That Time Star Trek Ripped Off D&D 

CORRECTION NOTICE: In this video I mistakenly claimed that Star Trek aired the first Borg episode before the D&D module was released. In reality the module, Where Chaos Reigns, was published in 1985, 4 years before the Borg were a thing in Star Trek. I think the website I was using to confirm the information about the module’s release date had wrong information either due to a clerical error or possibly because it was referring to a reprinting of the module itself. That’s my bad for not double checking. I pride myself and this channel on trying to find and present information about D&D’s history that is lesser know , so it’s very important to me that I make corrections when they come up. Anyways, just wanted to put that out there and let everyone know. The title has also been changed to reflect this. The rest of the video’s information is all still accurate as far as I know, but maybe D&D actually got ripped off in the end. Thanks for watching guys! Massive video coming next week, I'll see you then! Let me know what monsters you want to see me talk about on the show! Halloween is coming up so give me some spooky recommendations!

I need a pie chart of dnd monsters right from ancient mythology, dnd monsters ripped from Tolkien, dnd monsters ripped from other popular media of the 70s-90s, and then see how many distinctly original monsters remain.

The Oard vs Mindflayers is just the Daleks vs Cybermen

One aspect you didn't address was the Oard's complete hatred of magic, the major plot of CM6 was the Oard were defeated by the magic-using races. Their primary motivation is to eliminate wizards, the creation of artifacts and the extinction of magical creatures in the timeline. Failing to defeat them in one timeline might end up as an extinction-level event in the future for elves or gnomes.

I love the idea of a fantasy version of the Xeelee; an alien race so hyper advanced that they turned the universe into a closed time loop so they'd have more time to figure out a solution to their set of problems.

I like the mind flayer idea, I could see one begrudgingly going to/abducting a party, saying they need help. Like "Oh, you think *We're* bad?! You should see these things."

The module "Where chaos Reigns" with the Oard was published 4 years before the Star Trek episode featuring the Borg.

The idea of a temporal war between the Oard and the Illithids is super spicy, especially since the Oard are strongly resistant to psychic damage and are so focused on technology, as opposed to the strongly psionic and fleshwarping-focused Illithids. In a twist on the original adventure where the Oard made their appearance, the PCs could be tasked not just with preventing the Oard from dominating the timelines, but doing so in a way that the Illithids do not triumph either. And in this planes-spanning war between technology and psionics, might I suggest that a third faction representing magic could be sponsoring the PCs? Or, wild notion here, their patron could be a Reigar, who wants to wipe out both factions because art cannot exist in a multiverse dominated by humorless mind flayers or soulless automatons.

i think the most successful synthesis of the concept are the Phyrexians of Magic: The Gathering. Which really drive home the body horror and cosmic threat of such creatures.

I like the idea of mind flayers and the oard having some kind of tense war with one another in the future, and they both came back into the past to give themselves a leg-up in said war. I could see this being similar to the Cybermen and Daleks from Doctor Who, or the Borg and Species 8472 (which are also telepaths) from Star Trek: Voyager. I too grew up on Star Trek: The Next Generation. I still remember Levar Burton doing an episode of Reading Rainbow and taking the audience on a tour of the set. That's when I first learned of the series, and meeting both Q and the Borg are what sold me on watching it.

Crazy how you put this up literal hours before my party is about to meet, now I have to rack my brain on how to apply this new knowledge lol

i'm interrested how they would react to warforged or modrons, these creatures are also mainly made of metal and are pretty advanced themselves, and having something that would be able to use their technology could be dangerous for them. I could immagine a three way war between these factions trying to get advanced enough to compete with each other.

Day 13 of arc 2 of my never-ending quest to get the Grue from Zork an episode of MotW

You just gave me the BBEG of my new campaign! I was trying to figure out a way to get my players from a low magic steampunkish industrial fantasy setting to a Spelljammer adventure. I'm using these guys to go back in time to mess with Mindflayers that control political powers on the Material Plane to create chaos and try to change the flow of destiny. Thank you!!!

Didn't "Star Trek" 'borrow' the Borg from "Doctor Who"'s Cybermen?

I love the concept of the Oard as villains in Eberron, perhaps as a halfway between mindflayers and warforged

These are the creatures that mindflayers fear and we know they don't fear much.

I was already 'borrowing' the Foreclaimers from Fool's Gold for their technological know-how, and was pondering how to help make their tech feel that little bit more alien. Snagging a few ideas off the Oard, combo'd with maybe the Alien Technology rule from the DMG, could probably be a start.

Illithid vs Oord... No matter who wins we Lose! Nice when the tagline is so easy. Yeah these things are a great outside context problem to drop on a party. And The Mercury Dragon... I've got an interesting story about my introduction to them I'll share next week.

They would fit nicely into the dread domain of Lamordia. Perhaps a Spelljammer session where they enter a strange mist in wildspace and have to figure out how to escape the beam that keeps pulling them back in.

you say Borg, and i say Cybermen from Doctor Who. and the module witht he info seems like a Doctor Who series story arc

In the game I'm running the warforged, or in my world the forged, were once just automatons set to do specific tasks. Their creators then disappeared leaving them running their last instruction. They have been slowly gaining sentience. This has intrigued a wizard or artificer, who has been hunting down and chopping the forged apart. Then taking the parts he finds intriguing and grafting them on to himself. I think I might name him Oard in reference to this race now.

I love Fey so hoping for more Fey like the Murderjack

My first thought is that it might be interesting to be on the other side of the time travel. Perhaps your party discovers some Oard who have traveled back in time and are attempting to change something important or to set up a colony and are beginning to expand.

After facing Grym the forge golem on tactician in BG3 I can really appreciate how much a threat the Oard mechs would be in an encounter. Being resistant to everything and having certain conditions to even deal damage to it would be brutal.

I like that Oard Vs Illithed idea. What if you did a background of both originating from the same species but due to philosophical differences it split into two factions: one centered around machines and the other around magic? Over time they diverge into two very distinct species, but in a twist of convergence their MOs are very similar. Maybe both empires fell due to some kind of mutually assured destruction?

PLEASE do a video on the Pathfinder monster Ecorche! Such a cool and scary monster. They're essentially undead, skinless half giants that work as assassins and spies for powerful necromancers and liches. They can rip the skin off another creature and then squeeze themselves into it to assume the creature's identity. Then if they're found out, they can explode out of skin suit, causing a massive fear debuff to everyone that witnesses it

2:02 Okay, now I want a Caveman video

you’re cranking these out at such high quality on schedule, props.

I like the idea of these fighting against the Mind Flayers, maybe the party gets dragged into the war between them in some manner, and have to pick whose side, if either, they're on.

I love how the "Next time on" lady just picks up mid rant in this episode

Oards fighting Mind Flayers in a crazy, secret time war sounds like a Dr. Who episode. Awesome!

The module "tail of the commit" was and still is my favourite way to turn D&D Sifi. The doomed are even more Borg than this and most of the enemies are AI controlled tanks.

Imagine if the lightning rod had the same power as shocking grasp. It removes reactions on the successful hit.

As a Star Trek nerd, I love this episode! I think I'll finally make that campaign ❤️

This is great timing for me! I actually have a Tier 4 campaign approaching with players who have been introduced to weaker Spell Weavers (something else you updated for us :) ) and the Oard would make a great minion for them. I have an Atropol-type asteroid heading for the multiverse with the Spell Weavers imprisoned in it and these guys would be great with them. Thanks for the video!

Now that you mention it I could see Ord as either precursors to or alternate timeline version of Illithids. Like at one dead branch of the multiverse Ord discover tadpoles and adapt it into their collective, leading to the shift into organic tech.

So the Mind Flares at war with The Oard is basically what if the Yuuzhan Vong (from Star Wars) fought The Borg.

It would be pretty cool if a warlock had one of these as a patron after one day finding a piece of its technology, which channels the Ourd’s technological power. It could even be the warlock’s personal quest to find the Ourd and return it’s lost tech, at which point the player might be gifted something new or even punished if they fail in some way.

So your telling me memorizing the borg introduction wasn't useless after all? I can use it in spelljammer!?

Just a psa, older shows and such have very glitchy, if not straight up flashing, lights that may be problematic to some viewers. Those small snippets weren't bad, but as a thought going forward. I love the flavor and spice your edits add and don't want you to stop. Thank you for inspiring probably some of the best dnd plots and nightmare fuels I've ever experienced. (I mean bag men here)

I can't think of a campaign idea at the moment but a fun idea I had might involve a museum filled with displays of uncommon and dangerous creatures from time and space. And perhaps while adding another exhibit something goes wrong and it's revealed all the creatures and artifacts on display are real and were just in a kind of stasis. Now the party has to fight their way out or find a means of putting the monsters back. During said event the party might find a group of Oard attempting to open a portal to pull reinforcements from another time. Or perhaps you encounter a group of Oard who got unfrozen in a room that was also home to some Kythons who are now battling each other and the party can simply watch, join, or use the confusion to sneak by.

I love the callback to the Irnakurse!

So one of my long time big baddies is the Voyd which are totally not a mashup of The Borg, Phyrexia, and Cybermen. These guys will fit right in

Speaking of mind flayers, you could cover the 3.5 MM5 mind flayers of Thune

Nice video 👏🏻 Didn't make the name connection until it was spelled out 😅 but the Oard get points for the better name. Can't say I've enjoyed the Trek temporal cold war but it may make more sense in TTRPG format. One thing about the rip off the writers on TNG wanted to set up a BBEG but other attempts fizzled (such as the ultimate anti-federation faction ... the Ferengi😂) so it is possible, if unlikely, that it's more of a convergent evolution of the ideas that went into the faction. Cheers

You just *had* to include the Cake scene, didn't you? That mentally scarred me when I first saw it...

I started with Star Wars and Star Trek, so now that I've had time to discover Warhammer 40k and the Adeptus Mechanicus I have drastically changed my veiw of what the Borg can be. Thank you for discovering this gem of potential, i will put that to good use. Also quick shoutout for anyone that knows "Army of Darkness". Definitely my favorite Bruce Campbell movie.

Nice episode, good work.

So this is what happens when the artificer trys to become a litch...

I hope you plan on doing planar dragons in this series. I have a player in my 5e game who wanted to have a dragon-themed warlock character and was wondering why there weren't any dragon patrons. I pointed out that there were powerful celestials who were also dragons- so they're now a Celestial Warlock/Draconic Sorcerer and their patron, a radiant dragon, has become a major character in my campaign.

I've actually been trying to figure out what happened to a ghost ship being investigated by archeologists in my game. This is giving me serious pause...

Borg first appeared in 1989. CM6, where we first got the Oard, was published in 1985. It's very clear that the Oard came before the Borg, in fact they pre-dated them by about four years. So your basic premise, that the Oard were based on the Borg, is completely impossible.

I'm so glad I subscibed to this channel.

Oh these guys are definitely showing up in my upcoming Spelljammer game. These are a delight and I can’t wait to exploit this.

The Oard vs Mind Flayer thing got me to remember Star Control 2. The plot of that is there's a civil war going on between this alien race called the Ur-Quan and every other sentient being is caught in the crossfire, to touch on it without going into detail. I can totally imagine a similar plot happening in a Spell jammer campaign using Oards and Illithids as stand ins for the Ur-Quan factions. Or hell, make it a three way war and add the Ur-Quan, and have the party choose which they feel is the lesser of 3 evils to side with.

I remember the time when the Borg weren't reduced to a non threatening villain of the week for VOY

Overlap between Trekkies and DnD players? How dare you put me in a box that I entirely belong in

Cybermen, The Borg, The Combine...

Honestly I did not expacted something this sci fi in dnd. Like yeah I know Spelljammer and Eberron exist but this guys feel so... Strange.

Unironically, that campaign is nearly identical to the campaign I started in high school having never played D&D nor watched Star Trek in my life beforehand.

Just wanted to laugh with somebody. I guess this is one of the first times I caught a current Dungeon Dad video. I went to search for the mercury dragon video he mentioned only to find out it isn’t posted yet. Also I wanted to thank Dungeon Dads for his videos. I manage a restaurant and I was able to bond with one of my employees over DnD/Nerd stuff. The false hydra video of yours was recommended by me to him. After he watched the video we were bonded as he loved it just as much as me. For a parting gift he 3D printed a model for me that now sits safely on a Knick-Knack shelf

Live Long and Prosper Dungeon Dad-dy

5:00 Okay, Okay, Hear me out. Plot: the Oard are lost masters and creators of Illithids. 11:20 😅 yeah, good idea, I like it

You should cover the kilorean, a pseudo undead fey which shpuld get to do coven magic in their own since they have 3 fey spirits in themselves

I'm running a zombie apocalypse campaign I can't believe I never considered cyborg Zombies until now

Minor correction: Where Chaos Reigns came out in 1985 not 1989. So the Oard actually predate the Borg lol.

i love to see a time war between these and mindflayer

Oarg might also be DnD Cybermen from Doctor Who. Another device they can have is the bomb implanter device. It touches a protental victim and implants one nanomachines bomb which is basically a Quivering Palm ability as a device. It can only be used once per adventure but hey, you only need it once.

Given the gnomes have magic powered and non-magic invention rules, in D&D the Oard are ideal for educating Gnomes in technology.

This fits amazingly well with my artificer villain who has traveled back in time with no way to get back home. So his plan B is to extend life (sort of like a lich) long enough to see his family again via cyborg augments. Will definitely be using some of this in tandem. Thanks Dad!

Wasn't there a borgy race in Planescape? A race of metal women with wire hair, native to Mechanus, who consider themselves perfect, and want to share their perfection with the rest of the Planes, by turning sufficiently high level humanoids into more of themselves?

I need an Oard vs Mindflayer time war now.

I've been enjoying your videos, thanks for making them! Any chance you could talk about Mercury dragons? Always seemed like interesting little guys to me

Honestly, I have always loved the idea that you have these wizards and clerics and whole mountains colonized by dwarves and forests protected by druids or elves, and then there’s just actual robots and high-tech machinery that rivals even the most powerful of magics.

Hello bbeg for my spelljammers campaign.

One of the terrifying traits of the Borg is their ability to adapt; the same type of attack almost never works more than once or twice, and this is spread to the collective. They're somewhat vulnerable to randomly varying attacks. Perhaps the oard could be weak to wild magic and items such as a rod of wonder.

"We are Smorgas of Oarg, ja. You will be accumulated, ja."

In 1993, West End Games did their own version of The Borg called The Iskalloni. They were in The Twin Stars of Kira adventure module. .

Now I just need to set up a conflict between these guys and the Simic.

Finally I feel kinship with WotC since I too ripped the Borg off XDD

A slightly different take on the race could be. That in the beginning it was unable to cast magic. But was instead able to interact with magical materials to craft excellent and beyond normal magic items of that time period. A kind of non caster dwarf species. The race could have then over time built an interface between their bodies and the magic they desired to cast. Using technology made with magical materials a blend of exotic biology and magical engineering. Thus the borg similarity. Artificers could be the races prefered class. They could also have messed with time for the module bit. But its unessesary. So a race thats based around magical engineering. To have a basic balance with other races. Could be interesting to run across the proto version of the race. With fighters + crafters attempting to find ways to compensate for the martial caster divide. Err one fix for the early bit is they could attune to 6 items rather then 3. This sets up how later on as they integrate there tec into their bodies to allow for casting. They loose item attument slots. Ending up back at the original 3. Anyway cool vid thanks for the ideas i could innovate off of.

Reminds me of a race i created as a sidequest in my bery first homebrew campaign. Theyre called the Telchines (amost sounds like 'tell kenny'), they are bipedal seahorse-dog looking creatures with no magical ability, but have high prowess in technological and martial skills. Magic and most magical abilities are completely ineffectual, as they were immune. The wizard of the group dumped all of his gold into a sack and repeatedly yeeted it at one of them by casting catapult over and over until that telchines neck broke. Also (just saying, this might be icky to read), they all have gauntlet-like tools that, upon impact, insert a Telchines clutch. This clutch bursts out of the initial wound after 2d4 days, dealing a considerable amount of damage to the carrier. The spawn is water dwelling, and will die within hours when exposed to normal air and direct sunlight. In the sidequest, the pc characters got lured into a spooky house( its actually a hologram devised by the Telchines to camouflagetheir ship), as they hear one of the last victims scream for help from the door seconds after arrival. They enter, and find themsleves trapped in a Telchines laboratory thinly veiled as the Wesker Mansion from Resident evil, as i used its basic floor plan as the map. Additionally, even though I know this comment is probably so long that people won't read the whole thing, my favorite creation out of that whole thing (other than the telchines themselves) was a weapon called by players as "that scary ass gauntlet". It didn't deal damage in any traditional sense, but successful hits would incur a point of exhaustion upon the target, with critical hits dealing 2 points of exhaustion. If you want players to be afraid no matter what, make a magic-immune monster that deals exhaustion damage

Oh yeah I'm stealing this 100%! Thanks Dad!

Good video and all, but was that clip SERIOUSLY the effects that were used for Cyborg? Why do they look so bad?

Someone mentioned converting the phyrexians from Magic into 5e and I 100% agree.

The oard are also taking inspiration from terminator with all that time travel

A good minion i feel would be something based on the simic hybrids

Honestly, I feel like the Oard would work really well as a PC race choice. Having a player that's an Oard Artificer with a secret mission in this time period could set up an interesting dynamic for a party that doesn't know what Oards do (or maybe you modify Oard lore in your world to make this work). Thanks, Dad 🖖

Running a comic book/superhero inspired campaign and these guys would be perfect for a random encounter/villain of the week or even a short arc, thanks!

So what about the oard leader/queen?

I don't know if others have mentioned it but there was a proposed episode for the Original series of Star Trek involving the Borg but it was rejected. I can't remember where I hard this but the people at Trek Culture might be able to conform or debunk this.

Oh this is obscure, I love obscure! If you'd like another kind of monster that has only appeared in one adventure module check out the energon spiritovores, they love on the positive energy plane and have a weird ecosystem where they eat proto-soula and fertilize the trees of life.

omg.. this race is perfect for the idea i had.. i was gonna use the mechanus plane but this works 10 times better...

I would like to hear your idea of a good extraplanar exemplar for CN

I've only been watching your channel for a little while, but is this the first od&d monster you've covered?

This reminds me somewhat of Clockwork horrors from Spelljammer. Would make for a good episode. Especially since they literally butchered the clockwork horrid with that free stat block they released.

my headcanon is that these are the guys who built the crashed UFO from Expedition To The Barrier Peaks.

The Oard adventure 'where chaos reins' in D&D were published in 1985. Half a decade before the first next gen episode Q who?.

question, what happens when the oard get ahold of a deep span or vice versa?