Fans began trying to turn Destiny into a Dungeons & Dragons-style pen-and-paper RPG two years ago. This week they released the 1.0 version of the Dungeons & Destiny Player’s Guidebook, providing an entirely new way to experience Bungie’s loot shooter alongside the Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition ruleset.
For those unfamiliar with Destiny, it’s a sci-fi shooter that takes place in a post-apocalyptic future in which zombie super-humans fight aliens in an ongoing struggle between the forces of light and darkness. For those unfamiliar with Dungeons & Dragons, it’s a text-based game in which you act out stories IRL as math and dice rolls decide your fate. It’s a perfect match-up, but the makers of the project stress that they haven’t just swapped out proper nouns.
“D&Destiny isn’t just a re-flavoring of 5th Edition, it’s almost a complete overhaul of the entire system,” creator GoodGameKitty wrote on Reddit. For example, Dungeons & Destiny has nine new classes created from scratch based on existing Destiny subclasses like gunslinger and voidwalker (the new Stasis subclasses recently added to Destiny 2 in Beyond Light will get worked in later).
There are also 14 weapons that let you choose your own perk upgrade path, new mechanics for things like respawning, unique status ailments like tethered, and unique stats for all of the game’s races. The best part is you can even play as Destiny’s hostile alien factions—Cabal, Fallen, Hive, Psions, and Vex--if you want, something the main game hasn’t gotten around to yet.
Outside of the Player’s Guidebook, which includes the bulk of what players need to get started, there’s also the Architect’s Guide, an overview of all of Destiny’s lore, and the Bestiary of the Wilds, which provides insight into all of the enemies that can crop up in Dungeons & Destiny. Those secondary books remain works in progress, but versions of both are also currently available to download for free to help flesh out early sessions. Taken all together, it’s enough to get started creating your own Guardians and craft a campaign for them to journey through.
If you don’t want the hassle of pen and paper, the makers of Dungeons & Destiny say it’s also compatible with the Roll20 tools for virtual tabletop gaming. There’s a dedicated Discord and subreddit if you’re looking for a group to play online with as well. Even if you don’t think you have the time, energy, or interest to play through a session yourself, the books are worth reading through just for their interesting D&D takes on Destiny lore. Bring on the inevitable LARP.
DISCUSSION
Speaking of 5e, what does everyone think of the new expansion that came out last month: Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything?
Personally, I’m disappointed that they nerfed Foe Slayer from playtesting. It went from a concentration-free casting of Hunter’s Mark a number of times per day up to your Wisdom mod to 1d4 damage once per turn to a single target for a minute when you hit with an attack that requires concentration that you can use a number of times a day up to your Proficiency Bonus and the damage scales up to 1d8 by higher levels. This wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t concentration-based since most of the Ranger’s spells rely on concentration. At the very least allow it to be concentration free at higher levels.
I ado like the changes to the Sorcerer. The two new subclasses, Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul add spells to the Sorcerer spell list and you can swap them out when you level up with certain spells on either the Sorcerer, Warlock, or Wizard spell list (Aberrant Mind can only swap out for Enchantment or Divination spells and Clockwork Soul can swap them out for Transmutation and Abjuration spells.). I really hope they errata this kind of feature onto earlier subclasses to prevent power creep.