“My Gods, what have you done?”

The words of the Zhelzeo guard rings out in the small chamber. You are one of a small group of adventurers that showed up in Port Damali and answered a summons from a private citizen to assist with some small matter. You were only supposed to be together to explore this dark, undercity catacomb to see if this may have been the source of recent goblin intrusions into the city. Instead, you happened upon the very fresh corpse of Zhafe Uludan, the Marquis of Nicodranas, the sword wound on his neck a pretty obvious indication of foul play. A dead Marquis from a different city with ties to the power structures within the Dwendalian Empire is going to be a huge headache for the entirety of the shaky Clovis Concord. And the Zhelzeo think you and your group are the guilty parties. No one else has been in these catacombs, as far as anyone knows.

Your jail sentence will be revoked as you claim your innocence, but your price will be working for the person who negotiated for you to be released. And while you’re running errands for your mysterious benefactor, you’ll probably also want to figure out who killed Uludan, and why. After all, everyone still thinks you probably did it, and it’s possibly just the beginning of something much larger…

The Game

Hello! This is a D&D 5e campaign set within the Wildemount setting, specifically the Menagerie Coast. You may or may not be a fan of Critical Role, but it’s not necessary to be one. No knowledge of Wildemount or Critical Role prior to joining will be required. I just like the setting.

This is going to be a long post, but I want you to know what this is about and I’m about before deciding if you’d like to try to commit to what should be a rather long, ongoing campaign.

I would like to be your DM for this campaign, and I’m looking for 4-5 players for a weekly game to run for about 4 hours weekly on Tuesday evenings, starting at 6:00 PM PST. Full disclosure, this would be my first campaign as full-time DM, so there may be some wobbly moments as I get my legs under me. However, I feel ready for the challenge.

I am looking for players interested in in-character roleplaying as well as narrative-driven combat. (By which I mean combat will be mostly designed as part of the story). Be comfortable with speaking in character, though this does not necessarily mean an accent. I can’t really do accents, either. Look for about 60/40 roleplaying/combat ratio. Don’t expect many random encounters or dungeon crawls for no reason other than treasure. Do expect that I will want character backstories that I can weave into the campaign and the running plotline.

Honestly, despite the campaign intro involving a murder, this won’t be a grimdark campaign. There will be serious moments, of course, but I’m mostly here to have fun and I hope you are too. For the most part, expect this campaign to have a mostly light-hearted tone and not delve too deeply into the maudlin. I plan to involve some silly sidequests and I do have my own side goal of trying to create interesting NPCs who you’ll actually want around without taking the spotlight from your characters themselves. We’ll see how successful I am at this.

I’m also looking for players that want to be a part of a welcoming, LGBTQ friendly environment, and absolutely encourage all to apply. Also, 18 only please. Finally, we’ll be avoiding topics such as racism, sexism, bigotry, sexual assault, suicide and others that would be uncomfortable for any player. Let’s deal with those topics where it matters: in the real world and our everyday lives.

I expect this game to run weekly for at least a few months, so please apply only if you are willing to commit over a decent period of time.

We’ll play on Roll20, and do voice on Discord. Please be willing to use those if you haven’t already. Additionally, if everyone wants to, I’d love to share my DnDBeyond materials and have characters created there and use the Beyond20 extension to integrate with Roll20, because I like the character sheets on DnDBeyond more, but that would be optional.

There will be a Session Zero, to discuss the game in more detail, go over rules, answer questions, finalize characters, etc. I hope to have players chosen in time to have Session Zero on Tuesday, 6/16 at 6PM PST, incidentally the regular time and date for the campaign.

Summary of things you must be cool with

• A DM that understands rules are important but is willing to stretch a little to prioritize story, cool, or both.
• Being a team. Cooperate with your fellow players.
• Being willing to follow a main story plot that will happen in arcs. There will be side quests and moments where the main story is in the background, and there will be multiple ways to solve the current main story plotline arc. But there will be clear goals, you won’t be simply provided with a map and have complete freedom to just wander off. Keep that in mind!
• Have a good mic/headset, willing to use Discord for voice and are mindful of reasonable open mic etiquette, willing to use Roll20 to play the game, willing to use Theater of the Mind for most of the adventure outside of combat.
• Have a character concept that works within the structures of being part of a team and going along with the main conceit of the game.

Please see the Character Creation Guidelines for some details on what's allowed and what tweaks I'm likely going to do: Character Creation Guidelines

Final Words and Application Link

If you read all this and are still interested, great! I appreciate the interest. Because I do not want to just choose the first four people to see this post and reply, I do have an application form to fill out. I know, how gauche. But I have joined games both with and without application processes and the ones with application processes have been a tick better, so. I will take applications for a few days, until the end of Friday, 6/12 see below. I’ll start reaching out to people the upcoming weekend (6/13 - 6/14), or sooner if applications dry up before Friday, to hopefully get a group ready for a session zero on 6/16.

*Edit:\* Response has been much more than I anticipated and a touch overwhelming. With 50 applications submitted already and only two of those in the past 24 hours I ended this already and will start reaching out to people. If you applied, thank you and I hope you understand that I can't pick all the great players out there!

Thanks!