/ THE DARKEST DUNGEON

Ruin has come to our family... In this dungeon-crawling campaign I will try to emulate the feeling of Darkest Dungeon. You will embark on expeditions, suffer unimaginable trauma and likely die, all in pursuit of wealth and glory. Perhaps. Rather than a sandbox, the campaign will be quite gamified. You will be locked to your inherited Hamlet and the adjacent dungeons. I will be striving to create a certain type of gameplay, you must be ready to accept a "because it's a game" as an explanation sometimes.

Playing or knowing Darkest Dungeon is not necessary but recommended, it'll improve your experience and you won't be accidentally spoiled.
Discord will be used for voice chat

SINCE WE TAKE 6 CHARACTERS OUT OF 15 PLAYER ROSTER, SLOTS FOR THE "NEXT GAME" ARE PROBABLY TAKEN AS YOU ARE READING THIS LISTING<<<
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Due to hardcore nature of the game, **minmaxing is encouraged. It's mostly a mechanical game, strictly focused on dungeon crawling, murdering things and looting treasure. A bit of roleplay sits there in the background.

GAME FORMAT:
Due to being expedition based, this game will not have a constant party lineup. I make a forum trhead a bit ahead of time and people post if they can make it on a given date. According to posts it is first-come first-serve with priority given to players who have played before. In case we can't finish an expedition during one session, we'll set up a date to finish it. A short expedition can be between 3.5 and 6h, all depends. *Join the campaign to see the forum threads planning next expedition date. *

September is my last month of holidays, so I'm running more actively, with multiple expeditions during weekdays at GMT+2 evening hours (almost always 20:00 GMT+2).

Think of it a bit like West Marches, except the DM has more say on when the sessions happen.

Also, since I will be running sessions on the fly and frequently randomizing dungeons, I will be using sketches/doodles for the battlemap, with varying quality. If this turns you off, be advised. Example: http://imgur.com/a/oGeuO

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It is important to know that we use those Houserules!

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 (d20) rolls except death saves.

Rest Changes:
1. Short rest takes 15 minutes. If you regain spells or class features on short rest, you can only do so twice a day.
2. 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.
You can benefit from long rest once per 24 hours, and since sleeping in the wretched dungeon is often a suicide, you can typically only take a long rest once per expedition only.
3. During long rest, assuming you have trained any, you can use one of your camping skills.

Spell/Ability Changes: Some spells/abilities obviously aren't viable in the game's setting. Raise Dead is useless, so is Plane Shift, and Teleport will take you to somewhere else in the dungeon or to the Hamlet at most.

Stress: But of course! The system is directly ripped from Darkest Dungeon. At 100 stress you will suffer an affliction (or perhaps... 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 immediately kills you.

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Character creation:
All official player options are allowed except for "Lucky" feat. This includes books like Volo's Guide, the UA and the options from DMG. Better build a good character. HOWEVER, if you abuse this freedom to nitpick obscure rules and multiclass 5 UA's classes and create a thermonuclear druid, expect to be mercilessly shot down.

Levels go by 2s. Your base starting level is 2, levelling up in this game means gaining 2 levels. 2, 4, 8, 10 and so on. This is to introduce a visible power spike on level ups.

Starting Ability Scores are 27 point buy. However, each player's first character instead gets a 30 point buy. Your first hero is stronger than the others. Treasure him.

Your backstory is of minimal meaning, what matters is your dungeoneering capability!

If you wish to apply, post a new thread. Please include:
- Times available to play / preferred time to play
- Have you played Darkest Dungeon?
- Plans for your first character (first hero is the strongest, you can flesh him out a little more assuming you will care about his survival)
- Anything else you want to say about yourself I guess

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BONUS INFO:

The Hamlet is your base of operations. New heroes will arrive there, you will be able to purchase items, learn extra skills, relieve your stress and mourn your fallen friends. You will be able to spend gold on improving your heroes or improving the hamlet. Players will be able to have more than one PC after upgrading the Stagecoach, allowing better management and not sending your stressed-out veterans to death.
Hamlet
Every week any idle hero will heal 5 stress. Sometimes random events might happen. Every week an expedition will go out, with maximum of 6 heroes in it.

If they all die, welp, all they had is lost, though magic items may be recovered through random events. If the expedition retreats, all members suffer stress and gain less experience from it. If the expedition succeeds, rejoice!

(experience will be gained for: completing expeditions, slaying bosses, winning significant encounters, gold spent on training in the guild)