BittyBobcat
Llama hand
CLOSED
If you missed the tabs at the top of this post, please click through them! They are rectangular buttons with blue outlines, and have important information about the campaign.
(Credit for the general shape of the map goes to Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator)
Any child could tell you the tale of the Old Ones—a handful of beings so powerful that their disputes left scars on the world which haven't healed in the thousands of years since their creation, and show no sign of doing so for thousands of years more. They were greedy, corrupt things that cared not for the effects their conquests on the people of Ragoreth. No matter how much land they ruled, how much sway they had in the lives of every soul under their command, they would never be satisfied with anything less than complete control of the world.
Naturally, when so many powerful beings thirst for the same thing, they come to war over who gets it. And, like most wars, this conflict had a name. The Cataclysm.
The exact moment that the Cataclysm began has never been properly recorded, but the general consensus comes at around 1000 B.D. (before demise), meaning that it lasted for about 1000 years before it's end brought upon the first year of the new age. In that time, the havens—small areas of safety that protect from the effects of the apocalyptic lands outside—were founded by minor gods (now more often known as New Gods) and populated by the lucky few mortals that managed to get to them.
After the Old One's disappearance and the subsequent "end" of the Cataclysm, they continued to stand as the only true places of safety from the still-dangerous lands they lay surrounded by. In the current day, 1263 A.C. (after Cataclysm), the average person lives in one of the many havens scattered across the world, and very few dare to venture beyond their bubble of safety. However, Travelers between havens are needed to facilitate trade, send messages, and various other inter-haven tasks.
This is where our party comes in. Perhaps you've always wanted to be a Traveler, perhaps you've simply been drawn in by the often exuberant fees people will pay a well-known travelling group. Whatever the case, may luck be on your side, for travelling across the post-apocalyptic lands of Ragoreth is a dangerous occupation, and no small number have met their demise attempting it.
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DM - Dungeon master, hosts the game, controls NPCs and enemies, it's a DM's job to make the game fun for their players
PC - Player character
NPC - Non-player character
Homebrew - Content used for DnD that wasn't officially published, custom content
5e - Fifth edition (latest edition of DnD currently)
Campaign - A DnD story, essentially a single DnD roleplay
Mechanics - Refers to how the game works/the numbers and technical side of DnD, essentially all of the rules that separate DnD from regular roleplaying
Hello! I'm Bitty, the DM looking to run this DnD 5e campaign. In case anything above wasn't clear, this will take place in the post-apocalyptic world of Ragoreth, which is a custom setting of mine. It will center around a travelling party starts doing jobs together (the exact details of how exactly this happens will have to be ironed out once we get all the players and PCs gathered up, though I do have a starting place in mind), and the overarching plot will likely have many conflicts relating to tensions between factions, progressing in a ruined world, and lack of resources. As a lot of DnD campaigns tend to be, this'll probably also end up taking on a lot of found-family aspects, but—like any good DnD plot—the direction it takes will depend heavily on whatever the players are interested in. Derailing (meaning going off the original plans of the DM) is expected and encouraged.
Due to the cultural and technological variations between havens, plenty of character origins will fit into this setting, and I'll happily worldbuild with players to create a part of Ragoreth that will work for their backstory. That being said, we will be starting at level 1 (the lowest power level), so do remember that your characters won't have any world-shattering abilities at the start of the rp, and their backstories should reflect this.
This campaign will feature lots of exploration, and will likely be more oriented to roleplay than combat. I will be doing my best to make this campaign somewhat challenging, so there is a chance that your character might die, but that will never be my aim, and—if you want—I'll see what we can do about trying to bring them back (after all, DnD literally has a resurrection spell). I won't promise it'll be easy, though.
Due to the importance of travel, resource management will factor into this campaign as well. I'll try to prevent TPKs via starvation and such, but do know that not bringing supplies with you on missions can result in consequences like incurring a debt to someone who happened to come along to help your party, needing to scavenge for food mid-trip, or other things like that. If that's not your interest, though, then I'll allow you to just say "assume I bought the basic supplies" before any trip outside of the havens, and I'll simply make you note down how much those resources cost and assume you ran out at the same time another party member did.
All rolling and OOC talk will be done on a Discord server, which means that a Discord is required to join the campaign. Homebrew content from players will be allowed, but it has to be run by me first. As stated in the title, this will be a primarily text-based campaign. Voice chatting might be on the table for some specific scenarios, but that depends entirely on the preferences of the group we end up with.
The tabs at the top of this post (rectangle, blue outline) have lots of information about the campaign:
Rules - Must read before joining, all the ground rules
Playstyle - Not a required read, some house rules and mechanics I use that you'll probably end up leaning about throughout the course of the campaign
Setting - Must read basics before joining, further information on Ragoreth, you will likely end up having to understand the broader parts of it before building your character
Joining - Must read before joining, instructions on how to join
If you're interested, then please reply to this thread. If you have any questions, feel free to ask here or PM me.
Must read before joining!
1. Follow all RpN guidelines and use basic roleplaying etiquette (meaning don't metagame, don't control other people's characters, etc).
2. Respect other players (meaning respect people's pronouns, don't actively try to bully people, listen when people tell you to stop, and other common sense don't-be-a-jerk things).
3. Have a Discord because that's where rolling and OOC will be.
4. At any time, any player can PM me telling me that there's a certain topic/topics that they're uncomfortable with having in the campaign, and I'll steer clear of it. On the Discord, we'll have an anonymous topic blacklist so that the rest of the players know to do so as well. Obviously there are some things that can't be banned, like if they're something shown to be integral to the campaign in this interest check (such as magic) or a blatant attempt at excluding others (like trying to get rid of the existence of LGBTQ+ people in the campaign), but I'll always listen to things like "this part of how this spell was described makes me really uncomfortable, can we Not" or "I don't want to deal with homophobia in this campaign".
5. This is a semi-literate rp. I'm not going to go after every little grammar mistake (because that's annoying for everyone) or make a minimum post length (because, with the structure of DnD, it might even make sense to just have one-liner posts from time to time), but make sure you're willing to read other people's posts and write in a semi-lit way when you can. For reference, I'm usually best with people who average around 3-5 paragraphs per post, but that's in non-tabletop roleplays and I've already mentioned that the structure of DnD would probably make minimum post lengths kind of ridiculous at times.
6. The official DnD rules are—as the player's handbook states—guidelines. As the DM, I have final say on rulings. Players are allowed to argue against rulings (and, if you've got a good reason for it, then I would actually prefer you do so), but if I acknowledge their argument and still don't agree with it, then the ruling will stay as it was.
7. Player agency is more important than PC agency. This means that if someone wants their PC to do something to someone else's PC (ex: casting a spell on them), they need permission from the player of that character. If they don't get it, then they can't do it, regardless of how in or out of character that is.
8. Remember, we're all here to have fun. The point of all these rules and such is to try to make sure everyone in the group can have fun and to find people that would enjoy this campaign/the people in it.
9. Answering this question will be proof that you've read the rules when you apply (do not answer it in this thread, only answer it in the "Password" section when you apply): Would you be willing to try playing DnD in a voice chat? (I ask this mostly because, even though I'm planning to go primarily text based with this, I know that text-based and live DnD have different advantages, and if everyone else is fine with it then I'd be happy to do certain parts in voice chat. I won't tell anyone else what your answer was, but I will probably share the results by saying something like "It looks like everyone in the group is up for VC sessions" or "Some people in this group are not up for VC sessions" without connecting names to any of it)
This is not a required read. The most important parts of my DMing style have already been mentioned in the premise tab, this tab is all just various mechanics you might be interested in knowing I use and things that you'll probably learn over time in the campaign regardless of if you've read this tab or not. Some of these things are just things I'm trying out because of the text-format, so if they don't work then I'll stop using them. I also might add things to this as we gather players.
Milestone XP
Milestone XP is a specific method of giving XP to players (XP, also known as EXP, is what lets players level up) that entails giving players XP upon the completion of a certain story milestone such as discovering a threat or finishing a mission. These milestones are decided as you go throughout the campaign, and will most likely be given whenever it feels like we've concluded a story arc/mission or solved a specific problem. I scale the XP I give for each milestone on how difficult reaching it was and, like all my DnD decisions, on what I think will make the game most enjoyable for everyone.
Rule of Cool
The rules of DnD only exist to provide structure to make the game fun. If any rule stands in the way of that, then I will happily let it be broken. However, I do count the challenge of DnD as part of its fun, so I'm not going to let people abuse the rule of cool to the point that everything works so long as its got a bit of a flair. I use rule of cool to say things like "Technically this spell is supposed to be blue, but your plan to cast it to make people think there's glowing red magma coming their way is really fun, so I'll say it can be any color and that's the new rule for that spell now", not "Yes, you can get fire resistance just because you're red".
Loose Interpretation of what hit points/hp mean IC
Ultimately, hit points are just a way to know when your character is going to pass out. Losing or gaining hp can be interpreted IC in any way that gets someone closer or further from that end. Taking physical injuries, losing confidence, or losing stamina are all ways that losing hp might be interpreted. I'll likely switch between those methods often depending on whatever makes more sense or sounds better in different situations, and anyone else describing hp changes is welcome to do the same.
Chunked Initiative
Initiative is how the order everyone takes turns in combat is determined. I use chunked initiative, which means that people who are right next to eachother in the initiative and are allied together (in the same "chunk") can all take their turns simultaneously. For example, let's say the order is Player A, Player B, enemy 1, Player C. B could use their action to attack, then A could move, then B could use their bonus action. However, C cannot take their turn until enemy 1 has done so.
Rapidfire Sessions
Since this is text-based, we don't all need to be online at the same time to play, but there's probably going to be situations (like combats) that will be way quicker and easier for everyone if we're ready to respond quickly. For that, I'm going to try to schedule rapidfire sessions in which everyone (or at least everyone relevant to the situation) is present and gives short, "rapidfire" responses. These sessions hopefully won't be too long. If possible, we might try doing specific scenes like these (again, probably just combats that drag on long) in voice chat, but that's only if everyone is on board with the idea.
BASICS (required read)
Tech
While tech level varies significantly due to the isolation of the havens, there are some major things that cannot be commonly held without breaking the entire setting. This means that it may exist in some specific cases, but for some reason it isn't widespread. This includes: Easy transportation between havens, the ability of the average mortal to make a haven, the ability to resurrect someone or give someone immortality
Gods
The New Gods (or just Gods for short) are beings that hold power originating from the time before the Cataclysm. While not every God is the same and some will have specific abilities that make them an exception to this rule, they only have one single consciousness and physical body that can be damaged. It's very difficult, but it is possible to kill or trap a God. Most of the time, there will be only one God per haven (though, keep in mind that not every God supports a haven). For our out-of-game purposes, Gods can come from different sources, but I would prefer to keep Gods from real-life religions out of the campaign. Gods can be inspired by existing religions, but not directly taken from them.
Beyond the Havens
This is all further explained below, but the summary of it is: The land outside the Havens is all magically fucked up, and separated into different apocalyptic zones. Each zone is a specific flavor of fucked up that pertains to the Old One that messed with it the most. Ember's zones are all way too hot, Winter's Tundra is way to cold, Depth's Passage is way to wet and deep, the Grave's Embrace is actively trying to kill and rot away everything in it (also, it's full of undead), and anything having to do with the Wild is so taken over by nature that setting up a civilization there is basically impossible. These zones overlap in four notable places. The Stormfront (Winter + Ember) has terrible storms all of the time, the Glass Desert (Ember + Grave + a hint of Wild) is literally a desert of glass, the Wild's Path (Winter + Wild + hint of Ember) and Wild's Footprints (Wild + Ember + Grave) are both essentially "Thing they're on, but make it more alive". There is also one constantly moving zone known as the Wandering Chaos, which is a large storm where strange illusions are common.
The Travelers' Guild
Since paying for people to do life-threatening things for you is generally pretty expensive, clients of Travelers often want assurance that they'll actually receive the service they're paying for. The Travelers' Guild is an association of proven Travelers who are generally respected and trusted far more than any non-Guild Traveler. They enforce standard fees higher than most non-Guild Travelers, take a percentage of their members' profits, and require certain members to take certain missions. In exchange, they provide their members with supplies and information to survive the outside world. One of the most notable things the Travelers' Guild gives their members is a messenger bag. These are essentially sealed bags of holding (bags that are bigger on the inside than the outside that always weigh the same amount) that can only be opened at Travelers' Guild checkpoints, and are used to carry larger cargo.
The party will never be required to join the Travelers' Guild, but they will likely factor into the campaign.
THE DETAILS (Not a required read)
(Credit to general shape of map still goes to Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator, expect me to eventually make a map that's more neatly labelled)
The Depth (Depth's Passage)
While the Depth was the name of the Old One who rules over the oceans, in the Old One's absence the name has become synonymous with the oceans themselves. Any area of water is just as dangerous as dry land and will often have some shared traits near the coasts of Ragoreth, but Depth's Passage notably does not. Rumored to have been carved for the explicit purpose of weakening Ember, it is an unnaturally deep strip of water for how close it is to the shore. Sailors of the Passage have said that the water is always cold and dark on the sunniest of days, and rainstorms thick enough to drown a cargo ship in minutes can blow in with no warning. They speak of creatures that seem too large to fit between the two continents lurking below, causing whirlpools that suck in boats every time they open their mouth. On land, there would be a chance of a Traveler's corpse being found, but the Depth has no such mercy. Entire crews will disappear without leaving so much as a tattered scrap of sail.
The Ember (Ember's Stand and Resolve)
In Ember's lands, magma rivers are more common that the aquatic kind. Thunderclouds roll across ash-blackened plains and jagged volcanoes stab through the earth like claws reaching toward the smoke-filled sky. If the fire doesn't get you, the fumes very likely will. Some say that Ember's Stand and Ember's Resolve used to be connected before the Depth cut its passage right through them, leaving Ember to fight a war on two fronts—one of which with its greatest foe, the Winter.
The Winter (Winter's Tundra)
Say what you will about Ember's Stand, but at least the average person wouldn't be completely blind walking across it. The same cannot be said for Winter's Tundra, as the sun gleaming off the unbroken ice and snow is enough to render the naked eye completely useless in minutes. Even with eye protection, those unlucky enough to find themselves in a blizzard will be forced to wander through wind so thick with snow that their primary worry isn't too much light, but lack of it. And this is to say nothing of the creatures that wander its frozen peaks. Few and far between as they may be, not a single one of them can afford to lose a meal, especially not an entire travelling party's worth of them.
The Stormfront
In the place where Winter's Tundra and Ember's Stand meet, the greatly contrasting temperatures causes violent storms so common that a clear day on the Stormfront is a once in a lifetime event. The air is humid and the ground is muddy from the sudden snows being melted away by blistering heats. Combine that with the strong winds and you'd almost be better off mudsledding with a sail than trying to walk without falling every two feet. In fact, frequent Travelers of the Stromfront do just that. Not only does mudsailing make movement easier, but it provides some small bit of hope for if you get caught in one of the frequent flash-floods or mudslides there.
The Grave (Grave's Embrace)
Loose sand scatters the parched ground where no plants will grow. The loudest sound you'll hear in the Grave's Embrace is the wind picking up from time to time, sending dust so thickly into the air that to breathe is to be cut down to your very lungs by the grit. However, even during the dust storms, an unnatural silence seems to pervade the entire landscape. The buzz of flies around corpses, the groans of the undead, and sometimes the distant sound of crashing waves—all muffled as coming from beneath a blanket of stillness. Plague and necromantic mockeries of life wander the dunes, and they have added to their ranks many an unlucky Traveler.
The Glass Desert
When the scorching heat of the Ember meets the shifting sands of the Grave, they create barren landscapes of glass. This long strip of land stretching across the entire Western continent is known for transparent hills preserving skeletons at their centers, deep valleys of sharp, glittering shards, and molten red sections of glass that have just been struck by lightning from the dark thunderclouds which loom near-perpetually over the Glass Desert. Though it is arguably one of the easiest zones to cross due to its thinness, it is also one with the least known dangers due to the smaller amount of overall time Travelers spend in it.
The Wild (Wild's Sanctum, Path, and Footprints)
The Wild, being as scattered and overlapping as it is, has a significantly more varied effect than many of the other zones. First, let us focus on the island of pure Wild—Wild's Sanctum. Separated from the rest of the zones by a moat of the Depth rumored to be given as a favor to the Wild, the Sanctum is a rainforest so dense that it's nearly impossible to walk two feet without getting caught on vine or root. The most effective predators the world has ever seen prowl beneath the shaded canopy, and plants so poisonous that they hold more danger than any predator could hope to grow rampant.
When it overlaps with other zones, the Wild very much runs by the rules of "life finds a way". As much as this may sound like a blessing, it almost universally succeeds at making the area more deadly. Rapidly evolving, pathogenic bacteria lie within the oases of the Wild's footprints. Packs of predatory burrowing creatures hunt from beneath the snows in the Path. Ironic as it may sound for lands influenced by the embodiment of life and adaptation, to cross them is to tempt death.
The Chaos (Wandering Chaos)
The Wandering Chaos takes the shape of an ever-moving storm, and is the only zone to move since the end of the Cataclysm. The Travelers' Guild recommends avoiding travel within the Chaos at all costs, as it's both dangerous and usually unnecessary. Only a handful of Travelers have gone through it and lived to tell the tale, but those that do become legends in their own right. They speak of ever-shifting terrain and maddening illusions that left the rest of their party husks of their former selves, no better off than the undead of the Embrace. Beings—called as such because calling them as "creatures" or "beasts" would imply they live, as if they might follow enough logic to be properly killed—materialize out of the clouds with no warning, and disappear just as suddenly, leaving naught but corpses in their wake (if that).
The Cities of Theb and Es
If you look carefully toward the Southern (bottom) end of the Stormfront on the map, you'll see a little black star marking the starting point of our campaign, Theb. Ruled by the god of steam, Metas, Theb isn't protected by a visible barrier. Instead, Metas's power simply pushes the stormclouds back, leaving the city to deal only with the sudden temperature changes and a perpetual humidity. Out of all havens, Theb is easily one of the largest. Originally, it was built upon a mountain across from its sister city, Es, but over time Theb's inhabitants made use of their limited space and carved great tiers into the mountain so that more floorspace could be created. In the present, Theb's mountain resembles more a towering pile of glass and marble than a proper mountain, but don't let the locals hear you saying that (they tend to get a bit defensive about it).
Being such a large city located in a relatively-easy-to-reach area for many nearby havens—as sits along a coast nearing parts of Winter's Tundra and Ember's Stand, and water travel is usually faster (if riskier) than overland travel—Theb and Es are both somewhat trade cities (as much as a city's economy can be trade based in this world) that prosper off selling the precious ores and minerals they gain from the mountains beneath them. In particular, both trade often with one another. Es provides Theb with a good chunk of their food supply in return for Theb's newer technologies. Some criticize Eb's God—Mokes, God of smoke and twin sister to Metas—for this, as they believe that supporting Theb is a waste of resources.
While this has some grain of truth to it, the complaint is far from completely grounded. Aside from the obvious moral implications of cutting Theb off from their food supply, Es actually does get fairly good things in exchange for its agricultural efforts. Theb, being the more popular spot for foreign trade between the two, tends to be at the head of technological advancement on the Southern side of Ragoreth, and Es owes its agricultural success in part to the temperature-protecting technologies and hardy strains of crops gained from Theb's trade. Regardless, Theb is known almost universally as the more frivolous of the two cities, and the fact remains that Theb has significantly more entertainment-based businesses than Es.
Currently, both cities are working on building a railway for easy transport between them. The project has been going steadily for the last two years, and is predicted to be finished after one more.
Please read the rules before applying! Anyone caught not reading those before applying will not be allowed in. I understand that they might be a bit annoying to read, but they've got really important information and I don't think there's any way I could trust someone who didn't read the rules to read anything else that gets posted.
We won't be having an RpN character thread. Instead, if you want to join me, PM me with the template (pictured below) filled out. Please do not fill in your DnD character sheet (the one with mechanics and such on it) before you join the Discord server. If you'd like to have a pre-existing relationship with one of the other players in the campaign, then feel free to pull them into the conversation too (with their permission, of course). Once you send the application, I'll go over it (maybe have a bit of a conversation with you beforehand to cement out any details that seem important) and send you the link to the Discord.
You are allowed to format the template however you want as long as you have all the required parts and it's clear which bits are which. If you have questions or anything else like that, then feel free to say/ask something on this thread or PM me about it.
JOIN TEMPLATE
Password:
Have you ever played DnD before? (I'm asking so I know how much mechanics explanation will probably be wanted or not)
Character Concept: (Can be as vague or as detailed as you like, I'm happy to cement out the details together. If you've got multiple character concepts you're considering, then feel free to mention them all. If you've got any character arcs you'd like them to have, then please mention those. Format it however you like—CS, bullet point, paragraph, etc—so long as it's readable. Unbroken text walls are a bit hard to read for me, so if you do write it like that then please separate it out into paragraphs)
Anything else important to your enjoyment of the campaign: (Can be favorite parts of playing DnD, things in the setting that you'd like to interact with, house rules you'd like to see implemented, or literally anything else you feel fits here. Make it as long or as short as you want—I would love to read a rant about things you like in DnD if that's what you want to put—all I ask is that at least one thing is put here. It can be something as simple as "I like post-apocalyptic settings" or "I'm a bit nervous about learning DnD mechanics" if you'd like)
If you missed the tabs at the top of this post, please click through them! They are rectangular buttons with blue outlines, and have important information about the campaign.
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