[LFP] [5e] [Roll20] [Discord] [Biweekly] [Saturdays 7 PM EST] Curse of Strahd

Hello! I am a nonbinary DM (they/them) with two nonbinary players (they/them) (he/she/they) and I am looking for 2-4 more players to play Curse of Strahd every other Saturday. We are all 18+ (I am 36), and we would prefer to play with other adult gamers. Sessions will typically last 3 hours starting from 7 PM EST, but may run long depending on how combat is going, roleplay needs, whether people have work the next day, etc. I try to have 1 combat encounter per session, but Curse of Strahd starts slow and has a lot of investigative batches which are roleplay / discussion heavy. I will be altering NPC backstories as necessary for the sake of incorporating the player characters into the world, and to make Barovia more diverse in regards to the default d&d races. I will be using picrew and meiker to create NPC's that do not have default character art, and will source splash art created for the campaign. I do not want AI art or character concepts from my players. We will (mostly) be playing with 5e 2014 ruleset. We will be using Discord for voice chat and Roll20 for the rest. Six people would be a large party, but I am currently DMing another group of six every other Friday, and have been for a little over a year, and believe I would be able to balance a new group based on my experience. I am also a player in a game every other Thursday where my party size is three, and have been for many years. My current active player character is a lvl 7 half-orc ranger-warlock! I've been playing since 2017 and DMing for about as long. Three of my favorite DMing moments include: when a druid player argued that his character had been corrupted by capitalism and was now Neutral Evil for the sake of not being affected by a cursed object, when a barbarian character jumped from a cloud giant's floating tower onto an enemy, killing it but surviving the fall damage when they struck the ground, and when a different druid used Sleet Storm to keep some ogres and kua-toa down while the rest of the party faced down an illithid. I like horror and have been watching things for fun and to keep me in the headspace: Night of the Living Dead (1968), Pet Sematary (1989), Aliens (1986), Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Nosferatu (2024), Frankenstein (2025), just to name a few. I definitely appreciate that a campaign (and at the pace we'd be playing at) is a long commitment, and so finding players who would have fun playing together is more important to me than a prepared character concept. New players are definitely welcome. Please respect each other and maintain a friendly environment! Mistreating your peers is unacceptable. And using your character as a vessel to explore "fantasy racism" or other biases is unnecessary and unwelcome. I will post my house rules in a separate post in this thread in 2 minutes. You may wish to wait for that before replying to this thread or sending me a Private Message. What I want to know from prospective players: A Bit About You:  I shared my age, my gender identity, and my interest in horror. You might not wish to share some of these details, but give me something. Experience With TTRPGS:  I talked about my time as a DM and a player, as well as some favorite moments with my experience. If you haven't played, maybe talk about what got you interested in d&d, and what you've read so far. What do you know about Curse of Strahd:  Straightforward. Character Concept(s):  Be as vague as you like.

House Rules / Guidelines Sharing these in advance to help with character concepts and to give an idea of the type of DM I am. 1. PHB, Volos, EE, Xanathar's, Tasha's Cauldron, Mordenkainen, Wildemount, Eberron - Rising from the Last War and UA The Revised Ranger are all good. If you have playtested homebrew content that you'd want to roleplay or other UA material you'd like to use, please ask first. 2. Spellcasting: Unlike in the official rules, when you cast a Spell that has a casting time of 1 Bonus Action, you may still cast a Spell as your Action and need not restrict yourself to a Cantrip. 3. Encumberance: You can carry up to 15 x your Strength. After that, your movement drops to 0, but prior to that your movement is unaffected by the amount of weight you are carrying (within reason: even if you can carry another 80 lbs but want to pick up eighty 1 lb cakes, that would be difficult). Additionally, whenever you are dragging a willing creature or a creature you have Grappled (who is not carrying more than 15 x their Strength modifier), then your movement drops by half. 4. Rounding: We always round down. 5. Death Saving Throws: When combat ends, if your character is unconscious as a result of weapon damage or spell damage (as opposed to a trap or a spell), you need no longer make Death Saving Throws, so long as at least one surviving party member is willing to perform a Medicine check or take the time to stabilize you (depending on the urgency of the situation). During combat, anyone can use an Action to make a DC 10 Medicine check to stabilize an unconscious party member to 1 hit point. Healing an unconscious party member with magic or a healing potion, not only stabilizes them, but also gets them back on their feet. 6. Alignments: Please disregard the recommended alignments of races from the Player's Handbook. People are diverse, and I would like that to be reflected in my d&d game. I mean this in both your character creation, and for the purpose of your experience with any in-world npc. 7. Biographies: Please write no more than 7 paragraphs in your biography. 8. Backgrounds: Please don't forget that on page 126 of the Player's Handbook there is the option of Customizing a Background, wherein you can replace any one Feature with any other one, as well as choose any two Skills. However, please only choose one Tool Proficiency and one additional Language, if you are customizing a background in this way. Additionally, please choose any Personality Traits, Ideals, Bonds or Flaws from other Backgrounds, or feel free to create your own. 9. Starting Equipment: Please remember that you may either choose the starting equipment from your class and background or replace both with the maximum amount of gold described for your class on page 143 of the Player's Handbook, with which you can purchase your actual starting gear, and retain the remaining amount of gp. 10. No Mystics, Artificers or Blood Hunters. They intimidate me to DM. 11. Potions: Unless otherwise specified by the potion, it requires a Bonus Action to consume a potion, and an Action to feed a potion to another willing creature. 12. Default gender roles, especially the idea of subservient orc women: Disregard these. They're gone. 13. No rape in my d&d game. If it is integral to your character's backstory or something, I guess warn me in advance. 14. Echo Knight's Echo has no weight. 15. If two allied party members are on opposite sides of an enemy, then any allied party members has Advantage on their attacks against that enemy through Flanking. This is also true for enemies that are allied together. 16. Druids that can Wild Shape can turn into CR 0 little birds or butterflies that technically have a flight speed. 17. When two characters share an initiative roll, the character with the higher Dex goes first. 18. During the first round in the initiative order, a player can hold their initiative to be lower in the initiative order, however they will remain in this lower spot in the initiative order on all subsequent rounds. 19. Half of expended ammunition (like arrows) can be retrieved post-combat in scenarios that make sense for you to be retrieving ammunition. 20. Magical ammunition is expended upon use and cannot be retrieved. 21. Anyone can use any spell scroll. I always forget that 5e has the stipulation that you can only use spell scrolls if the spell is in your class's spell list, but I don't care. 22. Attunement: Like default rules, you can only be attuned to 3 items at any given time. Attuning to an item takes at least 1 hour (a Short Rest). When you attune to an item, you become aware of the magical properties of an item, though there may be additional magical properties that are only revealed by Identify. You learn if the item is cursed, but not the nature of the curse, which must be experienced or learned through Legend Lore.