the door down when he clearly saw you do it. It’s every theatre kid's dream when role playing gets involved, coming to the sessions dressed up as Dobby from Harry Potter and attempting to do Voldemort's voice when playing your character.

So I’m leaving you with that, I hope you’re journey in learning D&D is fun and you experience some of the best adventures.

Player Handbook PDF: https://orkerhulen.dk/onewebmedia/DnD%205e%20Players%20Handbook%20%28BnW%20OCR%29.pdf

Hey, I’m Valerie Robert! I’m a Dungeons and Dragons DM. I’d get your D20s ready because I’ll be taking you on an adventure into the world of Table top RPG games and why they’re taking over the world by a storm. For the past couple of years I’ve been intrigued with writing fiction, and decided to join the amazing world of Table Top RPG to take my skills to the next level, and have fun with my friends. I love being able to express my love for creating worlds and characters along with anything involving RPG games.

So before we begin our adventure, I’d love for everyone to please roll initiative.

So you want to get into Table Top RPG?

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Let me help you with that!

Image credit: War GAMER

Tabletop role-playing games or pen-to-paper role-playing games, istare a type of game where you play through a story through verbal speech. You can also play as anything you desire in any kind of world.  you desire. It has ’s even been said that games such as D&D are good for your mental health as they help improve social skills, help build confidence, and learn to express themselves through the characters that they create. In Tabletop RPGs you learn the perspective of other players.

An amazing example of a Tabletop RPG game is Dungeons and Dragons, which is the oldest RPG game.  It was created in 1974 by Dave Arneson and was recently brought back to popularity with the Netflix show Stranger Things where D&D is brought up quite often. There are other games such as “Blades in the Dark”, “The Quiet Year” and many more.

There are probably hundreds of reasons why people play RPG games., Years ago, when I was introduced to D&D years ago by my older brother, I knew that this was a chance to take my world-building, and story-writing skills to the next level and I took on the role of the DM.

I knew what world-building and story-writing skills I will be knew I needed to be a DM and have the chance to build amazing worlds with endless stories,I I went and asked some of my players why they enjoyed playing D&D and what made them interested to start playing. One of them stated, “It’s a game where you can go around doing things without real-world consequences and live a million different lives.” Another said, “To have an adventure in the safety of your own home and be able to get along and meet new people who have the same interests as you.”

IMAGE CREDIT: DICEBREAKER

So, you’re interested in Tabletop RPG and don’t know where to start? No problem! [AA1] When I first started, YouTube was my best friend. I learned almost everything I needed from it and there are so many people that will help with your D&D journey. I’ve always recommended finding a couple friends to start. Tell them that you’re all going to be playing a mind-blowing game— and hopefully that they say yes. If not, tell them they suck!  However, if your friends still say no, there are also so many online communities that are also in the same boat as you and would love to create a group to play.

Next, decide if you want to be a player or a DM., If you have a passion for world-building and storyline creation and want to create epic plot twists to mess with your characters, I think the DM role would be great for you. If you enjoy creating characters and participating in adventures with other players, then the player role is for you.

When it comes to roleplaying, you need to have fun with it and go with the flow. Once you get into it and start to overthink, the experience won’t be as memorable as it should be. It’s a game you play for fun, not to save the real world;, however, if you’re in a game and it’s time to save the world, then you can get stressed. Start easy, play with a group of friends you’re comfortable with, and like I told my players, remember to have fun and don’t stress— we’re all playing and learning for the first time we’re learning together.

Hey, I’m Valerie Robert! I’m a Dungeons and Dragons DM. I’d get your D20s ready because I’ll be taking you on an adventure into the world of Table top RPG games and why they’re taking over the world by a storm. For the past couple of years I’ve been intrigued with writing fiction, and decided to join the amazing world of Table Top RPG to take my skills to the next level, and have fun with my friends. I love being able to express my love for creating worlds and characters along with anything involving RPG games.

So before we begin our adventure, I’d love for everyone to please roll initiative.