Welcome everybody, this is the thread. We'll be playing a West Marches-style campaign for D&D. If anyone has any questions on what that is, it's this. The lands of Knoss are cold, withered, and ravaged by war. Years ago, the Overfather, the highest of highs, was betrayed by his wife, the High Queen, when she declared that she wanted her own, "better" version of Heaven. The gods made war upon one another, and the world of mortals provided both their soldiers and their battleground. Eventually, the Queen was cast down into Hell, but the effects of her reign still remain. The mostly-uncivilized land of Knoss was the center of the fight, when the rogue goddess claimed it as her own little haven, and what was once a paradise is now a warped, corrupted hell wrapped in an eternal winter. The dominant race on Knoss, the tieflings, have since turned their backs on the gods completely, earning the scorn of all still faithful to either side, good or evil. Inhuman beasts brought about by gates of Hell opening now roam the winter wastes, open portals to places best left unsought remain all over Knoss, and the tieflings are slowly becoming corrupted just by being in proximity to them. Shattered clans and ambitious warlords vie for control of Knoss, while meanwhile one of the petty kings of the human kingdoms to the West has designs on conquering Knoss for himself, establishing an outpost just on the border.Wyzack wrote:We rolling for stats? In fact maybe this should have its own thread now
For this, I'm being extremely loose with what I allow you to play. The golden rule for "can I play this homebrew class/specialization or this backstory" is "Convince me." The only things set in stone is that all the races are core races, from the book. Other than that? Run it by me. A monk using this "Drunken Master" specialization I found on the internet? Convince me. An Oathbreaker Paladin that's actually hiding how horribly corrupt he is? Convince me. Can I make my own bid for dominance in this setting? Convince me.
So far the players are:
THE MIGHTY GALVATRON: Marko Sewick, Tiefling Warlock
Wyzack: Aeden DuMontt, Human Fighter
An0n3: Karag "Bowbreaker" Orumkanu, Goliath Barbarian
TableTurning: Joseph "Joey" Toure, Human Monk
Burer: Biggs Burlen, Dwarven Rogue
Dannos: Mariya Fletcher, Human Fighter
TheWiznard: Bizarre, Tiefling Bard
Ezel: Uses-Magic, Dragonborn Wizard
West Marches-style campaigns work like this: There's one safe zone at the start, a big city for characters to cool their heels and lick their wounds. For this campaign, it'll be the Kingmaker outpost, a medium-sized castle town set right on the border of Knoss and the Western Kingdoms. Here's where the majority of quests will start, in case someone wants an area scouted out, or someone wants to make contact with a tribe to the south, or someone's placed a bounty on a monster or warlord or some such. Beyond that, you make your own adventure. This "Frozen Ponds" place sound interesting? Let's go scout it out, gang. I hear tell of monsters to the north-east, let's go fix that. I have enough money to establish my own outpost, let's go lay down some foundation. There will be dungeons, ruins, eldritch locations and such all over the place, and it'll be up to you to go through them. Some are well-known landmarks, some are only rumor, others still are completely undiscovered.
If you wish to join, you need only say so. These campaigns work best for groups that are hard to schedule for, because there's no guarantee you'll be on the same expedition as someone else performing the same task. TableTurning may be helping An0n3 hunt down an ice mephit one day only to have to team up with Wyzack and Galv to purge some bandits the next. Loads of players is completely acceptable, even multiple DMs, because the plot doesn't find you, you go out and find it.
I didn't plan on writing a book so I'll wrap this up so you guys can get to making your characters and I can get to this pool party. Here's some things to expect:
The world is dangerous. Your character may very well die, and while I won't go out of my way to kill off your characters, I won't be forgiving. Some places are simply too dangerous to explore early on, come back when you're stronger. There's no shame in running from a fight. There's a lot of shame in getting your throat opened by six wolves because you got cocky.
Adventuring is not common. Your characters are either nigh-suicidal opportunists or people hired to clear out swathes of land so the King can colonize this place. You'll very rarely run into people of your own caliber, and if you do, they're probably not sharing the same interests.
Town is safe, the wilds are wild. Unless you do something like try to establish a guild of thieves or such in the Kingmaker outpost, you won't find much adventure there. It's a trading post and a resting place, not Shadowrun Seattle.
The players rule the roost here. You as adventurers are in charge of most of the story, if you want one. I'm just here for the background. You want to unite the warring clans and make a power play? It's on you. You want to learn more of the secrets of the War of the Gods? On you. You want to try to change Knoss for the better? On you.
Competition is healthy and completely allowed. You're adventurers. Heroes-for-hire or just plain old glory hogs. You're here for either loot, what you perceive as a higher purpose, or just plain bragging rights. It's completely okay to try to be the very best. You could just very well have a solo campaign of one group running around doing anything, but it's so much more fun to have people realize that somewhere out there, someone's getting all the loot and glory that they could have a shot at if they tried.
Communication is very, very important. You the players schedule your expeditions. The Frozen Wastes to the South seem like ripe picking, who's down for travelling down there? What about this abandoned ruin of a city a few miles away? Could be prime loot there. Talk with your fellow players, share stories of what happened on your journeys if someone misses out and doesn't feel like reading. Make your cliques, then mix up your cliques for funsies. This is an experiment over anything, go wild.
Anything is permitted. The Convince Me rule. Again, I'm being very loose with what I'm letting you play, my only restrictions are the core races and if you have anything outside you run it by me first. This also extends to IC interactions. Your character an antagonistic, ambitious prick? He's That Guy, sure, but he's also in an outpost filled with other, equally-ambitious and equally-strong adventurers. If someone's a problem, you police yourselves. Street rules.
Have fun!
EDIT: You can use either 4d6 keep the best 3 to generate your character, or point buy. Up to you. Any other questions I didn't answer, hit me up on PMs or something. We'll begin when at least three people have finished their characters, though we can wait if people ask.
DOUBLE EDIT: I reward good roleplaying and creativity. Think outside the box or do something really cool and you may find yourself with extra exp. Just a heads-up.
TRIPLE EDIT: I don't have to be the only GM for this, FYI.
QUADRUPLE EDIT DELUXE PACKAGE ONLY $19.99: Unless we're going through either a very big encounter or a dungeon, we'll be using this thread for just about everything. Of course, if you want to do something private like run an idea by me without the others knowing or something, just PM me. Until then, I'm not even going to set up a roll20 until we need it and we're going to use the honor system, because only truly sad people cheat at RPGs.