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Welcome to the latest ’5D Pop Culture Website Pick Of The Week Award’, the opportunity to share something in the world of Pop Culture (usually, but not exclusively RPG-related). This week’s choice falls well and truly within of the RPG universe and will shortly be on my own ’to buy’ list on the Dungeon Masters Guild link below.
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And while the ’5D Pop Culture Website Pick Of The Week Award’ may not be; a) The most prestigious award in the TTRPG community, or b) A snappy, concise award title – well, it will be something we take rather seriously at 5DHQ as we fastidiously wade through the plethora of weekly releases.
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And while there may be no review, or even more importantly, no prize, there is the knowledge that the winner has our undying love and adoration…..though not in a creepy way, obviously.
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Crowns & Castles (277 pages) lets you play D&D as a 4x empire strategy game.
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You’re no longer playing as a single character. In C&C you’re in control of an entire realm that you create from scratch, making decisions for its military, economy, culture, and diplomacy. That realm gains experience, levels up, and unlocks new abilities. And you’re going to do all this in a co-op, player-vs-player, or mixed environment with a DM who guides the world’s narrative and lets you attempt anything you can dream.
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Choose a race, pick a government and founding backstory, construct buildings, discover natural resources, create powerful artifacts, research and cast continent-spanning spells, spy on your neighbors, sign treaties, trade valuable luxuries, make history, and wage war in a turn-based tactical combat system (check out the free demo “Battle at Shallow Mountain”).
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C&C can be played at the table or asynchronously one turn at a time. No more worries about cancelling sessions due to schedules. You can use C&C as a setting for multiple simultaneous D&D games where the outcomes of one game affect everyone else in a shared, living world, or simply as an engine to create your own worlds. The system is setting-agnostic and easily reskinnable to your existing homebrews.
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You get:
- 27 races (37 including subraces), each with a uniquely-themed set of military units
- 13 Governments that act as your realm’s class
- 10 Founding backgrounds to choose from that describe how your realm originated
- 15 skills to accomplish your goals from Recruitment, Research, Sabotage, etc.
- 50 buildings to construct in your settlements
- 70 resources to explore, exploit, trade, and develop
- 170 realm-level spells to cast in and out of combat
- 100 unique artifacts for your alchemists to create
- Over 500 military units scaled to C&C’s deep mass combat system
- Over 200 traits and reactions for those units
- 3 battle maps with special scenario rules at the C&C scale (50 feet per square)
- 3 storylines to threaten your world and either bring your players together or tear them apart
- 100 random events to jumpstart narratives
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This book contains everything you need – a Player’s section to create and manage your realm, a DM’s section to start and run the game, and a vast catalogue of NPC military units.
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Crowns & Castles is now available in PDF & print at Dungeon Masters Guild
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