Some of us have expressed an interest to play another DnD game for some time now and we have slowly organized things so that it went from a distant possibility to an actual reality. Obviously, I’ll be taking the part of the DM… what can I say… Shawnacy’s work has inspired me during the long weeks waiting for the next game to do this! I’ll be striving to get rid of the decade old rust to catch up to speed with the new rules… but I promise to be a quick learner!
As our discussions went on we have agreed that the ideal time where we were all available would be on Tuesday nights with the start time being at 6:30 PM Eastern Time and most sessions wrapping up around 10:30-11 PM. This will be an ongoing campaign with regular games planned every week. I don’t plan to have any downtime or any breaks other than my 2 week vacation with my fiancée late in September. The official start date will be July 15th (I’d do it on the 8th but I have scheduled a dentist appointment that day to remove 2 wisdom teeth, so yeah, not going be fit to talk for 4 hours that same night) and it will give people ample time to create their characters and their backstories. Thus allowing me the time to create the campaign I want that will fully interact with my players and their characters.
Please note that this is a 5 player DnD group that will be far more oriented towards role playing and have more role playing options available to them. For example, I’ve already come up with a few ideas to stimulate this and I’m going to continually find more ways to give the players the freedom of choice on how things may or may not be handled by their very own decisions. This will be a constant factor during the campaign. There will be the hard way and there will be easy way and players will be deciding that…. or your companions will! *shifty eyes*
I intend to portray a cinematic view on how things are being played out with you guys playing the role of the actors. So, expect some tasty drama and story swerves! Expect me to also tend to get a bit carried away portraying monsters and npcs, all for the sake of getting people really into the game atmosphere. The final campaign setting is going to be within the old Forgotten Realms in the “The North” (starter location being in Icewind Dale) and the game will run a bit differently from a standard game.
For example, there will be no assisting. I dislike that rule where players can “assist” other players in skill checks. How exactly can someone role play an assist to say, an arcane check when they know jack squat about arcane? “X squints his eyes and is relatively useless; Y appreciated the gesture nonetheless and is now better at checking the magical item”…. What the hell? That ruins DC checks for a bunch of things. I’ll have to raise DC checks on things and that’s unfair to players who have average bonuses to things and won’t necessarily get help. It’s a huge headache for nothing. I’ll allow multiple people to roll, depending on their relative location and use in the matter at hand and I promise you to be fair as the game progresses…. But no assisting rule will apply most of the time.
I feel that rituals are extremely expensive for their intended use, so I plan to make them ½ their original cost. So, if a ritual is 100 gold on DDI, it’ll be available for 50 gold and play a larger role in the game. Oh and for the record, for the sake of simplicity… I’ll be keeping tracks on people’s gold and experience.
Certain races and even classes will be restricted. There’s no definite list as of yet but I’d like classes to be restricted to those not in monster manuals. Dwarves, Elves, Humans, Gnomes, Halflings…etc are perfectly fine. I’m not going to allow certain “races” such as revenants, drows, constructs…and so forth. Do take in note of the game setting in the far north so some races will be considered extremely rare to see and exceedingly mistrusted such as shape shifters and tieflings. So, expect the game to consistently take this into consideration and considerably affect the party, which I don’t suggest. So when you’ll pick your race and class, kindly clear that up with me before you fully create your character.
To play with us, as I’m already sure you already most of these tools… and there following rules are mandatory:
Gametable – http://sourceforge.net/projects/gametable
Ventrilo – http://www.ventrilo.com/
DDI Character Builder
A working microphone…
- I’ll be providing my IP on Vent before our gaming sessions to connect to GameTable. It may change every week as I have ADSL.
- You need to be on Ventrilo for every game session and have a functional microphone to be able to interact. I don’t think it’ll be fair for everyone to wait for people to type things out.
- A fully functional DDI Character Builder would be cool beans; if you don’t have it, PM me. I have… options.
- You’ll need to have your macros ready, the first day. No exceptions. There will also be a special guideline for you to create your macros.
- Be there on time, in fact, be available 15-20 minutes ahead of time so you can review your character sheet and catch up on your abilities as well as chit chat briefly with your buddies and your DM without taking away from the gaming goodness.
- Let other players play their turn, its fine to help them out and point something out occasionally but allow them to play out their turn. Sometimes people will learn from their mistakes. People who constantly interrupt others will suffer.
- This also means players should be planning what to do their next turn so that they are more often than not, up to speed to what to do and not bog down combat.
- Players cannot provide other players advice if they aren’t present or unable to talk (aka unconscious, petrified). This is a solid hint on things planned. *shifty eyes*
- Monster HP will only be shown after they are bloodied.
In regards to macros, they make sessions play more efficiently and run more quickly. You should setup every one of your “skill checks” (yes, you may be asked to perform checks you’re incompetent in, mostly because fail results can be very entertaining), your init check, save rolls, race feats, attack rolls AND damage rolls… etc… So take the 15-20 minutes to check your character sheet and create your macros… and remember to save them regularly!!! Also, every time you level, you may have to update them but this should take even less time.
This will help me out enormously!!!!
All of this work will allow people to better understand their companions’ abilities a bit better, allow people to be more efficient during their turns and most importantly allow me to process character turns faster. All of this, honestly, simplifies battles.
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At this point, the players can go right ahead and start their character creation. So, take some time to choose what sort of character you want and reply here your main choice along with a backup choice. With 5 players, I’ll be looking for a balanced party but I’ll let you guys settle this amongst yourselves. However, I’d really like to see at least one leader, one guardian, one striker and one controller. Remember, there will be traps, locked doors and may be an issue if you have no one available to take care of them. I know Julie already wants to roll a warlock and …shit, what’s his face… Heath? Wait… Darrell…. Is open to whatever is needed. Once people have a general idea what race/class/dispo they’ll be creating, they can start working on their backgrounds at the same time finish drafts of their characters and share with others. It would be also a good idea to maybe create relations between characters; they may be childhood friends, family, etc… for the sake of the story.
Finally, I do want to mention that while I do have some possible leads on our 5th player, it’s still pretty uncertain at this point and time. So, if you read this and feel you can be a candidate after reading this wall of text, PM me.
But I could do coroner work.
