Hello, my name is Ashley Poston, Epic Reads' author in residence for the moment.
And today, I'm going to bring you YA books that would make
absolutely killer DnD campaigns.
Roll for initiative, [SOUND] [LAUGH]
[MUSIC]
Now, it's a little known secret that if you're a Dungeon Master in
want of a quick and easy campaign, you consult your favorite books.
Yes, that's right, your favorite books.
You just lift the plot out of the book, and you splunk it into Dungeons & Dragons.
The sky's the limit, and not even the sky, space is the limit.
I have done one in space before, anyway.
So if you want to transfer your favorite books into a Dungeons and
Dragons campaign, here's how you do it.
I have two simple rules to doing this.
The first rule is that the book should probably be plot-based, and
not character-based.
Heist and quest based books are usually gold when it comes to transferring
them to DnD, and they're the easiest ones to do as well.
Now I will get into one book later that is character-based, but
I will explain that when we get to it.
And the second rule, and this is the most easy rule to follow,
you just have to be familiar with the book.
You have to be familiar with the characters, with the plot.
You have to be familiar with what happens inside the world,
if you're basing the campaign inside the world of the book.
If not, you don't have to know it that well, but
you do need to have a tight grasp on the plot, especially when your characters,
aka players, decide to go off the rails and do something completely different.
And so without further ado, here are some YA books that I am dying to campaign.
Who wants to begin my DnD campaign?
[SOUND] And first up on the list is Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo.
Now, when I say heist books are super easy to transfers to a DnD campaign,
I really mean it.
And they´re so much fun too, both the DM and the for the player.
Now just imagine, a group of intrepid outlaws sneaking into a snow-covered
prison to save their mark or they don't get paid and probably die.
I'm talking corruption, I'm talking politics.
I'm talking a lot of stealth roles, to be completely honest, but it is so much fun.
Can you imagine being a barbarian, just tromping through this prison?
Aww man, so many, so many shenanigans, be so much fun.
[SOUND] And next up on the list is Sabriel by Garth Nix.
It is about the daughter of the Abhorsen,
who must travel across the wall into the Old Kingdom to find her father,
the Abhorsen, before he dies, or if he's died, find out how he died.
It is necromancy, but with a twist.
And you as the DM will lead a group of intrepid explorers across the wall
into the Old Kingdom to find the Abhorsen and
stop the darkness that's slowly creeping across the land.
And hopefully not kill anyone, that's always the goal, always the goal.
Can you imagine being just a group of necromancers just going
into the Old Kingdom and raising the dead and
just being absolute murderhobos, that'd be so much fun.
[SOUND] And next up on the list is Inuyasha by Rumiko Takahashi.
Now bear with me, high-schooler Kagome accidentally falls down
a time-traveling well it ends up in demon-infested feudal Japan where she
must find all the shards of the Shikon Jewel and get home, or die trying.
Now you will send your band of intrepid adventurers
across a land full of myths and legends in search of pieces
of a powerful jewel that monsters are also hunting for.
That sounds like such a cool campaign, I love Inuyasha so much.
[SOUND] And next up on the list is Stardust by Neil Gaiman.
To proclaim his undying devotion, Tristan must fetch a fallen star for his love.
An impossible task, but Tristan is just dumb enough to try it.
And so he ventures over the wall into a land of myth and
mayhem where, impossibly, a star has just fallen.
Now you, as the Dungeon Master, you are going to lead
an intrepid band of villains into the wilds of magic and
mayhem after Tristan and his star.
And you all are tasked with taking the star back, well, stealing it actually.
Stealing the star before Tristan gets over the wall again.
[SOUND] And next up on the list is Truthwitch by Susan Dennard.
Friends Safi and Iseult must flee their home when they accidentally clash with
a guild master and his blood witch bodyguard.
But when a magical disease begins to sweep the land, they must ally and oppose with
emperors and mercenaries alike to stop this nefarious plot from spreading.
Now, I don't know about you, but I really, really, really love, no,
there's a magical sickness and we need to stop it and
the nefarious people behind it sort of DnD plot because it's straightforward.
You can invent a lot of things inside of it, and
the sky's the limit with what magical disease it is.
So I highly recommend trying this one, I wanna try this one.
Susan do you wanna do this one with me?
Cuz it would be so much fun, although you already know the ending.
So maybe I will play it, you will DM it and
you will tell me all of the secrets in the other books that are to come right, right?
Yeah, yeah, okay, we're gonna do it [LAUGH].
[SOUND] And next up is The Diminished by Kaitlyn Sage Patterson.
In a world where everyone is a twin, those born single become the rulers.
And if your twin dies?
Well, you're soon to follow, or so everyone believes.
Take your band of intrepid twin-less Diminished across a land filled with
lies to find the truth behind the madness that takes every surviving twin.
And fight a religion that deems you unworthy to live.
[SOUND] And next up is Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C Wrede.
It is about a tomboy princess who leaves her royalty behind to go live with
a few dragons, and try and defeat the mages who are trying to kill them.
Now, this is a really, really, really cool take on dragons,
especially in DnD where they all have hit points and
you kinda are supposed to kill them, especially if you're murderhobos.
Well, if you're a murderhobo, you kill literally everyone, but
that's beside the point.
This would be so cool, to work with dragons to defeat an evil cult of
wizards hellbent on destroying dragons to use their parts for,
I don't know, a summoning of Tiamat or something.
I think that would be so cool, I really wanna do that, that'd be so much fun.
[SOUND] And
this next one is the exception to the rules at the very beginning of this video.
Because I said that mostly you wanna stick to quest or heist-based books,
which is still very much true.
But there are a few books that lend themselves very easily to campaigns,
especially if you know them very, very, very well.
And for me, I know Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones.
It is about a young woman named Sophie Hatter who gets cursed by the Witch
of the Waste to spend the remainder of her lives as a decrepit old woman.
And so she becomes the cleaning lady of the nefarious wizard Howl.
But she quickly finds out that is not
just his Moving Castle that's a disaster, so is he.
So you as the Dungeon Master, you take your intrepid
band of normies, cuz, I mean, Howl is from Wales.
So you can have all of your characters also be from anywhere in this world.
And they are summoned to Ingary by the wizard Sullivan to track down
a missing Moving Castle and capture the rogue fire demon inside.
That would be so much fun, I would love to do that, [SOUND] Calcifer.
[SOUND] But wait, not only can you play
Dungeons and Dragons on land, but
you can also play Dungeons and Dragons in space.
Yes, in space, and so I have two more recommendations for you.
And the first one is Ignite the Stars by Maura Milan and the sequel just came out.
So you better just go a hop on and get both because they're fantastic.
Anyway, Ia is the most feared outlaw in the entire
universe la Cōcha, she is also 17 years old.
And so when she is captured by the Olympus Commonwealth and
sent to their military academy, she must somehow find a way to escape.
Lest she befriend her classmates, which aren't that terrible as she's
beginning to find out, but gosh, she can't, it'd be a horror.
And so you as the DM will lead a team of elite outlaws into
the Olympus Commonwealth's military academy to bust Ia out of
her terrible predicament, and you'll have to fight your way out.
That would be so much fun, especially if you stuck to the non-magic class of aces,
like if you were a rogue or ranger or a barbarian.
My gosh, or even a bard,
I would totally love a bard to be in this campaign, it would be so much fun.
And also the books are great, you should read them.
[SOUND] And last but not least is one that's kind of cheating, I guess.
But I really wanna do this campaign, so I'm adding it.
I would love to run a campaign of Heart of Iron, by me.
It is about a girl who very conveniently, I guess,
very conveniently has lost her memories.
But she finds out that she is the lost princess of the Iron Kingdom.
And so she is fated to stop the great dark before it destroys her entire galaxy and
kills everyone she loves.
And you players would be outlaws on the intrepid dossier.
And your mission is to save the lost princess from the great dark
before the great dark gets to her.
And one of the players maybe can be secretly working for the great dark.
Because I think that'd be cool, a lot of fun, and
a nod to what happens in the book, no spoilers or anything.
But I think it'd be fun, okay, you caught me,
I really just want, I really just wanna play Captain Siege.
That's all I wanna do, I just wanna play Captain Siege, she's really cool.
[SOUND] Anyway, that's it for this video.
Thank you all so much for watching.
My name is Ashley Poston, cosplaying playing as the intrepid,
self-rescuing Princess Buttercup from the Princess Bride,
which is also a really good book to run and DnD campaign with.
I've done it, it's so much fun.
And so I hope you enjoyed this video.
Please like, subscribe, find me on the Internet and
if you end up doing any of the books in a campaign, please let me know.
Or if you have any books that you are dying to play in a campaign,
please respond below and happy reading!
I'll see you guys later, bye!
[SOUND] Actually, I do have a small caveat to add from the previous videos.
So it occurs to me that not everyone knows how to play Dungeons and
Dragons, and D&D is a lot to get started with.
So I have some links down below for you to get started.
Please check them out, join us, it's a lot of fun.
It's a great game and you get to collect awesome dice like me,
look at the shinies, they clicky-clacky, [SOUND].
[LAUGH] See you all on the next video, bye.