* Three hundred years ago, a magical cataclysm wiped out most life on planet Hyd through a series of city-sized wild magic surges. The cause of the cataclysm is unknown, and the gods are silent on the subject. * Society is on its way to recovery in most places, but there is a high imbalance of power. Some cities got lucky and were barely affected by the cataclysm, while other people lost everything and had to turn to a nomadic lifestyle. In some places, isolated bastions of civilization are surrounded by hordes of barbarians. * Your starting location is in the remnants of Oruk: A once powerful country known for its advanced technology, widespread use of magic, and modern but eccentric culture. Even though most of it has been looted by the survivors of the cataclysm over the centuries, some places protected by powerful security systems are still untouched and attract treasure hunters from all over the world. * About your characters: You are adventurers in Oruk. Why that is is up to you. Maybe you are trying to get rich, uncover secrets, or earn political favor, or maybe you are simply trying to get stronger. You should have a way to tie your characters together, or otherwise provide a reason why you should work as a team. What that is can be discussed in session zero. General expectations: * This game is set in a homebrew world called Hyd, which I originally created for a novel, and later adapted to D&D. * I believe that roleplay and building mechanically powerful characters are not mutually exclusive. A party of weak characters can have fun killing a bandit leader by the skin of their teeth. A party of min-maxers can have fun killing a bandit leader as a warm up, and then defeating his much more powerful secret backers in an epic showdown. What isn't fun is when half the party is weak and almost dies to the bandit leader, while the other half is strong and keeps stealing the spotlight. It's important that people share their expectations and find a good middle ground. * This is a team game. Inter-party conflict is only ok if all players agree to it. * Players should be 18+. I’m not planning to have mature content, but I’m also not ruling it out and I don’t want to have to restrict what players can do just because one of them is still a minor. * Newcomers are welcome, but only if they are willing to learn. I don't mind explaining rules, but I do not want to have to repeat myself and I expect players to understand the rules governing their own characters. This setting differs from typical D&D settings in a number of ways. Here are some highlights: * It is a known fact about the universe that people who risk their lives in dangerous adventures and persevere become stronger far more quickly than they logically should. Most adventurers die before they reach that point of course, which is why it is generally not considered to be worth it. Despite this, there are many people who attempt the adventurer lifestyle to grow stronger quickly, some out of desperation and necessity, others out of naive optimism. It is not known what causes this phenomenon, though there are many theories about it. (This is an in-universe explanation for why a PC wizard goes from casting web to casting Meteor Swarm in just a few years, when archmages have to study all their lives to get to that point.) * The gods are not people with human personalities, but living ideas whose personalities depend on the concepts they represent. Divine Domains come first, and personalities form around them. The personalities of the gods are influenced by their worshippers. Most gods are similar to what you get in standard fantasy settings, but there are also unusual ones. For example: Unir is the god of science, and he rewards creativity and invention. Tonos is the god of stories, and he bends probability to make stories real (basically like a toned-down version of Discworld logic on a local scale). * All magic is either divine or spiritual in origin. A spell is essentially a formalized query to a god or a spirit to do a specific thing. The arcane magic of wizards works by posing that query to the god Arcana. Arcana does not have a personality and acts like an automaton who just does as he is asked to do, so long as the wizard fulfills the requirements. This means that wizards are technically clerics, but they would scoff at the comparison. Sorcerers are people who have spirits bonded to them or their bloodline. They may or may not be aware of this, depending on their education. * The undead are not inherently evil. It is perfectly possible to animate skeletons to do menial labor, for example. However, simple forms of undead, such as those created by the Animate Dead spell, emanate energy from the Plane of Negative Energy, which is harmful. This makes it dangerous to keep large numbers of undead around, unless additional effort is spent on preventing the leakage of negative energy. It is perfectly possible to be a necromancer in good standing, but only if you invest the time and effort to make your undead safe. * Biomancy, the ability to use magic to manipulate living bodies, is a well-developed magical discipline in this setting. It allows its practitioners to strengthen muscle, harden skin, beautify, or otherwise improve a person physically. I have created an artificer subclass to represent it, but you can also play other classes and reflavor them to fit this theme. Game: * The game will take place every Saturday at 12:00 UTC. * We use roll20 and Discord. * Apply for the game here: <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1wbgadwI3fnaV9I_Fa_a65RhRRwN4pGsg0WN1tA7gsYw" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1wbgadwI3fnaV9I_Fa_a65RhRRwN4pGsg0WN1tA7gsYw</a> Character creation: * You start at level 3, and I plan to run this all the way to level 20. * Build your character using Point Buy. * You start with a free Feat of your choice. * You can create a custom background using the standard rules if you want (1 existing background feature, 2 skills, 2 out of tools or languages). Backgrounds that give spells (like those from Ravnica) are not allowed. * All source books and optional rules are allowed. Races from other worlds, such as dragonmarked races, are allowed so long as you reflavor them to fit into the setting. * I don't allow homebrew content unless I have vetted it first. However, you can feel free to reflavor what already exists. For example: If you want to be a gunslinger when guns don't exist, just use a crossbow and claim that your crossbow is really a custom-made mechanical gun. So long as you can provide a good reason for it, I am fine with it. * I treat character stats as a game abstraction. If you want to roleplay an intelligent cleric while still being effective in a fight, you can put your points in wisdom, set intelligence to 8, and simply roleplay them as smart even if the stats say otherwise. Your proficiencies affect skill checks more than stats do, so it shouldn't matter much.