D&D: Five Ways To Make Merry During The Holidays
‘Tis the season! If you’re lucky enough to fit in a D&D holiday game this season, here are five ways your characters could celebrate.
It seems like every game these days has a seasonal event. From Destiny 2’s Dawning, aka Space Christmas, to Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s Yuletide event, to GTA Online’s Festive Surprise. You can find themed-events and adventures everywhere from realms of fantasy to the darkest reaches of space.
Why should your D&D game be any different? Holidays abound in the Forgotten Realms or whatever world you’re playing on. Here are five ways to celebrate.
A D&D Holiday Feast
Courtesy of D&D Hero’s Feast Cookbook
You don’t need Heroes’ Feast to get a bunch of people for a description of made up characters eating food that would make even George R.R. Martin satisfied, but it certainly helps. Feasts are a great chance to not only describe sweetbreads, savory pies, roast beast, and so forth, but they’re also an opportunity to get characters together with NPCs in a casual setting.
Need a quick side-quest? Goblins have stolen a prize dish and the PCs must get it back. There’s no end of good you can have from a feast session in your D&D campaign.
Exchanging Gifts
Why let Stardew Valley have all the fun. Winter and gift-giving seem to go hand in hand, why not encourage them in your next session? For players, get a gift for an NPC and give it to them. If you’re the DM, maybe an NPC has a trinket that could be useful for the party. Or go full Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, and have Father Christmas hand out magic items like they were going out of style. Don’t want to overpower things? Try these common magic items.
D&D Holiday Adventures
Look we all know that it’s harder to do anything when people are celebrating, and that includes preparing for a game. Why not try a holiday adventure as a quick one-shot or side quest. You can find a variety of them, including a winter night ball.
Use A Winter Monster
There are plenty of monsters that use ice and snow as either their stock and trade attacks, or are at least, suitably scary for adventuring out in the frozen north. You can find an abominable yeti and more right here.
Holiday Mini-Games
A tried and true tradition. Pick a bizarre local custom and then pull the rules from a module like Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden or Tomb of Annihilation. Turn dinosaur racing into reindeer racing, take the fishing rules and just use them as they are.
Do you have a D&D holiday campaign planned? Let us know below in the comments!
Happy Adventuring!
