The Ill-starred Realm

Hey! Foreword: we're a permanent group looking for another permanent member. One of our players went MIA for almost a year already and another is currently very busy (he prefers raising his newborn kid over RPG with bros smfh). 

We play weekly, always on Saturdays at 19:30 Poland time (GMT+2), see link for conversions. We aim to play as long as possible, but we're getting old and decrepit so 5 hours is the current target. Sometimes we play slightly shorter but rarely shorter than at least 4 hours, and sometimes we play longer and I think we managed one ~8 hour session this year. We try to never skip a week if possible, if few enough players are missing then others take over their characters.

The group is: 2 x Polish (including GM), 1 x German, 2 x French. The MIA guy is from the US. The group is fairly long-standing, several years already.
(+1 new Polish guy as well now).

We plan to play other campaigns after this one and it will most likely NOT be 5e. We're looking for people who will want to stay and continue playing with this group.

Even now if both of our abominable Frenchmen happen to be unavailable, we sometimes play Delta Green instead. We also played Shadow of the Demon Lord before and a bunch of other one-shot scenarios in systems like DRYH or Cyberpunk RED.

For a quick introduction of what we're playing right now:
We're currently playing a quite specific 5e 2014 campaign with lots of houserules, HEAVILY inspired by the Darkest Dungeon and running on a premise reminiscent of West Marches, i.e. each player has multiple characters and picks whoever's best for the current job. Each player has their "main character" too though, representing a leader of their faction. The game is very combat heavy, with decent amount of exploration and with roleplaying ranging from very modest to medium in certain cases. More details at the bottom.

Requirements / Preferences:

1. Adult, proficient in English, has a working microphone and can speak on Discord, basic stuff.
2. Experienced in RPGs including experienced in D&D 5e. The GM and all the current players are advanced and enjoy minmaxing and we don't want wholly-new players falling behind. Even better if you know your way around high level play because we're at high levels already.
3. Is sure to have at least 5 hours of free time to play RPGs every Saturday at 19:30 Poland time. I've been running games at this schedule for 8 years so it's unlikely to change.
4. Agrees that in case of skipping a game without prior warning they shall forfeit their immortal soul as well as, their organs shall be sold at the black market, bones turned into fancy furniture and flesh ground into animal feed and the proceeds used to buy pizza and RPG materials for the rest of the group. The GM calls dibs on the first choice of the bone furniture.
5. Accepts this is a cooperative game and any kind of pvp/hostility towards other players without previously discussing it with others is strictly not allowed.

About the game/playstyle:

A few tidbits that apply both in general and to this specific campaign:
1. Jtank is the designated forever GM
2. We use grid for combat. I very rarely use premade/fancy battlemaps and instead I scribble the surroundings as the game goes. I use tokens for monsters and most effects, though. Example screenshots. I also tend to use some roll20 jukebox music.
3. Old quote from a player, for a different (though similar) campaign: "this is more like a 90/10 combat/RP campaign. I akin it to a multiplayer turn-based strategy game. There's not very much room for RP, so if you're not interested in that sort of thing that's fine, but let's not waste each others' time". It still applies here, we do sometimes have more extensive RP sections but everyone knows what the meat of the campaign is.
4. We seriously love our number crunching and combat and minmaxing.
5. Graphic violence present, i.e. descriptions of battlefields, gruesome monsters; sensitive themes present, drugs and suicide all the way and spiders lurk behind every corner. If you have any restrictions/phobias/feel uncomfortable about anything, please don't apply. Imagine this campaign is sometimes like a gratuitous horror movie.
6. So far we tend to go for either very long campaigns spanning several irl years or super short one-time scenarios that are a few weeks only. In case of long campaigns, for things like D&D this means going from low to high levels, we're all well acquainted with high level play.

About the current D&D Campaign

The campaign started in May 2023, I'd estimate it to be at around 60-75% completion mark, but it all depends.

This campaign includes a TON of houserules for various systems. The most important thing is the MC/Mercenary system: each player has their Main Character, a leader of their faction/mercenaries and when any top-level discussion about strategy or anything occurs, it's them talking. MCs are established powerful characters with history, but coming to reclaim their birthright in the Realm has cursed them and now they're weakened, but as mercenaries cut their way through the MCs regain strength. Oh, and you have a Hamlet which you rebuilt and now use as your base of operations.
Each player can have (theoretically unlimited) number of mercenaries, there are some restrictions i.e. each player can only have 1 mercenary each of certain powerful races. Mercenary minimum level is based on Hamlet upgrades and bosses killed, and is currently level 15.
By the way, there's perma-death, in the setting resurrection doesn't exist at all. That's why you may need the extra Mercenaries. Though I'm doing my utmost so far only 6 Mercenaries have died, but it was close multiple times before. 22 NPC militiamen also lost their lives in the line of duty.

The second most important thing is the weekly expedition system: Time and space in the game is discretely separated into weekly expeditions. No matter how many IRL weeks we take, the expedition lasts 1 week. If the party takes more, they're probably dead anyway or another expedition will assumedly start while they are gone. For expedition each player picks a character (MC or mercenary, nobody fielded a MC yet because of the curse and lack of necessity to do so). Once the party goes on an expedition, they're nearly totally cut-off, the Realm distorts communication, prevents long range teleportation and so on.

Due to the situation being as it is, if you join for the first session we'll ask you to either make 1 Mercenary character or inherit any existing character from the MIA player. If you end up being a good fit with the rest of our group, we'll discuss the further proceedings, i.e. you could either inherit the MC from the MIA player or we'll somehow handwave yet another MC into the story, coming late. Magic items are practically shared entirely with all the parties, gold is split up and then players usually pool it to purchase expensive things as necessary.

Some very important houserules you should know ahead of time (i.e. don't apply if you don't like them):

1. Death's Door: When you drop to 0 hit points, you stay conscious, immediately roll a death save and enter "Death's Door". Whenever you take damage, roll a death save. If you accrue 3 failed death saves, you perish. Otherwise you can exit Death's Door by gaining at least 1 hit point, however your failed saves still remain afterwards. While in Death's Door, you have disadvantage on all attack rolls and ability checks (rule exception: you can still apply sneak attack damage). On natural 20 you heal 1 hit point and exit Death's Door (no longer disadvantaged). Natural 1 is a regular failure unlike in the regular 5e, but it's always a failure. Bonuses to death saves from any source other than specific orange magic items are reduced to +1 per source. Your total death save bonus cannot exceed +5.
2. Stress: The system is directly ripped from Darkest Dungeon. At 100 stress you will suffer an affliction or have 25% chance to gain a virtue. Any stress past 200 will give you a heart attack, immediately putting you at 0 health and Death's Door (but not forcing a death save). Suffering a heart attack at Death's Door equals a failed death save. When Virtuous, nothing happens if you go over 100 Stress and if you reach 200 Stress instead of a heart attack you lose your Virtue and are reset to 0 Stress. Virtues are great and Afflictions will ruin you.
3. Rest Changes: Rests work slightly differently, short rest takes 15 minutes. If you regain spells or class features on short rest, you can only do so twice a day. Long rest only takes 4 hours, however you do not regain lost hitpoints at the end of it. Instead you regain half your max Hit Dice (as normal) and you may then spend them on healing. Long rest is only allowed on certain expeditions.

Some other things are changed here and there. Some spells use my generic 5e houserules, a sparse few is banned, for thematic reasons all revival magic is gone and plane shift/teleport are rather useless too.

Here's the campaign's blurb:
All-powerful dynasty ruled over perhaps the most resource rich piece of land in the world, amassing incredible prestige, unthinkable riches, incomprehensible knowledge and unsurpassable power. Soon after reaching the peak of their glory cracks started to appear, members of the house involving themselves in greater and greater decadence, intrigues, backstabbing, occult and worse...
Hell was unleashed all at once as a civil war broke out, factions of the clan started fighting each other, demons were summoned and yet unpreceded drought caused a famine, and then a plague... As if to culminate the unavoidable doom an eldritch meteor fell down upon the clan's grandest palace, causing incredible destruction and yet even worse, giving birth to a ravenous star cancer which would poison the land forevermore.

Few desperate men dare approach these accursed lands now, overrun by monsters and undead, filled with traps and death, with even the few surviving locals turned distrustful and hostile at best and savage at worst.
You are such desperate men. Other life ventures have failed you and this place is your last hope. You're however not like other vagabonds who travel here. You bear the deeds of ownership and the family regalia, marking you as the true inheritors of these lands, the treasures and the curse...
...of the Ill-starred Realm.

Applying

Drop a post in the thread or make a thread yourself if you feel particularly self-important.
Please include at very least this info:

Age (rounded is fine):
Country:
Systems you played or favorite systems:
How experienced with D&D are you?:
Please write a short description of your favorite D&D character:

If you strike us as the right person, we'll probably invite you on discord to discuss the details.

We're mid-expedition ingame so if you want to join on 12.04.2025 you would need to temporarily take over one of the 2 available characters before getting to field your own mercenaries.