I'm looking to run 6 adventurers through Rappan Athuk. I will let the text speak for itself: "Once upon a time, there was an idea — an idea formulated by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson got together in 1974 and published in a little paperback book set (maybe you’re heard of it?), including a little tome called Underworld Adventures. The idea was simple: it is a lot of fun to go into a dungeon and kill evil monsters. Why is the dungeon there? No one knows. Why do the monsters usually fight rather than talk? We aren’t really sure. Why are there 16 trolls in a cave with a jug of alchemy? No one cares... This adventure pays homage to that original idea. True, there are opportunities for role-playing, but most of this adventure is dedicated to “roll playing.” Hopefully, while exploring the halls of Rappan Athuk, you will recall the thrill of discovery, the terror in your heart when you fought your first skeleton, the joy of rolling your first natural 20 and the despair you felt when that 1 came up for your poison saving throw. This adventure, Rappan Athuk V, is nothing more and nothing less than a good, old–fashioned, dungeon crawl updated for the Fifth Edition of the world most popular roleplaying game." This is a dungeon is so difficult that the last level was merely written as an exercise to see what craziness Bill Webb could slip past his editors. It is not meant to be gotten to, let alone defeated. This is the bastion of Orcus after all, it would be silly if victory was to be expected. There will be a few strange things I will be doing as DM to facilitate and respect the raw power that is Rappan Athuk. Character levels 1-2: you will create a character using just the Core Rulebook (no feats) using the standard array. During this time you will learn some of the back story and find out some rumors (could be true could be false). These two sessions will basically be for us to learn about how each player plays the game and how my rulings go. (Each session should level you up. So one session will be played at level 1. The next session will be played at level 2, and that one will advance you to level 3.) Once level 3 hits we will start to diverge from a standard campaign. Here each player will make 3 PCs. Each PC will have his or her own items. Will gain experience separately from your other characters. And at the start of each session you will pick which character you want to play as. Magic Items: As a general rule, magic items will essentially be bounded to specific characters. (So you will not be able to use you loot as a library, each character will get and keep their own stuff). Once a character dies, it is likely that their magic items will be destroyed in the process (so death can not be used to move magic items around). Death: Typically pretty permanent, but resurrections may occur. Once the encounter is over and the party is in a safe space you will simply bring in one of your other two characters. If all your characters die, then you play as another player's character, determines by random if nobody offers up one of their backups. Magic Spells: Assume anything above spell level 6 will not be readily available. And assume these spells will have backlash or repercussions. They are powerful and dangerous spells and cannot easily be wielded by humans and demi-humans. Character Experience: Will be gained by spending gold with small amounts given for well roleplayed events. But the majority will be about gaining and spending loot. You don't have to kill things just get their loot (easy, eh?). I'll have to look at 5e experience tables, but the current plan is to make 1gp = 1 experience point. If this is causing characters to level up too slow or too fast then it will be adjusted. Player Experience: New players welcome. I have only DM'd 5e twice but do have lots of experience with Pathfinder. One word of caution, this will probably be a different experience than what you've seen in Youtube and Twitch. You will have to play intelligently and know when to run away. And sometimes you'll just die to a particularly deadly trap in a rather unfair manner. Pace of Play: I imagine will be pretty swift. Gone is the arguing about whether you can trust the drunken homeless man's ramblings. Gone is the listening to political events. And instead it is replaced with simple straightforward (just kidding, Rappan Athuk is extremely winding) dungeon crawling. Yes you can make friends. Yes you can choose which stairs to go down next. But you know the motivation: sweet treasure. WTF No Feats and No Supplemental Material?: Yeah, I like the classics. This rule only initially constricts the characters and the ability to customize. Bonuses outside of class features can be gained by completing quests and reaching milestones. Roleplaying, if you will. Want some bonus? Well maybe pleasing a god will help with that. Want to recover more hp during a short rest? Maybe there is an alchemist who has an experimental potion that will help with that (that may or may not have have side effects). Want to breathe fire? Take a dragon's firebox and experimentally attach it into your neck. It might even last an entire session. We will be using Roll20 for communication and using Discord as a backup. I will not be on video because the focus is on the dungeon and not the DM. You may use video if you wish (it helps me with knowing who is talking). I'll also set up a Discord to let the group communicate outside of each session. To Apply: Respond here with a bit about yourself and a vague concept of what 3 characters you will be bringing. It is assumed all PCs will be friendly to each other and there will be no PvP (until somebody gets mind controlled.) Provide a few sentences for each character to give their background and goals. Edit1: Remember, don't go in the well! Edit2: Character Creation rules have changed . We will be following the Adventure League rule where you can use the Player's Handbook and 1 additional book released by WotC. Hit points : Max at first level. Upon leveling up you will gain the average roll of your Hit Dice or whatever you roll, pick which one is higher. Eg, Your Hit Dice is 6. You roll a 1. Your max hit points increase by 4. No Evil characters , and the characters will be working together. Clarification on Experience: Only gold spent on Roleplay related things will count. So if you purchase a +1 sword it will not grant experience. Examples that will give experience: buying ale, donating to a church, buying a house. The goal is not to make gaining experience hard, just to encourage outside of dungeon play. Most magic items will be gained through adventuring so you shouldn't be spending much if any gold on magic items. Length of Adventure : Until all the characters die or until you kill Orcus. The two options for the end of this module are "I made it though X levels of Rappan Athuk: Dungeon of graves!" or "I actually defeated Orcus!" We'll see what happens after that, if we like each other we can move on to a different module, if not, disband. Clarification on Vampires: Apparently negative levels aren't a thing in 5e, so ignore any instances where I might have used that term. Edit3: Sessions will be around 4 hours.
