Keepers of the Secret Hoard I'm an experienced DM looking for 4-6 experienced players for a regular (twice a week or more) game of 5th Edition D&D starting at 1st level, following a modified Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat campaign. Applications are closed/closing! I'm beginning to reach out to players to form a party! First game will be Saturday, the 28th at 12:00 noon EST Keepers of the Secret Hoard, the Wearers of Purple - not to be
confused with the Purple Dragons, the famous and heroic human knights of
Cormyr with their purple dragon heraldry - rather, The Cult of the
Dragon has been a force of evil in the Sword Coast for centuries, once
ruled by the powerful wizard Sammaster, former chosen of Mystra, the
goddess of Magic. Though it is said that Sammaster was defeated by the
mysterious organization known as the Harpers, only to be risen again as a
lich and defeated once more, his legacy remains as whispers on the
wind, whispers of a new threat. In the typically peaceful castle-guarded village of Greenest, founded
by the halfling entrepreneur Dharva Scatterheart, deep in the
Greenfields north of Amn and East of Baldur's Gate, south of the
ever-illuminated Elturel with its proud Companions and Hellriders,
located on the trade road through Berdusk, with its seemingly endless
rolling plains of tall grasses, a slow but steady stream of traumatized
refugees have been making their way to town, their hair and clothes
singed, with little-to-no possessions between them. Although the strangers have been fed and sheltered, they have yet to
recover from the trauma of whatever happened to their homes enough to
talk about it, and more keep arriving every day.
I know this is somewhat unusual, but I'd like to try running a game almost every day of the week
with frequent breaks, whether more than one person needs a day off
(I could always run a PC as an NPC for a session if someone needs a day
off without feeling like it's a detriment to the campaign), or we just
take breaks between chapters for me to catch up on DM material. I don't really want to play 7 days a week, nor 5, but maybe 3-4 days a
week when possible, and we can certainly take more breaks. I just want
to play more frequently than weekly, with the hopes that we play as much
as we want to and actually finish a campaign. I'm hoping we can run a group of four players through the entire
Tyranny of Dragons campaign (that's Hoard of the Dragon Queen and The
Rise of Tiamat, levels 1-15) without having to play for a year just to
get to the Castle in the Sky, and maybe even complete a whole high-level
campaign with original characters from the ground up! That would be
neat. Tyranny of Dragons appeals to me because it throws some of the
coolest stuff from D&D in to a variety of open-ended sandbox
encounters that could honestly be played any number of different ways.
And since the Forgotten Realms has so much material available, and
there's so much travel involved (from Greenest and Elturel in the south,
through Baldur's Gate, Waterdeep and beyond), there's plenty of
opportunity to get side-tracked with character goals, world events,
local lore, etc. I have some minor modifications planned. It should have a slightly
grittier, more serious tone (more of a Game of Thrones or Lord of the
Rings aesthetic) with an emphasis on interacting with dragons and the
lore of Faerûn. I should point out that I do not want any silly absurdities
or goofball characters. Of course, we as players are free to goof around
and have as much fun as we want to out of character and
sarcastic banter between characters is the norm, but this isn't the
flying circus, so please refrain from applying if you can't get immersed
in the story. On that note, gnome and halfling applications will be
subject to extra scrutiny for roleplayability ;) Standard rules and only core races/classes allowed. If you have
something special from the official books you'd like to play as, run it
by me and we'll see if it fits in with the tone I have in mind. I'd prefer it if nobody's played or seen a playthrough of the
campaign before, but I admit it is a 5 year old product, so if you can
promise to refrain from spoiling any secrets, having someone along to
nudge the party in the right direction wouldn't be the worst thing in
the world. I'll keep applications open for a week or two if necessary, and
hopefully we can pick a time that works for everyone. I'm available from
around noon til early evening like 8 or 9 PM Eastern time, and I could
play anywhere between a couple hours to all day on occasion, depending
on what players want. Also, I would like to stream to YouTube and Twitch, and/or record the
sessions to make content with later on. I usually stream my work in
Unreal Engine making a multiplayer RPG with 800 followers on YT, so I
think the audience might be into it, but no promises anyone actually
shows up to watch ;) I'm traditionally a fan of text only, but we can do voice chat or
video chat depending on what players prefer. I'm familiar with Roll20 so
I'll be making use of tokens, sound effects and maps, but it's been a
while so I could use some pointers on any other neat features we can
use.
Please apply with the following information:
Player Name: (real name or Roll20 name or whatever you prefer) Age: Experience Role Playing:
Experience playing D&D:
Experience playing on Roll20:
Experience playing Tyranny of Dragons:
Time Zone:
Availability: (time preference, general availability)
Play Style: (Role Playing, Exploring, Combat, Puzzles, Lore or a certain mix?)
Text/Voice/Video Preference: Character Name:
Character Race:
Character Class:
Character Background: (Acolyte, Charlatan, etc) Character Alignment: Character Appearance:
Character Personality:
Character Back Story: (A brief story on how/why you live in, recently
arrived to, or are traveling through Greenest. This can be very brief
for now but we'll expand it to include some direct connection to the
plot. Check out the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide or just keep it
ambiguous with no named locations and I'll fit it into the world.
However, having any characters who want to make a stop in Elturel,
Baldur's Gate or Waterdeep would be good for the plot, as would any
character's interest in dragons or the dragon cult in particular,
whether their family was formerly members, they have a vendetta against
them, they've been secretly studying or posing as an initiate into the
cult, etc.) Other Races/Classes you might be interested in: For those of you who'd like to play something special, I'd suggest this character: A
Yuan-Ti pure-blood with human enough features to pass off in society
(pronounced fangs, yellow eyes, maybe claws for hands that are kept
hidden under gloves, or a scaly tail that you keep wrapped around one
leg - but no split tongue, slits for eyes, or scaly facial features as
that would make blending into society impossible). As a true
believer of Sseth, you've been sent on a missionary purpose to seek out
and eliminate Yuan-Ti worshipers of other serpentine gods. You're headed
to the Mere of Dead Men to investigate a place known as Naerytar, which
is rumored to harbor a splinter cell of Yuan-Ti outcasts, but you'd
gladly be distracted from that long term goal by pursuing any Yuan-Ti
you suspect to have converted away from Sseth. Constant exposure to
these false idols has you questioning your own beliefs. Since you have
no mission to return home per se, your secondary motive is to gain a
position of power within society to further the ends of Sseth, but that
means even more exposure to beliefs that threaten your own. Pretty badass, but you get to work with the goals of the campaign and possibly roleplay converting away from Sseth. Here's
an excellent video covering Yuan-Ti history, religion, culture, and how
they are created, with a timestamp for questing characters: <a href="https://youtu.be/cwCjR1OPDGo?t=421" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/cwCjR1OPDGo?t=421</a> There's rules for it in Volo's Guide to Monsters, pg 120 And here's a nice video discussing some possible class options and clever use of the racial abilities: <a href="https://youtu.be/maEv1mVMQ4Y?t=474" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/maEv1mVMQ4Y?t=474</a>
